Rules are available for customers using Asana Premium, Business, and Enterprise. Certain features within rules, including the custom rule builder, custom rules with conditions, approval status changed trigger, and add comment action, are only available to Business and Enterprise customers.
Rules allow you to streamline routine tasks and establish workflows with ease. For a rule to work, you need a trigger that activates the rule and an action that is performed automatically. For example, a rule can be created to automatically assign a task (action) when a due date is set (trigger).
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A rule can trigger another rule. You can also add multiple actions to one trigger to create similar functionality.
Creating a rule
There are two ways to create a rule for your project, selecting one from the rules gallery in your project or creating your own custom rule. The custom rule builder is available for all Asana Business and Enterprise customers.
To create a rule from the gallery:
- Navigate to Customize in the top-right corner of your project
- Click + Add rule
- Select a rule from the gallery
- From the drop-down select Runs on tasks or Runs on tasks and subtasks
- Click on the three dot icon to add additional settings
- Fill out the specified parameters
- Click Create rule
To create a custom rule:
- Navigate to Customize in the top-right corner of your project
- Click + Add rule
- Select Create custom rule
- From the drop-down select Runs on tasks or Runs on tasks and subtasks
- Click on the three dot icon to add additional settings
- Choose a name for your rule
- Choose triggers and actions
- When you have selected your desired options, click Create rule.`
Rules will only run on the first level of subtasks (i.e. rules will not run on sub-sub-tasks, sub-sub-sub tasks, etc.)
Editing a rule
Edit your rules any time by navigating back to the project and selecting the rule you want to update.
You can edit a rule by clicking the pencil icon next to the rule on your sidebar.
Any edits you make to your rules will only apply to a project's tasks and content on a go-forward basis. Edits will not apply retroactively.
Pausing a rule
You can pause a rule at any time by clicking the pencil icon next to the rule on your sidebar.
Click the toggle icon to pause your rule.
Deleting a rule
You can delete a rule at any time by clicking the pencil icon next to the rule from your sidebar, and then clicking the Delete button.
Section-based rules
For Premium, Business, and Enterprise users, the rules icon will appear in sections (on list and board view) that have rules. Once the rule triggers, the icon will become animated. Clicking the icon will open a rules menu for that section, allowing users to add new rules or edit existing ones.
You can edit a rule by clicking the pencil icon that appears when you hover over it.
Trigger combinations and multiple actions
Custom rules with conditions, the Approval status changed trigger, and the Add comment action are available to Business and Enterprise customers only.
You can also use trigger combinations and/or conditional logic and multiple actions to automate routine tasks so your team doesn’t have to think about them.
It's now possible to add up to 20 different trigger combinations and select up to 5 different actions when creating a custom rule. While you can select the same trigger more than once when creating a custom rule, you can only use an action once.
Once a task has been added to the project from list or board view, via form, email, or another area of the product, the custom rule should take effect immediately.
Additional triggers and actions
Using other trigger and actions:
- When the status of an approval changes, you can specify the action that happens as a result
- Create a comment that will post as Asana anytime a selected trigger happens
Due date approaching trigger
Enterprise and Business customers can create a custom rule in the rules dialogue and find Due date is approaching in the list of triggers. You can choose from a couple of preset options or click Custom for more options.
The Custom option allows you to specify how many minutes, hours, days, or weeks before the due date the rule should trigger.
Task overdue trigger
Enterprise and Business customers can find the Task is Overdue trigger when creating a custom rule. You can choose from a few preset options or click Custom for more options.
With the Custom option, you can specify the number of minutes, hours, days, or weeks after the task becomes overdue for the rule to trigger.
If you choose days or weeks when setting up your trigger, it will ignore due times and fire based on due dates only. However, if you choose minutes or hours, it will respect due times.
A few notes on due date approaching and task overdue triggers
- These triggers fire based on the moment a task becomes due or overdue, not simply because a task is due or overdue.
- Both of these triggers will not retroactively fire upon rule creation for all of the existing tasks in the project that match their criteria. They will only fire for due events that happen after rule creation.
- These triggers only fire for incomplete tasks.
- Rules with day or week precision will not execute precisely at midnight. Rather, these rules will execute in the window between 00:00 and 01:00.
Create task action
With an Enterprise or Business subscription you can use rules to create tasks, milestones, and approvals in your project automatically. Choose a trigger or combination of triggers, and Asana will create the task when the rule runs. You can pre-select the task name, assignee, relative due date, and more.
To create a task with a rule:
- Navigate to Customize in the top-right corner of your project
- Click + Add rule, then Create custom rule
- Choose a trigger or combination of triggers
- When the trigger is selected, click the Actions tab
- Under Create new, select Task
You can customize the task by pre-selecting details:
- Task name
- Assignee
- Due date (relative to task creation date)
- Click View all fields to open up the task details pane for further customization
- Choose a project association, task description, collaborators, and subtasks
Create subtask action
Enterprise and Business customers can create a custom rule in the rules dialogue and find Subtasks in the list of actions.
Subtasks allow you to add a predefined list of subtasks to a task automatically.
To add a subtask:
- Click on Subtasks.
- Write the name of the subtask.
As soon as one subtask is added, the rule can be created.
You can create up to 20 subtasks.
To edit the rule, click on the pencil icon next to the rule on your sidebar. The changes made will be automatically saved.
Updating Text and Numerical Custom Fields
You can also use rules to update the contents of a text custom field or a numeric custom field. This means that you can select the values for a text custom field or numeric custom field based on a previous trigger.
Text custom field:
When the trigger of task moved to a section is set to To Be Scheduled, you can add the action of setting the Content Channel custom field to “Blog”.
Numeric custom field:
When the trigger of Content Stage(QGEC) is set to On Hold, you can set the action to select the estimated time.
Rule types and limitations
Regardless of whether the rules are in a Premium or Business project, the limit is 50 rules per project
Custom rules
Triggers
- You can add up to 20 triggers per custom rule
- You can select the trigger more than once
- You cannot choose the Due date is approaching or Task is overdue triggers for subtasks. To use either of these triggers you must change the rule to Runs on tasks.
Multiple actions
- When one or more triggers happen, you can select up to 5 actions to occur as a result.
- You can't add the same action more than once.
Column or section based triggers
Column or section based triggers are for Boards View projects or projects that have been updated to use the new, collapsible sections.
Custom field rules
Custom field rules are available on all projects with custom fields. People custom fields are also supported.
To unlock these rules, you must first add a custom field to your project.
Triggering rules
You can trigger a rule from anywhere (web, mobile, external integrations). If you update something on a task, we check to see if that task is in any projects with rules, and if your action is the trigger on any of those rules.
Projects you don't have access to
You can trigger rules on projects that you don’t have access to, but the yellow lightning bolt icon will not be displayed to indicate that a rule is running.
Anyone can trigger a rule, including Guests.
Permissions: a few considerations
Rules, much like custom fields, are now editable by other members of the project by default. Rules that multi-home tasks into other projects are also now visible from the customize menu. These rules can be paused directly from their project.
- You now have the option to allow others with edit access the ability to edit rules. Now rules that are created will default to editable.
- Only the owner of a rule can delete a rule.
- When updating rules on projects and templates, the editor must have the correct permissions to save all of the rules. For example, if the rule adds tasks to another project, then the editor must also have edit permissions in that other project.
- When a rule is duplicated via project duplication, the duplicating user becomes the owner with insufficient privileges. In this instance, the rule is disabled, but the owner still has editing access.
- Rules are designed to keep running even when the owner's access control permissions change. For example, if a rule is set up to add tasks to a project and you later lose access to that project, the rule will continue to run.
- When a rule is copied or duplicated via project templates (new and legacy versions), the template user will become the rule owner. Here, the rule will only be disabled if the template duplicator has insufficient access control permissions for the rule. For example, you cannot edit a project to which the rule wants to add tasks.
- If a user leaves a project, the rule will not break. However, if there are no other users interacting with the project the rule will be disabled.
Who can enable or disable a rule?
Any user with edit access to a project in which a rule is running will be able to enable or disable a rule created by someone else.
Users with edit access are also the only ones that can view the change history.
A user with edit access can pause or activate a rule but only the owner can edit a rule's triggers and actions.
The rule owner is still the only person that can edit or delete a rule.
Deprovisioning
When you deprovision someone who has rules, their rule will be paused and ownership of any rules on projects will be passed to the project owner.
If there is no project owner, ownership will be passed to the admin who deprovisioned the user. Only the new owner of a rule can re-activate the rule to have it continue running.
When a rule owner is deactivated and the new owner has sufficient permissions, this means that the rule will continue to run which the new owner will then be able to edit.
Updates on misconfigured rules
If a rule becomes mis-configured (example: “Marked complete > Move to column “Done” and someone deletes your “Done” column), we will email the owner of the rule to let them know to fix it.
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We will email you the first time a rule is triggered but cannot fire due to being misconfigured. We will not email you again until it has been corrected and successfully run at least once before misconfiguring again.
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All users with read access to the rule in question can see the correct status of the rule.
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Once you update the rule to a correct configuration and save the updates, those warnings will go away.
Rules integrations
Rules are an important part of many workflows, and so are integrations with third party services (e.g., Slack). Now, you can use a rule to integrate your team's favorite tools into your work in Asana, and let rules do the heavy lifting automatically. You can set specific triggers in your Asana projects, and trust rules to automate your workflow when your chosen criteria are met.
For example, the Slack + Asana rule integration allows you to send a message to a teammate in Slack, triggered by task or project completion.
You can create a rule which pings a specific channel in Microsoft Teams based on criteria such as a change in a custom field value.
Or create new issues in Jira Cloud and Jira Server when a task is added to a particular project section.
Recently launched rules integrations also support actions within Gmail, PagerDuty and Twilio. Learn more about configuring their respective rule integrations here.
Rules using integrations require proper app management settings and user authentication with the third party services.
Triggering actions within apps
There are three types of triggers for rules, and this is also true for triggering actions with rules integrations.
Task added type triggers
- Task added to a section
- Task added to this project
Task updated type trigger
- Based on approval status
- Based on completion status
- Based on assignee
- Based on due date
- Based on attachments added
- Based on comments added
Task timing type trigger
- Task is no longer blocked
- Due date is approaching
- Task is overdue
Forms
When tasks are created from forms they can trigger any of the following triggers:
Task added to a project
This trigger will apply to all tasks being added to a project, not just from forms.
Custom field set
For each drop-down custom field in the project, you will see a trigger and an action. So if your project has "Priority" and "Stage" custom fields, you'll see "Priority set" and "Stage set" as triggers. You pick which value on that custom field you want to trigger a rule.
Example: If you have a drop-down custom field on your form for Type of Request, with the options “Blog” and “Website”, you can set a rule on the project for “When ‘Type of Request’ is set to ‘Blog’ it will add that task to the ‘Blog requests’ project.”
This only works for drop-down custom fields on the project. Some form's drop-downs are not custom fields.
Form submission triggers
With form submission triggers, you can automatically move your forms to a new process without having to triage them manually. Form submission triggers can help you standardize your intake process and automate forms in your workflows.
To set your form submission trigger:
- From the Triggers tab, click on To a project
- Choose Form submissions as a source
- Choose a form
- Choose an action
After setting the trigger, you’ll be able to see your rule in the customize menu.
Every time a form is submitted, you will receive a notification. You can also keep track of the form submission’s history through the task details pane.
Guest permissions
Guests cannot create or own rules, but they can trigger rules.
Pricing
Business and Enterprise customers:
The custom rule builder is available for all Business and Enterprise customers.
A subset of rules are available to Premium customers:
- Move to column/section > Mark complete
- Mark complete > Move to column/section
- Custom field changed > Move to column/section
- Move to column/section > Set custom field
- Custom field changed > Mark complete
- Mark complete > Set custom field
Inverse actions for rules
Business and Enterprise customers:
Inverse actions are a compliment to existing rules that now provide the option to reset or remove data. By providing the option of inverse actions for rules, we have created a more robust rule engine that better maps the structure, quality and efficiency of customer workflows.
Available inverse actions:
- Unassign task
- Move task to another project
- Clear due date
- Mark task incomplete
- Remove collaborators
Inverse action capabilities support the reassignment, resetting or movement of tasks from one project to another.
Variables in rules
It’s now possible to reference dynamic values, called variables, when creating rules. Users can call on variables such as Task assignee, Task creator, Due date, and Custom field values for more clarity and flexibility.
Action: Add a comment
Variables can be used in the Add a comment text field when creating a rule.
To access the list of variables when using the Add a comment action, click the + icon in the bottom-right corner of the text field when adding a comment.
Next, select the appropriate variable from the list. Variables are ordered under four branches: Task, People, Dates, and Custom fields. See the list of dynamic values that the variable can reference below.
| Task | People: Task creator | People: Task assignee | Dates | Custom fields |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Task name | Name | Name | Start date | Single-select value |
| Task description | Due date | Multi-select value | ||
| Task ID | ID | ID | - | Date value |
| Task URL | URL | URL | - | People value |
| - | - | - | - | Text value |
| - | - | - | - | Number value |
This example shows a comment that will reference the variables Assignee name, Task name, Task due date, and Task creator email, even if they change.
To add a custom field value when using the Add a comment action, click the + icon in the bottom-right corner of the text field when adding a comment.
Next, select Custom field as the variable from the list. A drop-down list of custom fields within that project will appear. Choose the field whose value should replace the variable in the comment. Click Save.
The variable used in this case is the custom field Priority. When the comment is posted, the current value of the task's priority field is used in place of the variable. Note that the comment reads Medium, as the task's priority field was set to Medium when the rule was triggered.
Action: Assign task
The Assign task action can reference the following variables:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Task creator | User who created the task |
| Assignee | User assigned to the trigger task |
| Rule triggerer | User who triggers this rule |
Action: Create task
The Create task action can make use of the following variables in rules when setting a relative due date once the rule is triggered:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Trigger time | The time this rule is triggered |
| Start date | The start date of the trigger task |
| Due date | The due date of the trigger task |
| Creation time | When the trigger task was created |
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