Rules are available on Asana Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Premium, Business, and Legacy Enterprise.
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. This article will cover the various rule triggers in more detail. For information on rule actions, please visit this Help Center article.
Let’s take a look at an example:
- A rule can be created to automatically assign a task to someone (this would be the action) when a due date is set (this would be the trigger).
- Trigger: Due date is set
- Action: Assign task
Trigger: Due date approaching
You can create a custom rule in the rules dialogue. The trigger Due date is approaching can be found 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.
Notes on due date approaching triggers
- This trigger fires based on the moment a task becomes due (within the specified timeframe) not simply because a task is due.
- This trigger will not retroactively fire upon rule creation for all of the existing tasks in the project that match this 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.
Trigger: Field is changed
You can create a custom rule in the rules dialogue based on a field change. You can choose from two preset options to trigger an action when a Start date is changed and trigger an action based on when a Date custom field is changed.
Trigger: Task overdue
You 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.
Notes on task overdue triggers
- This trigger fires based on the moment a task becomes overdue, not simply because a task is overdue.
- This trigger will not retroactively fire upon rule creation for all of the existing tasks in the project that match its 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.
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. If your project has "Priority" and "Stage" custom fields, you'll see "Priority set" and "Stage set" as triggers. 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 in the project.
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.