Rules

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. For example, a rule can be created to automatically assign a task (action) when a due date is set (trigger).

Creating a rule

There are two ways to create a rule for your project. Either select an automation from the rules gallery in your project, or create your own custom rule. 

 

To create a rule from the gallery:

1. Navigate to Customize in the top-right corner of your project
2. Click + Add rule
3. Select a rule from the gallery
4. From the drop-down select Runs on tasks or Runs on tasks and subtasks
5. Fill out the specified parameter
6. Click Publish rule

Custom rule builder

The custom rule builder is available on Asana Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Business, and Legacy Enterprise. 

 

 

To create a custom rule:

1. Navigate to Customize in the top-right corner of your project
2. Click + Add rule
3. Select Create custom rule
4. From the drop-down select Runs on tasks or Runs on tasks and subtasks
5. Choose a name for your rule
6. Choose triggers and actions and add conditions
7. When you have selected your desired options, click Publish 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 into 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 into the rule on your sidebar and click Active. If you would like to make the rule active again, follow the same steps, but click Paused. 

Deleting a rule

You can delete a rule at any time by clicking into to the rule from your sidebar, and then clicking the Delete rule button.

Section-based rules

On paid plans, the rules lightning bolt 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

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.

You can use the act performed by one rule to trigger another.

Additional triggers and actions

Rule types

The maximum number of rules per project is set at 50, regardless of plan size or tier.

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 board view projects or projects with 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.

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.

• 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.

• All users with read access to the rule in question can see the correct status of the rule.

• Once you update the rule to a correct configuration and save the updates, those warnings will go away.

Pricing

Rules are available across every paid tier in Asana. The custom rule builder is available on Asana Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Business, and Legacy Enterprise. 

A subset of rules are available to customers on the legacy tier Premium:

• 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

Inverse actions are available on Asana Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Business, and Legacy Enterprise. 

Inverse actions are a complement 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
• Remove from project

Inverse action capabilities support the reassignment, resetting or movement of tasks from one project to another.