Allow NEW Timeline to work with Project Custom Templates

Currently if you create a new project using a Custom Template that has a Timeline in it, the new project will have the old dates. There should be a way to select the start date and have all dates update or at the very least have all dates work from the creation of the new project.

I’ve seen multiple posts where the “Sort by Due Date, Select all tasks with dates, Hold Ctrl+Up or Down to change due date one day at a time” trick is presented as a fix.

THIS IS NOT A FIX. Here are three reasons this isn’t enough:

  1. With Due Dates in general but especially with the new Timelines feature I’m seeing the need for start/end dates vs a singular due date. If you use the trick above it ONLY moves the END due date… it does NOT move both dates together.

  2. If I create a template today and set all the dates appropriately, even if #1 above was fixed, what would I do in a year from now. Does Asana really expect me to ctrl+down 365 times to get to the correct dates?

  3. If I hold the up or down arrow to try to make the dates go by faster Asana WILL freeze 100% of the time and you will lose data. Sometimes only half the dates change, and only to what you froze on. Sometimes none of them. Sometimes all of them but again it’s just random. This will severely jack up your timeline too. Good luck trying to fix this if it happens to you and you have a LOT of tasks in your template.

Hi Matthew,
I had the same problem, but found that linking the project to instagannt meant that I could select all tasks in instagannt and move them along the timeline in one go. Asana is then auto-updated with the new start/finish dates.
Rob

Nothing against instagannt, and I’m glad that works, but this shouldn’t require a 3rd party. You can also select multiples on Timeline in Asana and drag. Two issues though. One… what about in a year if I’m using the same template. Am I really going to have to drag a years worth to get it right… or change the template every month? What about when I have a ton of tasks with dependencies and it’s difficult to highlight, drag, drop. What about the issues with trying to mass change dates causing lag/crash/loss of data. This could all be solved with a simple “Do you want us to update the task dates?” question when I create a new project from template.

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It would be great if this were connected to the project due date where you could set the project due date on a specific task or custom date and all other task dates would update based on the template time span on the timeline.

We are a church using asana. We have a specific template we use for our Sunday message series, and it all hinges on the starting Sunday of the series. This would allow me to create a new project for each series, and instead of dragging across the timeline, just set the date of the first message in our series and all other tasks populate dates based on that information. Glad I’m not the only one wanting to use the software this way.

+1. The whole point of a template is to streamline project creation. I have a process that all keys off of one date. I should be able to use the template for that process, supply the key date, and the rest of the dates should populate.