Automatically creating subtasks from emails in CRM project (using Asana, Gmail + Zapier)

Hey everyone. I’d like to share something pretty cool I set up for a client recently:

Background:
The client is setting up a CRM project in Asana and uses tasks to track each prospect. They approached me asking how they could ensure that emails sent to the client could be automatically added to the client task as a subtask (rather than forwarding to x@mail.asana.com and manually adding to a task). With some Asana and Zapier magic I was able to achieve this for the client.

How this works:

  1. In Zapier, set up a trigger where the zap runs when an email is sent to a special Zapier email address.
  2. This email address can be included in the Bcc field (or if you use Yesware in Gmail, you can auto-Bcc this address) when emailing clients.
  3. Zapier then uses the “To Name” of the email to set up a new task in the CRM project. Or, if a task with this name already exists, it’ll update the existing task with a subtask, rather than creating a whole new task.
  4. After Zapier has identified the parent task, it’ll create a new subtask in the parent and will name it with the date and email subject e.g. (2017-07-21 Re: Meeting tomorrow). The body of the email with popular the description.
  5. And that’s it. Any new emails sent to the client can be added to the existing parent task so that you build up a nice history of emails that have been sent to the client.

To take this a step further, I set up a second zap to attach emails received from the client to the same task. It works mostly the same way - Zapier looks at emails received in Gmail and if the “From Name” matches an existing task in the CRM project, it’ll add the email as a subtask to that task.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. If you’re interested in improving your use of Asana further or want to discuss team training, please feel free to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to discuss consulting options.

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Very cool, thanks for sharing!

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That’s great! Thanks for the advice. I will try to implement something similar for our company - so I might get back to you for questions :wink:

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For sure, good luck @Tom_Suberg

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Good work Paul, thanks for sharing

Thank you for sharing this!

I know this is an old thread but I’m kind of a Zapier newbie and have a couple of questions about this. I have set up our CRM in Asana, however because we are B2B the Name is the organization name. Is there a way to set up a zap that will read the email address or contact name in Asana from an email sent in Gmail? I’d love to have all email correspondence automated to create a subtask in our CRM Tasks! I’m sure that is clear as mud lol!

Hi Brittany, I see what you’re saying. This would be a little trickier. You could try using the formatter in Zapier to find the company name from the email address and remove the .com. Then look up the task (company) from the output.

I attempted to change our contacts to our contact name at the organization to get around the B2B issue but my zap is creating duplicate tasks rather than just updating the current one. I’m wondering if this original poster was using a three-step zap, including a search? I don’t have a budget for Zapier so I’m stuck with two-step zaps for now.

Ah right - yes, the original poster (me) uses a multi-step Zap so you can use a find action to update existing records.