Custom Template

Iron Fences need to be (1)measured, (2)welded and (3)painted… so we’ve made a different list/template than Wood Fences which need to (1b)go to our wood shop.

  1. Customer makes first call, and we create a New Project with the Sales Funnel Template.
  2. 10 Tasks later, Customer gives go ahead and wants to order an Iron Fence.
  3. CAN WE (after 10 tasks completed) add-in a template that’s been made for Iron Fences into this same project, without loosing everything that’s already in the Project?
1 Like

My personal approach would be: create a template with the Sales Funnel, then many blank lines, then the Iron Fences tasks… When the customer chooses 1a or 1b you delete the empty tasks and irrelevant tasks. If needed, Templana can host such a project in a private repository for you, if you need to share it outside your colleagues.

1 Like

@Wally_Montpetit another option for you is to create a Sales Funnel Template Project that includes a template task within it. Simply create a template task for teammates to copy when the “customer gives go ahead and wants to order an Iron Fence.” The template task can live in the project and simply be copied and then dragged and dropped to the appropriate place in your list. None of your work would ever need to be deleted.

Here’s a rough outline of how that Sales Funnel template project and corresponding template task could look in Asana:

As you can see, I put my template tasks at the top of the project, so I can copy them easily. I can copy the “Iron Fence Order” template task, then put the copy into my “Post-Sale” section. You’ll also notice that project name includes “TEMPLATE” in the title. You can of course copy the project and change the project name for each client.

Wally, do you think this workflow or Bastien’s above could work for you?

I recommend you take a look at this Guide article on account tracking for more info, as well: Using Asana for account tracking | Product guide • Asana Product Guide

1 Like

THANKS Alexis. I’m going to test some ideas over the weekend… and I know one of these paths are going to help me make things better.

2 Likes

That’s great @Wally_Montpetit! Please do report back about how things go.

Any update on when the custom templates will roll out. I am currently evaluating Tallyfy, process.st and Asana but the lack of custom templates in a Asana is huge minus

Unfortunately we aren’t able to provide a specific date, but I hope you find comfort in that this is scheduled for the very near future!

Can you define very near? Next 30 days? We need to make a decision.

Hi Ulrik. We’re unable to say specifically if this will happen in the next 30 days, but it is scheduled to happen soon. It sounds like you’re at an important time in the decision making process. I’ll be happy to connect you with one of my colleagues who can provide more information. :slight_smile:

Hi @Ulrik_Binzer. For what it’s worth, when I was first evaluating Asana I thought the lack of templates was a dealbreaker. I eventually realized that creating my own templates as dummy projects/tasks/subtasks was just as good, and we do it every single day. Once the custom template feature is available, I’m not even sure I’d bother changing to it at this point. Given that the feature is coming soon, though, I’d strongly encourage you to not to make a decision you’ll have to live with for a long time on the basis of a temporary issue when copying projects is a viable alternative for the interim.

4 Likes

I am absolutely for being able to save custom project templates in Asana as it would make my life of building out easy to use templates for my teammates so much easier. Although, I would love if we could go one step further and make template tasks, along with the ability to save those custome template tasks.

My team works with many external partners across many cities and we’ve found it easiest to create a project for that city’s partnerships, with each partner being it’s own task. And since what we do is program implementation at these partners, we then have a separate project with various program implementation task flows that we now have to manually copy and drag over to the partnerships project, and then drag into the subtask view of each partner task to show what programs that partner is implementing, as well as what tasks need to be completed for each program implementation at each partner.

It’s a convoluted workaround that would be made so much easier if someone could simply make the partner a parent task, and then whey they go to type in a sub-task, there is a window that pops up that asks if they would like to select a pre-made task template that would allow them to select the program, which would then auto-populate all of the tasks associated with that program.

1 Like

Good idea, @pdmcdermott. In the meantime, I add a tag “Template Task” to all my template tasks so I can view them all in one place.

Todd
projectmanagementpros.com

2 Likes

Hey there! Just in case y’all haven’t heard the news, Asana recently added custom templates as a premium feature: Learn About Creating Custom Project Plan Templates in Asana

1 Like

is it possible to use the custom templates inside of subtasks within a certain project?
Instead of creating multiple tasks with a common purpose we would like to limit to fewer parent tasks and have the multiple subtasks inside of the parent task. This will streamline our initial view and help to categorize our tasks per say the vendor’s name and then all tasks in the project related to the vendor are subtasks. I can apply custom fields to the project but they do not show in the subtasks unless i assign them individually in the subtasks. - Thank you in advance!

Hi Jennifer. At this time Custom Templates are at the project level.

With your team’s interest in subtasks it sounds like you might enjoy this discussion, To Subtask or not to Subtask:

When it comes to Custom Templates, how do you make them accessible to your team without giving everyone access to the base template? We removed most of our team from our “Templates Library” in order to streamline the process for creating and updating, and now none of them can use our templates when they create a new project.

Hi @Blair,

This sounds like a permissions issue. I’d actually suggest that you add your team back to the templates library for them to access the template and then create Asana conventions that encourage your team to not edit the base template. I think you’ll find these Guide articles on project permissions and conventions to be helpful:

Please let us know if you have other questions.

1 Like

If it helps, @Blair, we put all of our base templates in one section on the sidebar, with an empty project serving as a header:

I also keep private back-up copies of everything, just in case someone accidentally alters one of them.

3 Likes

Oh nice! I like this.

1 Like