Is there a way to modify when daily recurring tasks renew?

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Is there a way to set when daily recurring tasks renew? I am setting up daily recurring team check in questions, but when someone misses completing their task the day before, and completes it today, the new task that gets generated is for tomorrow, not for today, which leaves a gap.

For example: A team member misses their Monday check in, so they mark the Monday check-in task as complete on Tuesday (even if they don’t actually answer the check-in questions, they still have to complete the task to get the new one). Then, the new task is generated but it shows up Wednesday. I’d like it to show up on Tuesday, so they still have the current day’s check in to complete.

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated!

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@Jenna_Avery thanks for asking! Actually, the recurring task due dates are setup this way by design. As you can see in this blog post,

In addition to the normal schedules like daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, you can also choose “periodically” for tasks that should repeat based on the last time the task was completed.

For example, I like to send the team a summary of customer feedback every week. I can set the due date to Monday, and have it repeat 7 days after completion. If I have a busy week and don’t write the summary until Thursday, when I mark it complete it will create the next task for next Thursday. This is really nice because my tasks don’t get crowded close together, and get scheduled for just when I want them.

Also, this Asana Guide article on recurring tasks indicates that the interval you’ve set for your tasks’s recurrence will determine the new due date.

That said, I can understand how this can become challenging sometimes. I have had a similar experience. :slight_smile: If you’d like people to stick with the same due day of the week, I suggest that you ask them to reset the due day of the week after they complete the task late. So, if they complete the task on Tuesday but it was due on Monday, ask that they change the due day back to Monday when they complete the task. This ask is something I’d categorize as Asana etiquette or a trust policy of sorts.

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Thanks @Alexis, what you’re saying makes sense. I guess it’s just that this use case (wanting a repeating daily task) makes it so that having to reset the due date to force it to be on the right day seems cumbersome and potentially confusing. I’m looking at using this with clients to create an accountability system (right now we’re just testing with my team), and I have a feeling that would actually get in their way, stop them from participating, or confuse the heck out of the less tech savvy ones.

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@Alexis While I understand what you are saying in theory, our workflow depends a LOT on recurring tasks that need to occur everyday without missing a day if someone forgets to check it off. Asking our staff to reset the schedule is leaving too much room for error hence the reason we have asana :D.
You mention “normal” schedules like daily, weekly, monthly and yearly, while periodically repeats after completion.

From my experience here is what i’ve discovered about the normal behaviour of these.
Daily - These repeat after completion (just like periodical tasks)
Weekly - these will repeat 1 week (or 2 or 3) from the task date regardless of when they’re checked off as complete - This is the one we trust.

@Jenna_Avery as a workaround for what you need (a task repeating daily regardless of when it is completed) you can do the following. Set the task to repeat WEEKLY every ONE week, on everyday of the week.

My feedback alexis is:

  1. The “Daily” recurring option and the Periodically repeat 1 day after completion option are doing the same exact thing. I understand the need for “periodic” after completion, but in that case it would be nice to have the daily option repeat EVERY day.
  2. If we could get a way to do periodically and then have a choice (After completion or from task date) that would be HUGE for the recurring function. Almost all of our tasks in Asana are recurring and having the flexibility to have them come up every 3 or 4 days but have the peace of mind that if an employee “forgets” to check it off as complete on Monday that it won’t mess up the schedule would be great!

Sorry for the rambling :slight_smile:

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Nice workaround, @Emil_Kamel! @Jenna_Avery please let us know if you think that would work for your team. Also perhaps I’m understanding you incorrectly, Jenna, but if you have a daily repeat task you shouldn’t have to change the due date each time. If I were you I’d check this Guide article to be sure, just in case it could help your team. :slight_smile:

I hear you both on your feedback and can see how this would contribute to your experience in Asana. I’ll send that feedback to our product team.

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I really like the idea of weekly tasks that show up when they are supposed to show up. :slight_smile: This might be a workaround for us. I will check it out. I totally agree with “Asking our staff to reset the schedule is leaving too much room for error hence the reason we have asana :D.”

I love the idea of being able to set a choice about how the task recurs.

I’m going to experiment with daily vs. periodically so I understand the difference better.

And I’ll also try the weekly tasks to see how that goes.

Thank you!

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@Alexis, no they wouldn’t have to change it EVERY time, I just know my people well enough to know that they will a) blow it regularly, b) struggle to reset the due date, and c) ask me for help. I’d rather make it more bulletproof for this use case. :slight_smile:

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Unfortunately “Daily repeat” doesn’t work perfectly still.

Create a task with a due date of March 12th, set it to repeat daily. (Just to have an overdue daily task) - Check off the task as complete today. The next instance is not March 13th. It is today March 15th. Basically skipping the March 13th and March 14th instance of that task. What @Jenna_Avery and I are needing to achieve is to have task everyday regardless of how “behind” we are on our work.

This is unfortunately currently only achieved by the workaround of repeating weekly on every day of the week as I mentioned above :frowning:

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Ah, I hear what you’re saying. I hope that some of the workarounds we’ve discussed will work for you. :slight_smile: Our product team is aware of your feedback.

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also wondering - i know this thread is about daily recurring tasks - is there a way to set a task to repeat x months after completion? I know we can do this for days under periodically option, but can we do this for months as well?

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You sure can! Just select the monthly option in the repeat drop down.

47 PM

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Hello, I have some problem inserting recurring events into the calendar. By inserting the event with “daily” repetition, however, this only appears on the date I insert it without ever repeating itself daily. Can you help me to understand something more? thank you

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Hi @matteomartinucci

I believe these posts will answer your question.

Please let us know if you have follow up questions. Thanks!

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This still hasn’t been implemented yet three years after?? I am having the same issue. It took me a week to realize that I was actually two days behind on my daily tasks because of how daily tasks don’t actually recur daily as one would expect them to!

This isn’t expected behavior! If a task should be completed every day, then I expect asana to create that task for every day! If I wanted to have just one instance of that task until I complete it, I would have set it up to repeat periodically, 1 day after completion. Not set it to repeat daily!

The workaround of creating a whole bunch of duplicates and set them to recur weekly, would technically work (unless you miss weeks the same way you miss days? ಠ_ಠ), but this is a basic feature, I shouldn’t need to use workarounds for it. What if I wanted to add something to the description of this recurring task? I’d need to update it on 5-7 instances of the task?

I get that you might worry about tasks multiplying like bunnies, but that can be solved by setting up some kind of relevance period. If you are behind on completing that task for, say, a week or two, then just have it automatically deleted or something.

There are many scenarios where people need this functionality. For example, many have daily quotas they need to fill, and if they don’t, they need to work extra the following days to make up for it. Not to mention writing daily check ins, filling up work hour sheets, daily reports, etc. If you have to enter your tracked time for a certain day in a sheet so you can get paid for it, it isn’t ok to miss a day!!

You shouldn’t be thinking “oh, there is a workaround for this, so we have better things to work on”, you should be thinking “this is a basic feature. Basic features have priority over advanced features.”

Do a google search, if there are countless people on the internet posting about a workaround to get a certain functionality than you obviously have a problem for you aren’t catering to the needs of your users.

I literally check in every couple of years to see whether asana had implemented the basic features our team needs so we can move to asana, yet year after year there is still no progress. And it would seem that I am a fool for even expecting them to come.

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