T+/T- dates for recurring processes

English Forum Tips and Tricks
1

I’m very new to Asana (just started using this morning) and am attempting to use it to make sure everything is in place/allocated to the correct team members for recurring processes, such as onboarding new employees. Is it possible to set up a project such that you set a T date (e.g. new employee starts) and then the due dates for other tasks fall around this? e.g. on T-5 to check that the contract is signed.

Thanks in advance for your wisdom :slight_smile:

2

@Louisa_Troitzsch Unfortunately that’s not available for now. I’d also love to see those kind of customization and advanced configuration option though.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the speedy reply :slight_smile: I noticed that with the premium subscription you can save a project as a template which might partly help. I’ll trial it for now and see how we get on!

4

Yes, templates are great way to standardize some processes. However, due dates cannot be flexible in templates. How to Use Asana Project Templates | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide

5

Hello Lousia,

First of all a warm welcome to Asana and the Asana Community! :unicorn:

Despite the fact, that there is no perfect built-in solution for your question you might be able to do it via Templates, which you know are available in Premium and Zapier.

You can connect your HR software to Zapier and create the following workflow:
If team member has first day → copy Asana template for new employees
Set due dates in Asana according to first day of employee

You have to do this only once in Zapier and then you are good to go.

There are also many built-in Zapier connections I recommend you to check:

And again welcome to the Community?

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6

Thanks for the reply (and for the welcome!). I’ll definitely look into this option - thanks for highlighting it. I’m currently getting my head around all of Asana’s functionalities to see if it’s worth us subscribing for the premium service/how many of the premium features we would actually use. Appreciate the answer and I’ll report back!

1 Like
7

This sounds like an interesting idea @Sebastian_Paasch. Have you actually set this up?

8

Hi,

not so far, since I always had all my HR topics inside Asana :slight_smile:

9

I use Zapier and Asana quite a bit. You can absolutely do this with Zapier, but not quite the way @Sebastian_Paasch described because if you just copy a project it would not set the due dates with a Today + 6 days type of format. Your options are:

  1. Copy a project in Asana with static due dates and use the date shift method.
  2. Keep the template in Zapier so the dates are automatically set correctly.

I cover this in the Asana Training Masterclass in the integrations module for anyone interested.