Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve written about what’s new in Flowsana – here’s everything that’s been added since my last update post.
Plus there’s a little surprise for you – some exciting news about an upcoming hotly-requested feature.
Dynamic Duration Workflows
Previously Flowsana always skipped weekends when calculating and assigning task dates. Now there is a Skip Weekends option; you can uncheck it if you want to include weekend days in your workflow.
When you marked a task complete, Flowsana always adjusted the dates of its dependent tasks to that completion date. Now there is an Adjust Dates of Dependents on Task Completion option; uncheck it if you don’t want this behavior for a workflow.
Some inconsistencies occurred when you manually updated a task’s start or due date. You can still manually change the start and/or due date of a dependent task. However, once you do, that task is now under your manual control and will no longer be changed automatically by Flowsana. If you want to adjust a task and still keep it under workflow control, the way to change it is to adjust its Duration and/or Lag Time fields; if you do that, it will remain under automatic control.
Auto-Assign Workflows
Just as with Dynamic Duration workflows, you can choose to include weekend days in a workflow by unchecking the Skip Weekends option.
Rules: New Conditions
Some new rule conditions have been added:
- When a task changes from complete to incomplete…
- When a task is moved out of a specified column/section…
- When a new form is submitted…
Date-Based Conditions
In addition to the above, you can now trigger Flowsana rules based on dates! This means you can move tasks between columns/sections, change custom field values, add tags, etc., based on a change to a task’s start or due date.
Any Flowsana rule can now be triggered by the following conditions:
- If a task is due today…
- If a task is due in N days…
- If a task starts today…
- If a task starts in N days…
- If a task is past due…
- If a task is past due by N days…
Rules: New Actions
The following new rule actions are now available:
- Change a task from complete to incomplete.
- Set a task as an Approval task.
- Set a task’s name to some particular value.
- You can now blank out an existing custom field value (this works on any type of custom field).
Rules: Powerful new “Variable replacement” feature
Flowsana’s rules now allow you to insert values from custom fields, as well as task, project, and section names, in a number of places.
What special strings can I put into my rules?
You can include any of the following text strings:
- {task.[custom-field-name]}
- {task.name}
- {project.name}
- {section.name}
and Flowsana will replace the string with the value specified by it.
Where can I use these strings?
In the following places:
- The If task contains the word or phrase ______ rule condition
- The Set custom field ______ to the value ______ rule action
- The Set task name to ______ rule action
- The Create project from a template rule action
This feature opens up a whole new set of possibilities for using rules!
For example, say you want to prepend the name of the project to the front of every task in the project. Easy! Just create this rule:
> If task is newly created, set the task’s name to {project.name} – {task.name}
Forms Support
A new option has been added to the Forms Support feature: Add form submitter as a Collaborator.
With this option enabled, the Asana user submitting the form will automatically be added as a Collaborator on the task created by the form. In this way, the submitting user can be kept informed of activity on the task.
Support for “My Tasks”
In both rules and workflows – anywhere you can select a project – you can now choose to build a workflow or rule for your My Tasks view.
What’s that – Subtasks, you say?
One of the biggest requests I hear is, “Will Flowsana work with subtasks? I want to include subtasks among my dependent tasks” or “I want to build a rule that applies to subtasks”.
I’m excited to announce that work to fully support subtasks in Flowsana is underway! I expect it should be available in the next month or so. “Watch this space” for more details soon.
Want to try Flowsana again?
If you previously tried Flowsana and you want to give it another go now, you can – just write to Flowsana support and request a new 30-day trial.
Questions? Suggestions? Requests?
I really value your input – please write to me with any questions or feedback you have.