Flowsana Enhancements

It’s been a while since our last update! We have a long list of exciting enhancements to share. Here is the summary; details follow below:

• Subtask Updates:
  • Add Start/Due Dates to Subtasks: When adding subtasks from a template, you can now have your subtasks automatically set to the correct dates
  • Workflows on Subtasks: When creating a new workflow, you now have the option of selecting to include subtasks in that workflow
    
• Variable Substitution Feature Updates:
  • Insert dates into task fields
  • Insert information from parent tasks into subtask fields
    
• Custom Email Notifications: You now have the option to specify your own email subject and/or body
  
• Powerful Quick Task Entry: When you create a Hashtag Automation workflow, you have the option of having it operate on the task Name
  
• Expanded Information in Workflows List: See ALL of the settings and options that you’ve defined for ALL of your workflows
  

Subtask Updates

Add Start/Due Dates to Subtasks

When using the “Add subtasks from a template” rule action, you can now optionally have Flowsana add start/due dates to the subtasks it adds!

To do this, set a date on the “subtask template” task, then set dates on subtasks that you wish to have dated, where the subtask dates reflect the appropriate relative spacing from the “subtask template” date. (We recommend you set dates far in the future so it’s clear that these are just “placeholder” dates.)

Then, when you create the task that triggers the “Add subtasks” rule (that is, the task under which the subtasks get added), set its actual due date. Flowsana will then populate the subtask dates appropriately, relative to this actual date.

For example, let’s say you have an employee onboarding template and have three subtasks that you want performed two weeks, one week, and one day prior to the onboarding deadline. Set your template like this:

If you then trigger the “Add subtasks” rule on a task that has a date of July 16, this will be the result:

In other words, Flowsana calculated the relative distance between each of the template subtasks and the parent “subtask template” task’s date; then it took the actual target date of July 16 and it set the date of each subtask to the same relative distance from July 16 – two weeks, one week, and one day.

Workflows on Subtasks

When creating a new workflow, you now have the option of selecting to include subtasks in that workflow! These subtasks do not have to be attached to the project to be included in the workflow automation.

When you create a workflow, you’ll now see this set of options to choose from:

For an Auto-Adjust workflow, this option means that you can set subtasks as dependent tasks and give them start/due dates, and those subtasks will have their dates adjusted just the same as Flowsana adjusts the dates of top-level tasks.

For a Dynamic Duration workflow, this means that you can set subtasks as dependent tasks and give them a Duration (and optionally a Lag Time and/or Assign To), and Flowsana will adjust those subtasks just the same as it adjusts top-level tasks.

For an If-Then Rule, setting this option means that the rule will be evaluated, and run if the trigger condition is met, for all subtasks in the project in addition to its top-level tasks.

You can read more about this option in the Flowsana Knowledge Base here.

Variable Substitution Feature Updates

Insert dates into task fields

Flowsana has a feature called “variable substitution” that allows you to insert data from your tasks, sections, and projects into a task’s name and/or custom fields. (This feature also allows you to create unique short IDs and links for your tasks.)

We’ve expanded this feature to support various date fields. You can now insert any of these dates into your task names and custom fields:

• Start date
• Due date
• Completion date
• Creation date
• The current date; i.e. today’s date

In addition, you can choose the format you want Flowsana to use: mm/dd/yyyy, dd/mm/yyyy, or yyyy/mm/dd. You can also set the delimiter character to use, so you can have dates like 12/23/2021, 04-12-2021 or 23.07.2021 – or no delimiter at all, like 20210519 which is good for sorting purposes.

Insert information from parent tasks into subtask fields

Following on the heels of the date enhancements above, we’ve also expanded the “variable substitution” feature in another way: you can now insert any field from a subtask’s parent task.

For example, whereas using a variable substitution of {task.Request Stage} will insert the value of the “Request Stage” custom field from the current task, using a variable substitution of {parent.Request Stage} on a subtask will pull the value of the “Request Stage” custom field from its parent task.

You can read more about both of these variable substitution capabilities in the Flowsana Knowledge Base here.

Custom Email Notifications

Flowsana has a “Send an email notification” rule action. Previously, the content of the notification email was fixed; it indicated what change occurred that caused the rule to be triggered.

While this email format is still available as a default, you now have the ability to override it and specify your own email subject and/or body! Even better, you can use Flowsana’s variable substitution feature to further customize the email.

Here’s an example of what the new option looks like when creating a rule with the “Send email notification” action:

Powerful Quick Task Entry

Previously, Flowsana’s Hashtag Automation workflow only operated on a task’s Description field. Now when you create a Hashtag Automation workflow, you have the option of having it operate on the task Name. Here’s what the new option looks like when you create a Hashtag Automation workflow:

In addition, when it processes hashtags on the task Name, it strips out the hashtags after it processes them.

What all of this means is that Hashtag Automation is now a powerful way to quickly set various properties on a task simply by typing them at the end of the task’s name, without having to use the Asana web or mobile interface to separately set each property. Flowsana will set all of them and then will remove them from the task name, leaving it clean.

What can you set on a task using Hashtag Automation?

• The due date
• The assignee
• The section it gets added to within the project
• Any number of tags
• Any number of additional projects

See the Hashtag Automation documentation to learn exactly how to use it.

Expanded Information in Workflows List

The Flowsana web portal displays a list of all of your existing workflows. Previously, while it displayed some information, like the details of your If-Then Rules, it did not display other information; for example, once you created a Forms Support workflow, there was no way to see the settings of that workflow.

We’ve expanded the descriptions available in the workflows list, so you can now see ALL of the settings and options that you’ve defined for ALL of your workflows.