Zapier offers introductory support for Custom Fields

   |    |  
 Filed under:   Asana news

Note: If you buy something linked to in one of our posts, we may get a small share of the sale.

Zapier is my favorite automation platform for Asana. With Zapier, you can create complex automated interactions between different web applications with no coding knowledge. For example, you could create a new Asana task when a row gets added to a Google Spreadsheet, update a task description when your CRM contact information changes, or you could create a series of subtasks when an email order comes in.

Learn more about how to use Zapier with Asana in the Asana Training Masterclass!

Custom fields, formerly Track Anything
Custom Fields. Source: Asana.

Zapier recently released support for the New Task in Project trigger using Custom Fields. This means you can access Custom Field data from new tasks for actions in other applications.

For example, if you manually created a “contact” task in Asana, Zapier could pick up Custom Field data for “Phone” or “Zip code” and you could use that information for actions like updating a CRM application or sending a sales lead email.

While this is good news to improve the capabilities of Asana, what I was really hoping for in previous articles is the ability to adjust Asana’s Custom Fields in the actions, not just one type of trigger.

More robust functionality in the future should include:

  • Trigger when a Custom Field is changed to a specific value – Would allow actions like a Slack notification when a task Custom Field “Stage” changes from “Not started” to “In Process.”
  • Action to create a new task and edit its Custom Fields – Would allow you to use another database tool like Salesforce or Google Sheets and add detailed information to Asana.
  • Action to update a task’s Custom Fields – Would allow you to keep all your Custom Fields in sync with other applications.

This would allow Asana to serve as database of sorts, with various apps able to write to Asana’s Custom Fields. I believe Asana will be able to replace CRMs, applicant tracking systems, and other tools once that happens. For now, we’ll keep hoping Zapier expands this functionality! In talking to Zapier’s support team, they said, “It’s not right around the corner, but we’d definitely like to make that happen in the future.”

Start typing and press Enter to search