Asana Automation of Due Dates of Dependant Subtasks using Tray.io

My team uses subtasks heavily in Asana and was looking to automate adjusting the due date when one subtask is delayed. I built a quick demo automation using Tray.io which adds 2 days between linked tasks or subtasks. Asana has built-in features for doing this with tasks, but it doesn’t work with subtasks. This solution should also work with tasks between projects, if desired.

For this demo, if a task or subtask has its dueon value changed, all dependent tasks will get a new due date of two days later. I was really glad to see that the Asana API call does trigger the webhook to fire, so it is recursive by default. Any chain-dependencies will fire in turn, and the change will cascade down the line, albeit slowly. Next steps are to meet with the team and understand their requirements better. I should accommodate for due_on vs due_at and also for a date range. As described in the video, I might add a custom field for “how many days does this subtask take” so the team won’t need to use a date range. I really don’t recommend this for level-of-effort tracking, I’d strongly suggest using story points instead, but I think an estimate of days might make this more user-friendly for the team.

I also need to add code to check the gid received from the Asana webhook is in fact a task or subtask. It’s probably possible to get other types of gid objects from the webhook. I might exclude tasks and only update subtasks for this team, I might add logic to update the overall task due date based on a specific subtask title, and/or I might update the due date of some or all subtasks based on the due date of the parent task. We are managing an editorial calendar, so your needs may different. Even though Asana Rules don’t allow automation on subtasks or detailed triggers, the Asana API and Asana Webhooks have a ton of hidden functionality!

MAJOR potential pitfall: it is possible to have an infinite loop of dependencies in Asana! Task A can block B, Task B can block C, and Task C can block A. If you do that in Asana, it won't be possible to mark any of the tasks as complete, but it would mean that if triggered, this automation script would run forever! I used the automation platform Tray.io, but that isn't required.

You could probably set this up to run off a Raspberry Pi running as a home server. The Asana API documentation explains how to setup a webhook and how to update a task. Tray.io makes setting up and modify an Asana webhook extremely easy.

My First BBQ Smoked Pork

Yesterday I finally smoked meat for the first time, and boy howdy was it a delicious adventure! This is something I’ve been wanting to do for almost a decade, so needless to say I was excited and I am thrilled at how well it turned out. I want to talk about lessons learned and where I plan to go from here, but first let me share the technical details and some mouth-watering photos.

Meat: 3lb pork shoulder butt roast
Equipment: Kingsford 18” kettle
Fuel: Kingsford blue bag charcoal w/ Maple Mojobricks
Method: Snake + Texas Crutch
Final temperature: 205.2 F
Max grill temp: 242 F
Probes: Thermoworks Smoke w/ grill clip probe + meat probe
Start time: 6:30am
Eating time: ~7:00pm

 

  • Right off the bat you might notice something funky about the details. 12 hours to smoke a three pound piece of meat? The TL:DR is my cook temp was too low, staying between 200F and 215F for the first 6 hours or so, and that was with both vents wide open. This is the first grill I’ve owned, and I’m still on my first bag of charcoal and learning a lot about temperature control. My first few cooks were simple steaks, brats, and grilled veggies. The biggest lesson I learned from this cook is I need way more charcoal in my snake in this kettle when using Kingsford charcoal. Most snake tutorials shows two rows of charcoal with one row on top. Reading about it during the cook, with Kingsford blue bag some people talk about having a 2-1-2 setup, almost double the coals! When I had enough of a break in my day, I opened up the grill and added another row to the snake. That got me up closer to 240F with the vents wide open, good enough to finish this cook and a sign that even one extra row wasn’t enough. Ideally I’d use the intake vent to control temperature and would have targeted 225F inside the kettle consistantly. Multiple dips to 200F slowed me way, way down.

  • The second thing I want to do next time round is trim some of the fat off the meat. My cut wasn’t overly fatty, so as a novice I felt comfortable not trimming any fat off it, despite having read you should trim the fat cap down to ~1/8”. The fat cap was thin at one end, which gave me a great insight into what I want the fat to look and taste like next time. When pulling the pork, I removed a lot of the excess fat and set it aside. After eating a plate, went back and nibbled off the bark from the unused fat cap and sampled different parts. It tasted heavenly! Down at the thinner end, the fat was less of a distinct, rendered layer in the meat, and more integrated into the crust with a great texture and flavor. The thicker end also tasted great, but I know my body doesn’t need all that extra fat, it doesn’t look visually appealing, and it didn’t taste better than the thin end. If I had trimmed the fat cap down to be much thinner, I would have been able to integrate the fat cap into the final pulled pork a lot easier and I think it would have added a lot of great flavor back in.

  • I’d love to make some grill modifications soon and try to enhance this lowly Kingsford kettle. I got this grill for the low, low price of Free, so I’m not complaining, but I’ve seen some of the features in a higher-end kettle. I already Dremeled out a small slot for my probe wires, which has already proven useful. Handles for the vents should be an easy and almost essential mod to make next. The top vent is easy enough to adjust with metal tongs, but wow is the bottom vent a pain. I practically have to lay on the ground to even find the little tab, and if it’s a little stuck from ash or stray drippings, it can be a real struggle to adjust. I’d also really love to engineer a cheap ash scoop/cleaner for the inside of the kettle to push ash out of the way and guide it out the bottom vent. I haven’t put much thought into this yet, but the ash buildup from the snake method was substantial, and would only get worse if I doubled the number of coals being used. Cheap and DIY are the name of the game here, since I’d rather just buy a nicer, larger kettle if I was going to spend serious money. I might need something larger soon if I want to be able to cook for more people or even think about smoking something special like a beef rib!

  • I wasn’t planning on using the Texas Crutch, aka wrapping the meat in aluminum foil to help get it up to temperature, but with the long cook time I just had to speed things up. Due to my low cook temp, my pork stalled around 150F initially. When I finally added more coals, it climbed to 170F. I don’t know if it would have stalled again at 170F with the change in grill temp, but it was getting late and I wanted to eat eventually. I think I got the benefit of the long cook time in terms of bark formation anyway, so I wasn’t too upset by using the crutch. I added a splash of New Glarus Nectar Ale, wrapped it up tight, and watched the internal temperature shoot up! For a larger piece of meat I would definitely consider this method again, and would even consider finishing in the oven if need be.

Up next I’ll probably practice on pork shoulder a few more times. It’s a fairly forgiving cut of meat and great to learn on. Ribs and brisket will have to be on the menu soon, too. The last time I was in Texas I had a smoked beef rib which was so good I almost can’t describe it. It’ll probably be a while before I get to smoking that myself, not least of all because of how large a single beef rib can be, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to.

I had a blast throughout this whole process and can’t wait to do it again!