Skip to content

Weekly

Flag Asana tasks with no owner or due date

Each week your team sees the open tasks that are missing an assignee or a due date, grouped by project.

Runs
Weekly
Apps
Asana
AI
Not needed
Access
read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every Monday at 9am, post to #projects in Slack the open Asana tasks in my projects that have no assignee or no due date, grouped by project.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A project in Asana only works if tasks have an owner and a date. In practice, quick captures pile up with no assignee, and tasks created in meetings have no due date. These items cannot appear in a person's My Tasks or in a timeline, so nobody sees them. A project lead reviewing progress on Friday sees a clean board while a quarter of the work is quietly unowned and unscheduled.

Every week, ClickRuntime lists the incomplete tasks across your projects, picks out those missing an assignee or a due date, groups them by project and posts a scorecard to Slack. Each project shows how many tasks need attention, with links so they can be fixed in a minute.

Operations teams and PMOs use it to keep Asana trustworthy as a source of truth.

What you get out of it

  • Unowned work gets an owner

    A task with no assignee is a task nobody will do. Seeing the count by project each week creates gentle pressure to assign every item before it gets forgotten. That prevents quiet drift.

  • Timelines and calendars become accurate

    Tasks without dates do not show up on timelines. Filling in the missing dates means project plans reflect all the real work, not just the neat portion that happened to be scheduled.

  • Projects can be compared fairly

    A scorecard that lists the number of messy tasks per project shows which teams keep tidy boards and which need help. Leads can compare and encourage without a lecture. Encouragement beats lectures.

  • Reporting numbers become more reliable

    Dashboards built on due dates and assignees are only as good as the data. Fixing gaps weekly keeps workload and completion reports honest for leadership. Leadership sees honest numbers. Decisions rest on better data.

  • Cleanup stays small and routine

    Fixing five tasks a week is a ten-minute job, while fixing five hundred after a year is a project. A weekly nudge prevents that backlog from forming. The backlog never forms.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Once a week, ClickRuntime checks the unfinished tasks in your Asana projects.

  2. It picks out tasks with no owner or no due date.

  3. It groups them by project.

  4. A message goes to your Slack channel listing each task and what it is missing.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Asana

What you get

RunsWeekly
Flag Asana tasks with no owner or due datetoday, 9:00Succeeded
Slack · #projects*Q4 Campaign* (3) • Draft Acme case study (no owner) • Book webinar slot (no due date)

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Asana steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
task_hygiene_scorecard.pyexample
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, notify

PROJECTS = ["PROJECT_GID_1", "PROJECT_GID_2"]

def asana(method, path, body=None, **params):
    r = http.request(method, f"https://app.asana.com/api/1.0{path}", params=params,
                     json={"data": body} if body else None,
                     headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('ASANA_TOKEN')}"})
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json().get("data")

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    blocks = []
    for gid in PROJECTS:
        name = asana("GET", f"/projects/{gid}", opt_fields="name")["name"]
        tasks = asana("GET", f"/projects/{gid}/tasks", completed_since="now",
                      opt_fields="name,assignee,due_on,permalink_url")
        gaps = [t for t in tasks if not t["assignee"] or not t["due_on"]]
        if gaps:
            rows = [f"• {t['name']} ({'no owner' if not t['assignee'] else 'no due date'})" for t in gaps]
            blocks.append(f"*{name}* ({len(gaps)})\n" + "\n".join(rows))
    notify.slack("\n\n".join(blocks) or "Every open task has an owner and a due date.", channel="#projects")
    return {"projects_with_gaps": len(blocks)}

FAQ

Common questions

Which tasks are counted as missing information?
Incomplete tasks that have no assignee, or no due date, or both, are counted. Completed tasks and tasks in archived projects are skipped. You can also exclude certain projects, such as an ideas backlog where undated tasks are expected.
Can the scorecard name the person who created the tasks?
Asana records who created each task, and the post can include the creator so the right person gets a nudge. Some teams prefer to show counts only, to keep the tone neutral, and it is easy to choose either style.
How is it different from the overdue alert?
The overdue alert reacts to tasks that already passed their dates, while this scorecard looks for tasks that cannot be overdue because they have no date at all. Together they cover late work and invisible work, which are different problems.
What permissions does it need?
read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (weekly). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Flag Asana tasks with no owner or due date” from your assistant

Copy the prompt above, or connect your assistant first. Free plan, no credit card.