Reminder bot

Even the most conscientious and best-intentioned teammate can get overloaded and occasionally forget a task. For project managers, team leads, or coordinators, it can be draining to check in on everyone to make sure that everything is going according to schedule. To stay on track and minimize the work-about-work use, you can Asana’s API to create a bot (i.e., a script that performs a task automatically) for automatic reminders. In this case, a "ping bot" takes action when due dates are approaching (or for any other specified trigger). This can act as a more intelligent version of the reminders that Asana already sends when due dates approach. For example, the bot could comment with reminders further in advance, ask assignees or followers to take some action (e.g., setting a custom field), reassign the work, and/or modify due dates. With a bot handling the schedule and reminders, people can spend their time on the work that needs human attention, such as ideation and feedback.

Recruiting bot

At Asana, we use a bot to help automate the process for evaluating engineering candidates. The bot helps ensure that applicant coding tests are graded in a timely manner by the right engineer.

When candidates have submitted their coding test, the bot uses the Asana API to assign the test to a grader based on specific criteria tracked in Asana, such as their preferred programming languages and number of previous evaluations. Graders are given x days to grade tests (the bot takes into account when graders are out-of-office). If tests have not been graded by the due date, graders are pinged (i.e., notified) by the bot with a comment on the task to either grade the test or to reassign it to someone else. After y days, the bot automatically re-assigns the test to the next grader to keep the process moving.

Bugs bot

Our engineering teams handle triaging bug reports by creating a task in a "Bugs" project. A bot then adds the project manager of the relevant team in Asana as a follower, moves the task into a "needs triage" section, and requests assistance. The project manager can then evaluate the bug and triage it.

Since the evaluation of the severity of the bug is important for understanding how urgent the fix is, the bugs bot will remain persistent, commenting every few days until the task has been moved out of the triage section and into a section of the relevant priority. This process ensures that we are aware of the impact of bugs and helps us accidentally overlooking severe bugs.