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How to retrieve text and email from Asana custom fields


Greetings and thank you for help / direction!

I am would like to send email notifications after milestones are achieved in Asana. This is represented by a task moving from/to different sections in a project in Asana.  

I have set up flowsana to trigger a generic notification email which identifies the task name and status update. This gets forwarded to mailparser so that an email can be formatted to originate from our outlook. 

I am able to use this information to look up the task by name and it retrieves the task.  However the custom field data has a lot of filler content. 

I have tried:

Looking up the task again from the task ID isolated after searching for the task by task name.

Creating a task manually instead of via api per usual. 

  • Both result in data fields which cannot be used to set email to or text variables from the related field. 

Best answer by GBConnectBest answer by GBConnect

Troy Tessalone wrote:

Hi @GBConnect

Good question.

What you’re seeing are line items for the custom fields.

Here’s a help article about using Line Items in Zaps: https://zapier.com/help/create/basics/use-line-items-in-zaps

Thank you Troy! 

This helped frame the mission. I found a different route to accomplishing the goal but this insight could come in handy at some other point. Using tags was a better route to triggering an email. 

---- 

One challenge is that sometimes there are null fields in Asana, so it is not as straight forward as pulling an index.  Lookup tables seemed promising, but I’m not trying to transform the data. 

Essentially want to use the custom field header, which can be separated nicely with util.line_itimizer to reference the index of the display value field (util.choose) 

Unfortunately the null fields creates a missmatch between the two outputs

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4 replies

Troy Tessalone
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Hi @GBConnect

Good question.

What you’re seeing are line items for the custom fields.

Here’s a help article about using Line Items in Zaps: https://zapier.com/help/create/basics/use-line-items-in-zaps


GetUWired
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  • Zapier Expert
  • 1030 replies
  • August 4, 2022

Since the fields come back as line items, you will need to use a code step to isolate the line items into mappable fields. 

This article will show you how to parse that data into mappable fields: 

 


  • Author
  • Beginner
  • 1 reply
  • Answer
  • August 4, 2022
Troy Tessalone wrote:

Hi @GBConnect

Good question.

What you’re seeing are line items for the custom fields.

Here’s a help article about using Line Items in Zaps: https://zapier.com/help/create/basics/use-line-items-in-zaps

Thank you Troy! 

This helped frame the mission. I found a different route to accomplishing the goal but this insight could come in handy at some other point. Using tags was a better route to triggering an email. 

---- 

One challenge is that sometimes there are null fields in Asana, so it is not as straight forward as pulling an index.  Lookup tables seemed promising, but I’m not trying to transform the data. 

Essentially want to use the custom field header, which can be separated nicely with util.line_itimizer to reference the index of the display value field (util.choose) 

Unfortunately the null fields creates a missmatch between the two outputs


christina.d
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  • Zapier Staff
  • 2653 replies
  • August 9, 2022

Hey there, @GBConnect! Thanks for closing the loop and so glad to hear you were able to find a solution! Thanks for sharing it with the Community.