Hi
A common problem we hit is that production will manually add a new task (say “uvUnwrap”) on assets/shots and we later decide “you know - we should really add this “uvUnwrap” task to the TaskTemplate!”. The problem though is the original task they created is NOT linked to the template_task - and we cannot change that since Task.template_task field is not editable.
Then, next time we do an “Update Entities with New Tasks…” the templated “uvUnwrap” task will be created alongside the original, so we end up with confusing duplicates.
I feel like this would be resolved if the Task.template_task field was editable. Alternatively, we could n/a all the new duplicates. But are there any better methods for this?
Hi Luke, thanks for the post! I agree it would be great if this process was easier. The Task Template update feature was intentionally limited in this area when it was first built, because we wanted to err on the side of never overwriting important Task data with any blank Template info.
Fortunately our design team has been looking at this workflow recently, so keep an eye out for some welcome updates in this area in the near future!
There is another option here that may be helpful, if you need something right away. Our ShotgunEvents trigger daemon ships with a sample trigger called “update_task_template_entities.” This uses the Python API to create a workflow that will overwrite existing Tasks with updates from the associated Template. You can find documentation for this plugin in the repo itself.
Just keep in mind that, while I can’t commit to a specific timeline on the aforementioned product updates, when they are released, they should make this trigger functionality redundant.
I hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Hi Tommy, thanks for your answer. However, our need is slightly different. Indeed we want to update entities with a new template, instead of updating the preexisting one. Even if the old and new templates are quite similar, we must keep them independent for production requirements.
All the tasks already present in the previous template will be duplicated in the entity when its task template will be changed.
The easiest way would be to modify the field “task_template” of tasks common in both templates before updating the template, but the field is not editable. Do you already have or plan to have in future releases, a functionality to change task templates without duplicating tasks ?
Let me know if you need further information,
Regards,
Astrid here from Shotgun. Unfortunately, if you have two very similar templates, it will think the second applied template has all new Tasks and won’t recognise any duplicates. The only way to prevent Task duplication would be to use one Task Template and add your new Tasks and then use the “update Entities with new Tasks” feature. This checks the names of the Tasks and only adds the Tasks with new names. Whereas, if you’ve create a second Task Template based on the first with a few changes, it will think all these Tasks are new and add all of them.
We have an existing feature request to be able to see a list of Task Templates that were applied to an Entity, rather than just the latest applied Template, would this meet your production requirements?
