Task Templates are a great way to manage auto-creating standard Tasks for lots of entities (Assets, Shots, etc). You setup your Task workflow in a Task Template, assign that Template to a bunch of Assets at once, and boom - hundreds or thousands of Tasks are created in just a few steps.
But if changes to the workflow are needed later, it can be a little more difficult to deal with via the Task Template framework. If you just need to add a new Task, great - you can use the "Update entities with new Tasks" menu item (found when right-clicking on a Template on the Task Templates admin page). This pushes the new Task out to all entities currently assigned to that Template. But this is intentionally non-destructive - it will only add the new Task, it won't change, update or delete any existing Tasks that were previously created on the Asset via the Template. This is to avoid someone accidentally wiping out a bunch of critical production data being tracked on existing Tasks.
But it would be nice to be able to make potentially destructive Task changes en masse to a lot of entities via Task Templates. Right now you would need to do this from a Task page - filter for all affected Tasks, and rename them or update some fields, or delete the old Tasks, then push out new Tasks via the "Update" function, or with an Excel import. Batch editing generally makes this manageable, but the process could definitely be streamlined.
If you delete a Task Template from an entity and then re-assign it, it will end up creating duplicates of any Tasks from the Template that already were created on the entity, so you have to delete the old ones first (or clean up the duplicates afterwards). This is also not ideal.
Maybe the right solution here is a right-click menu item on entities along the lines of "Update Task Template and Replace All Tasks." Or just make it so that when you change Task Templates, any potential duplicates are skipped (any Tasks with the same Task Name and Pipeline Step). Obviously we'd want a confirmation screen to make sure no one uses these by accident. And they should be permission-controlled so access can be restricted.
Click 'Me Too!' to vote up this feature, and add any additional thoughts or use cases in the comments. Is this a pain point for you? What is the right solution in your mind? Or are you more concerned about the widespread destruction potential to even consider a feature like this? Let us know.
