Definition

This action allows a user to modify the properties of an existing team within a specified Asana workspace. By providing the team's identifier, you can programmatically change its name, description, or privacy settings, ensuring that team information remains current and accurate without manual intervention.

Key capabilities:
Identify a specific team within an Asana Workspace using its ID or name.
Update core team attributes, including its name, description, and privacy level.
Dynamically change team details using data from previous steps in a flow.

This action is valuable for automating Asana administration tasks, such as renaming teams after a project pivot or adjusting privacy settings based on organizational policies.

Inputs

connection

Purpose: This field establishes a secure, authenticated link to your Asana account, granting zenphi the necessary permissions to make changes.
Practical Guidance: You will typically select a pre-configured connection from a dropdown menu. This is the foundational step that allows the action to access your Asana workspaces and teams.
Use Case Context: You would use the 'connection' field to authorize zenphi to update a team on your behalf.

Workspace

Purpose: This field specifies the exact Asana Workspace where the team you want to update is located.
Practical Guidance: After your connection is established, this field will present a dropdown list of all available Workspaces in your Asana account. You must select the one containing the target team.
Use Case Context: You would use the 'Workspace' field to ensure you are modifying a team in your "Marketing Department" workspace and not one in the "Engineering" workspace.

Team id or Name

Purpose: This field is used to uniquely identify the team you intend to modify.
Practical Guidance: You can select the team from a dropdown list of all teams within the chosen Workspace (a static value). Alternatively, you can use the token picker to dynamically insert a Team ID from a previous action, such as 'Find Team', which is useful when the team being updated changes each time the flow runs.
Use Case Context: You would use the 'Team id or Name' field to tell zenphi precisely which team, like "Q4 Product Launch," needs to be updated.

Select fields for update

Purpose: This field allows you to choose which specific attributes of the team you want to change.
Practical Guidance: This is typically a multi-select dropdown or a series of checkboxes. Selecting an option here (e.g., "Description") will make the corresponding input field visible, allowing you to provide the new value. This prevents accidental changes to fields you don't intend to modify.
Use Case Context: You would use this field to specify that you only want to change the team's name, leaving its description and privacy settings untouched.

Team id

Purpose: This field allows you to provide the new name for the team.
Practical Guidance: You can enter a new name directly into the text box as a static value (e.g., "Project Falcon Team"). For more dynamic automations, you could use the token picker to construct a name from variables, such as combining a project code and the current date.
Use Case Context: You would use this field to rename a team from "Initial Brainstorming" to "Official Project Alpha".

Description

Purpose: This field is for entering the new description or purpose statement for the team.
Practical Guidance: You can type a detailed, static description directly. It's also common to use the token picker to insert dynamic content, such as summarizing key details from a trigger form or another system.
Use Case Context: You would use this field to update the team's charter to reflect its new objectives for the quarter.

Team privacy types

Purpose: This field determines the new visibility and access settings for the team within your Asana organization.
Practical Guidance: This is a dropdown menu where you select the desired privacy level, such as making the team public to the organization or keeping it private and accessible only to its members.
Use Case Context: You would use this field to change a confidential project team's status from "Private" to "Public" after its official launch.

Outputs

Team id

Data Description: This output provides the unique, globally-recognized identifier for the team that was just updated.
Workflow Utility: This ID is essential for reliably referencing the team in subsequent steps. For example, you can pass this token to an 'Add User to Team' or 'Create Project in Team' action to ensure you are targeting the correct team.

Team name

Data Description: This output contains the new, updated name of the team.
Workflow Utility: This is useful for creating clear logs or sending confirmation notifications. For instance, you could use this token in an email action to state, "The team '[Team name]' has been successfully updated."

Description

Data Description: This output provides the full text of the team's new description.
Workflow Utility: You can use this content to populate fields in other systems, such as creating a summary in a Confluence page or sending a detailed update notification to stakeholders.

Permalink URl

Data Description: This is a direct, clickable web link that navigates to the team's page within the Asana application.
Workflow Utility: This URL is perfect for including in notifications sent via email or a chat application. It allows users to click the link and immediately view the updated team in Asana without having to search for it.

Team Privacy Types

Data Description: This output reflects the new privacy setting of the team (e.g., "public_to_organization" or "private").
Workflow Utility: This value can be used to drive conditional logic later in your flow. For example, you could set up a condition: "If 'Team Privacy Types' is 'private', then send a notification only to the team manager."

Organization

Data Description: This is an object containing information about the parent organization to which the team belongs.
- Id: The unique identifier for the organization.
- Name: The display name of the organization.
Workflow Utility: The Organization ID and Name are useful for logging, auditing, or for use in advanced scenarios where you need to confirm that actions are taking place within the correct organizational context.

Example Use Cases

Automate Project Rebranding Automatically rename Asana teams when a project's name or code changes in another system, ensuring consistency across platforms.
Manage Team Privacy Programmatically change a team's privacy from private to public when a project moves from a confidential planning phase to an organization-wide launch.
Standardize Team Information Run a scheduled flow to update team descriptions across a workspace, ensuring all teams have a current charter, list of key contacts, or link to resources.
Reflect Organizational Changes Update team names and descriptions in bulk to align with departmental restructuring or new company-wide naming conventions.

Example

Scenario: A marketing department launches new campaigns each quarter. Each campaign has a dedicated Asana team, initially named "Campaign Planning - [Code]". Once a campaign is approved and launched, the team name needs to be updated to "Official Campaign - [Name]" and its description must be updated with the launch date to reflect its new status. Manually tracking and updating these teams is time-consuming and prone to error.

Steps to Implement:

Trigger the Flow: Use a zenphi trigger, such as "When a row is updated in Google Sheets." The sheet contains campaign details, including the old team name, the new official name, and the launch date. A status column changed to "Launched" will trigger the flow.
Find the Asana Team: Before updating, add an Asana "Find Team" action to locate the correct team using the old name from the Google Sheet. This provides the Team ID needed for the update.
Configure the "Update Team" Action: Add the action to your flow and configure the following settings:

Connection: Select your pre-configured Asana connection.
Workspace: Choose the "Marketing Department" workspace from the dropdown.
Team id or Name: Use the token picker to insert the Team ID from the output of the "Find Team" action in the previous step.
Select fields for update: Check the boxes for "Team id" (for the name) and "Description".
Team id: Use the token picker to insert the new campaign name from the "Official Campaign Name" column in your Google Sheet.
Description: Enter a dynamic description using tokens, such as: "This team is for the official campaign. Launched on: [Launch Date from Google Sheet]."

Add Confirmation Step (Optional): Use the Permalink URL output from the "Update Team" action to send an email or a chat message to the marketing manager, confirming the update and providing a direct link to the renamed team in Asana.

Outcome: The entire process of renaming and updating campaign teams in Asana is fully automated. This eliminates manual administrative work, ensures all teams follow a consistent naming and information standard, and provides immediate, accurate updates as soon as a campaign's status changes.

Best Practices

Use Dynamic IDs: Whenever possible, use the Team id from a previous action (like "Find Team" or "Create Team") instead of selecting a static team name from the dropdown. This makes your flow more robust and prevents it from breaking if a team is manually renamed.
Perform Selective Updates: Only use the "Select fields for update" option to choose the specific properties you intend to change. This prevents accidental overwrites of other important team information, such as its description or privacy settings.
Validate Team Existence First: Precede the "Update Team" action with a "Find Team" action. This allows you to build error-handling logic in your flow to manage cases where the team you intend to update no longer exists or was named incorrectly.
Log and Confirm Changes: Use the output tokens like Team name and Permalink URL to create an audit trail. Log the changes in a Google Sheet or send a confirmation notification via email or chat to stakeholders, ensuring everyone is aware of the update.