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Task Description Caused Errors

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If your feed fails when creating a task, the problem may be the task description. Asana only supports certain kinds of rich text and may reject unsupported content.

Supported HTML #

The following HTML tags are supported in task descriptions:

  • <body>, <h1>, <h2>
  • <strong>, <em>, <u>, <s>
  • <code>
  • <ol>, <ul>, <li>
  • <a>, <blockquote>, <pre>
  • <hr>, <img>

Anything else will be stripped out or converted, which can lead to unexpected results.

Automatic Recovery #

The plugin now reduces these failures in two ways:

  • Malformed markup is auto-balanced. Before sending, the description is corrected so unclosed or orphaned tags (common when a description contains code or pasted AI output with literal < > characters) cannot break the request.
  • Plain-text retry. If Asana still rejects the rich-text description, the plugin automatically retries once with the description as plain text, so the task is created instead of failing.

Description Format (per feed) #

Each feed has a Description Format setting:

  • Rich text (HTML) (default) — supported tags are rendered, and the markup is auto-corrected if needed.
  • Plain text — angle brackets are shown as literal text instead of being interpreted. Choose this when the description contains code or AI-generated content (for example a code review) so tags such as <strong> appear as text rather than being treated as formatting.

Common Pitfalls #

  • Using the {all_fields} merge tag: This generates a full table, which isn’t supported. Avoid using it in the description.
  • Adding unsupported fields: Some fields (like the Signature field) can produce markup that causes task creation to fail.

What To Do #

  • Use only the supported HTML tags listed above.
  • Instead of {all_fields}, selectively include the fields you need with individual merge tags.
  • If a specific field seems to cause errors (e.g., Signature), remove it from the description mapping.
  • If errors persist:
    • Try simplifying the description to plain text.
    • Enable Gravity Forms logging.
    • Contact support with the entry ID, description content, and error message.
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