🔖 A “task type” in Asana, the missing link

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We recently tested something in Asana that turned out great: we added a “task type" dropdown.

In Asana, a task could be a regular Task, a Milestone or an Approval. It can’t be an “invoice”, a “meeting” or a “contact”.

But we needed to identify tasks to be able to:

  1. quickly prioritise some types
  2. scan through a project quickly
  3. automate specific behaviours using rules

We started to preprend tasks with emojis, and it works great. Our invoices start with :moneybag:, our meetings with :calendar: and a contact with :iphone:. But for automation, we were missing one element: a drop-down “Type”.

So we created the drop-down and did the following:

  1. each member added it in their My Tasks view
  2. we applied the correct type on all existing tasks (50 at a time, or through a script)
  3. added an automation in projects to choose the type when a new task was created
  4. and used it to automate what we needed, for example meetings going into a “Meetings” section of My Tasks

What do you think about this idea?!

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I think this is great because it gives you more abilities for filtering, etc
We recently started adding a work type custom field with various options for our accounting department.

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Richer meta data for information often leads to better efficiency. This approach makes a lot of sense. Each company will have their own task types. For me, I could see “Follow-up” as a task type (basically a task that belongs to someone who is not using Asana), and “Notes” or “Reference” (a task that simply contains information, not intended for action).

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Could this have been done with tags?

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I’m intrigued, but I immediately see this as added complexity and confusion for the rest of my small team, especially if it were opt out instead of opt in

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Thanks for this.
We also use emojis to mark tasks with a specific purpose (calendar, specifications, process, multi project, training…) and indeed adding an extra dropdown would be helpful to automate things.
The issue we would have with this is the fact that all teammates would have to remember to select the specific task. Could you share how you automated this “3. added an automation in projects to choose the type when a new task was created”.
Thanks

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They don’t even have to know if a rule chooses the right type automatically.

Yes and no. Rules can’t put a tag, and tags are a bit clunky to use (in my opinion). Rules can’t trigger on a tag value either.

We have a “Sessions” project we use for all meetings. As soon as something is multi-homed there, the task type is selected by a rule. A Flowsana workflow may add the emoji automatically as well.

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I love this, as we’re using emoji’s too as a quick fix and visual aid.

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Hey Michael and welcome to the forum!

I love these task type suggestions; I think they’d fit into my workflow, too. Specifically the one for following up with people who aren’t using Asana (silly people, haha). I might suggest this to one team in particular. Thanks for mentioning it!

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Thanks for sharing your workflow, Bastien! I love these ideas and see how it makes a lot of sense. I think for more “power users” (for my company at least) like myself this would be very helpful. How was the set up for your team(s)?

I’d love to hear how this might affect other’s My Task sections and current workflows they have. Specifically the visibility of the Meetings Section in My Tasks. I’ve got a “today, tomorrow, quick win” section flow that I like and not sure how adding another section might affect me so I’m curious to hear more about this. I definitely think being able to review meeting notes (before and after) a meeting is super helpful for meeting efficiency… rather than increasing work about work during a meeting :wink:

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What’s interesting about our approach is that someone could totally disregard them and not use them, it wouldn’t affect their workflow. But if someone wants to go a bit more granular in their My Tasks, they can.

For example, my My Tasks has the following sections:

  • Meetings
  • Top priority
  • Recently Assigned
  • Important
  • Secondary

Thanks to types, I can say that task of type “meetings” when due always go to Meetings. A quote always go to Important and an invoice goes to Top priority. A “maintenance” task can go to Secondary. A personal task could go to a Personal section if you had one.

See what I mean? It is a way to auto-triage based on type.

1 Like