Ability to archive tasks.

[Avery_Bingham]

Hey everyone! Sometimes, a task is put on indefinite hold, but might need to be referenced later. I don’t want it hanging around in my task list forever, but I also don’t want to mark it as completed. If I delete it, that implies that it won’t be needed later down the road-- does anyone else run into this problem?

I wish there were a way to “archive” tasks so that I could look for them later and also make a note that they are archived/on hold, just not urgent. I have an issue with “deleting” a task… even if deleting it still keeps it searchable! Anyone have a solution? Am I overlooking something obvious?!

[Julien_RENAUD]

Hi
If those tasks contains reference documents for a project then I let them at the top of the project tasks’ list, unassigned and incompleted so that everyone has access to.

If it’s just for me then I creat a specific private project for the tasks in stand by or the ones I want to keep.

[lpb]

Various approaches are possible, depending on your specific needs. These suggestions focus on not cluttering up your personal My Tasks list which I’m guessing is your case (the solution would be different if you’re talking about not cluttering up a project instead of My Tasks)

• Keep the task assigned to you, mark for Later, give it a due date in the future, then it will generate a notification and re-appear in your My Tasks a week prior to the due date you chose.

• Give it a “pending” or similar tag, mark it complete, then remember to periodically review a Saved Search for both tag = pending and complete. Mark incomplete and remove pending when ready to work on it again.

• Mark for Later (or unassign from you) and add to a “Pending” project that you remember to periodically review for actionable tasks. Assign back to you (if unassigned) and Mark for Today or Upcoming when actionable again.

Hope one helps!

[Leticia_Magalhaes]

Wondering if there are any updates on this. With the “progress” feature it would be really useful not to have to delete or mark complete for the tasks that were dropped/are on hold (deleting or completing will affect the chart in progress).

[Katriel_Friedman]

Sometimes we decide to abandon a task that has a lot of comments or is otherwise a good record of our past thinking. I feel uncomfortable deleting these tasks because I don’t want to discard that information, but at the same time I don’t want to have it in my face. It would be nice to have the option of archiving it–putting it into an archive that would be permanently searchable but normally out of sight.

The Project Archive feature is a good example of I’d like this to look like.

[Marie]

Thanks for sharing this great feedback with us @Katriel_Friedman and for providing us with context, this is so useful! I agree that the ability to archive tasks would be very useful; if you haven’t yet, I would recommend checking the tips shared on this other thread. In fact if you agree, I think we could merge your post with this existing one to consolidate feedback on this topic; let me know what you think!

[Katriel_Friedman]

Oops, I didn’t find that one. Yes please, merge this in! Thanks.

[Katie_Reynolds]

I everyone, there is a work around for archiving tasks. If you would rather not use custom fields to help manage pending tasks and would like to archive instead then you can do the following. Create a project and archive it for the sole purpose of archiving tasks. When you want to clean up a project with abandoned tasks you can move task to the archived project. See if that works for you.

Katie

[Cass_Bradley]

yes! And for us-we may have a client book us and become a project but then delay their dates. SO ideally we would like to be able to archive and then unarchive all tasks with the project or we have 10000’s of tasks that may or may not ever some to futon that we have too single item delete as our workflow are long. Short answer; pleas allow assigned workflow tasks to go into an archived space and not be seen unless the project comes back out! The 10, 000 ‘maybe’ tasks are killing our soul. lol

[brian.johnson]

Asana projects are a great checklist but they also serve as a convenient timeline of what actually happened, which is excellent for planning future, similar projects. However, sometimes a task can be partially completed and that, in and of itself, is sufficient to move on to the remaining tasks. Sometimes, the task becomes irrelevant BUT needs to be addressed as such rather than checked off as COMPLETED or deleted.

How do other Asanians approach this?

[Jason_Woods]

Hi @brian.johnson. I d ok be it in a couple of ways. I had a status custom field on most projects which had “Not Done” I would select that the complete the task.

Or I commented on the task on the reason why it was not done deferred etc.

I ended up getting rid of the custom field as I ended up making the comment anyway for my on closure point of view

Reporting would be easier using a custom field.

I definitely would suggest not deleting the task.

Jason.

[Emily_Roman]

Hi @brian.johnson, this is a great question!

We actually have a similar threat related to this topic. I have gone ahead and merged your post with Tasks that Are on Hold: Complete, Delete, "Archive" option? to centralize feedback.

Let me know if you have any questions. Have a great day!

[brian.johnson]

Thanks!

[brian.johnson]

Thank you!

Brian

[brian.johnson]

Thank you!

[Kelly_T]

We often have tasks that have large amounts of comments/subtasks actions etc which for a number of reasons may be superseded, no longer required as part of a specific process (but still need to be recorded for compliance) or put on hold indefinitely.
We don’t want to mark them as ‘complete’ because they are not, we don’t want to leave them open because then they sit there indefinitely or a project appears incomplete, and we certainly don’t want to delete them as they may hold valuable information - or need to be recorded simply as evidence of risk management processes for compliance.
It would be great to have a ‘closed’ button for these sorts of tasks, this could show they’ve been reviewed etc but not actually completed.
This should help us to more accurately reflect the true progress of our projects.

[Natalia]

Hi @Kelly_T and thank you for sharing your feedback with us and for explaining how useful this would be for your current workflow.

I have merged your post with a similar request we have regarding this topic to consolidate feedback and votes. I hope it’s OK!

Thank you again for your feedback Kelly! Have a great week!

[Kelsey]

Oftentimes there are tickets that aren’t going to be completed for one reason or another and should be removed from the backlog. The only option right now is to mark them as complete, which is inaccurate since the ticket was not completed. Deleting it isn’t the right answer either since we need to keep a record of the ticket. It would be great if we could archive tickets instead of marking them as complete, similar to the way we can either archive or delete projects.

[Vince_Mustachio]

If you archive the Tasks and you longer see them in the Project, it seems like a pretty good way for them to disappear and get lost forever.

Would a separate Section for these to be done but not any time soon Tasks, work as an alternative? And this Section could be put at the bottom of the Project so it’s more out of the way.

If you are using Tasks as tickets, another option would be to create a custom field for ticket status. Options for that custom field could include “Waiting on Customer” and “Pending”

[lpb]

@Kelsey, I imagine Asana is reluctant to add a feature like archiving tasks because it will add complexity (though maybe if there are enough votes…).

As an alternative to @Vince_Mustachio’s suggestion, you could move those tasks to a “Tickets - Archive” project you create.