Ability to copy sections including all tasks in that section

Hi @anon68803854, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! As it stands, itā€™s currently not possible to duplicate a section including all tasks in that section. We already have thread in our #productfeedback category on this topic so Iā€™ve gone ahead and meged your post with Ability to copy sections including all tasks in that section to centralize feedback. We will update the main thread as soon as we have any updates!

1 Like

Hi, this is a REALLY important feature, can we PLEASE have an ETA for implementation?

Thanks,
Stephan

6 Likes

Iā€™ve searched through the support resources and canā€™t seem to find instructions on how to do this. Iā€™d love to be able to duplicate all tasks listed under a particular section header! It appears you can only duplicate individual tasks one at a time or entire projectsā€¦

1 Like

Hi @fawner, welcome to the Asana Community Forum! itā€™s currently not possible to duplicate a tasks in bulk or duplicate a section including its tasks. Iā€™ve gone ahead and merged your post with the main request we have in the forum for this feature to centralize feedback!

Would love the ability to temple time sections for a board. Simply copying and pasting the section loses any information in the form fields. I realize you could create a project board with these ā€œpre-builtā€ sections but itā€™s tedious to have to create a new project every time you want a certain set of tasks. Plus it affects your metrics when it contributes to ā€œtasks created in a weekā€ or number of new projects, etc.

Hi @anon96691218, welcome to the Asana Community Forum and thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! We already have a thread requesting this feature so Iā€™ll merge your post with the main thread. I also recommend you checking the workarounds share in this comment.

1 Like

Hi Iā€™m using a task template feature It was grate!! I like that we can make this with a sections, sometimes I use a group of repetitive task for purchasing, re-engineering, facturaciĆ³n etc. but every client and provider have its own different process, whit these section template my team could add this task without the knowledge of the specific client provider process, with I can make standards and avoid failures with the new and old team members

As a new Asana user, we have multiple projects that all have similar elements. We are still discovering what elements we need our general template to have. After a week of working with it, Iā€™m getting closer to a standard template, but Iā€™ve already created many of my projects. Am I correct in understanding that because Iā€™ve already created these projects, I cannot apply a new/updated template to the project? But instead, I have to create a completely new project with the template and transfer everything over (creating a new project and an older defunct version) - OR I have to manually go in and create all of the sections I now realize I need across all projects, and add the tasks to them for each and every project?

This seems like a horrific waste of time for the users. Especially since great Asana minds are out there creating amazing templates. Iā€™m fully anticipating that Iā€™m going to find templates along the way that would work far better for various projects than what Iā€™ve created/currently using. But the inability to import that new template into a project, means that I now have to do a lot of manual updating or transferring into a new project. And I thought Asanaā€™s main goal was to be sure we were spending more time on the actual work than on the organizing of the work/workflow?

As a production company, we will always be finding better ways to organize our workflow, and so that template option is an imperative part of our Asana world. But itā€™s very frustrating thinking that I had better know everything Iā€™ll want to do in that project/find the perfect Template, BEFORE creating it in Asana, because otherwise, itā€™s manual input city after itā€™s been created.

2 Likes

Hi everyone,
My organisation is working with Asana since 6 months and we start to get used with the entire workflow and basic functionality of the tool.

Our templates are ready and we can launch projects more effectively.
However, it happens that some sections have to be duplicated from time to time with all standards tasks including description etc. It seems this features is still not included in the tool.

The Cmd + C ā†’ Cmd + V option is ok but why basic data are not kept? (description for example) This requires quite some manual workā€¦

If the section could be directly copied with all included tasks, this would be really time-saving for our teams. Do you have any update by when such features will be deployed?
Cheers

5 Likes

Hi,

Having the same problem as the above with copying a section but not the descriptors/sub-tasks.

An earlier comment from Asana said this is being developed but back in 2019 - is there going to be an update?

1 Like

Hi Ruth,

This sounds good, but i canā€™t figure out what you mean / find out the solution to this.

How do you get it so sub tasks are appended to the main ones?

Hi @anon8212269
Seeing you face also similar issue.
One solution I found if your section contains always the same tasks and donā€™t change (e.g. template section):

  1. Export your project/template in CSV

  2. Open CSV file. You will see all the different information from your tasks (see list below)
    I rather use Google Sheets which separate sections in different columns more easily
    (Task ID / Created At / Completed At / Last Modified / Name / Section-Column / Assignee / Assignee Email / Start Date / Due Date / Tags / Notes / Projects / Parent Task / Stakeholder / Status / Umsetzung)

  3. Eliminate all tasks you donā€™t need. If you know your template properly, you should recognise first task and last task of your section.
    Pay attention: Sub-tasks are not part of projectsā€¦ Donā€™t use the filters or you might delete the wrong tasks.

  4. Save the file in CSV format. You can now import the file in your active project.
    I usually change the name of the section before importing.

  5. New section is created with all tasks, subtasks, descriptions etc!
    However if you count on dependencies, this is not part of the saved data. You have to include them again.

This solution might sound complicated at first, but it took me 30min to figure out how it works correctly. If your section is really always the same with limited template changes, it will save you quite some time in the future rather than all other options where you have a lot of manual work after.

Hope my explanations are clear and will help you.

2 Likes

Thanks Fabien,

Yes, it seems like this should be a simple fix, especially with how many people have been asking for this.

I figured out a way using Ruthā€™s method, but i think your method above is a good way to use as a structure for multiple projects.

Here is a video using Ruths method above - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXbZuZ_hbcY&t=30s

Thanks,

2 Likes

Iā€™ve honestly just gotten used to going project to project and manually making the field/column adjustments that I need to make. Itā€™s perhaps the most INEFFICIENT way to resolve the ongoing workflow development that happens as you streamline your processes. Well, other than having download a CSV file, which you then make edits to outside of Asana and re-upload. That may actually take the cake on inefficiency.

So, hopefully, the day will come when a user can say "Oh, I need __________ on all of my projects created with the ā€œXā€ template, and then update the template and have the change reflected on all of the projects created with that template.

1 Like

This has been requested for more than 2 years now - why is it so hard to make it happen?

2 Likes

Iā€™ve come to the conclusion with EVERYTHING having to do with software designers - unless THEY personally have faced the issue and been inconvenienced by it, that the changes requested are likely to be very low on the priority lists. Being married to someone with a computer engineering background, we constantly battle over use experience with software - he thinks like a programmer and everything seems very obvious to him. I think like an end user creative, who doesnā€™t frankly care HOW it works - I just need it to work so I can do what I do in life as efficiently as possible.

2 Likes

This is the solution -workaround of course. I was lost in the comments here and at the end I figured it out alone. Before posting it here, i searched on the page and it was already written. Thanks Piim.
I faced the same problem, and the easiest way to bulk copy-paste tasks with all their data is to export in csv the project where your tasks are. Open the csv and delete the sections/tasks you donā€™t need and save the file. Upload the new csv on the projects you want to paste the tasks.
IT keeps all the info, but loses the text formatting in the description

Totally agree, this is a huge feature that we desperately need! Duplicating each task one by one is very time-consuming and the tasks end up all over the place.

This is huge blocker currently necessitating my team to move out of Asana and in to Google sheets.

Use case: Viewing development timelines on a number of small, identical projects in the same place

Attempted solution: Projects wonā€™t work for this as we wonā€™t get a holistic timeline view. It seems that the timeline view with sections would be perfect for the use case, but we have 40+ of these projects so we must be able to create a template section and then duplicate it (including subtasks!) - but I was shocked to learn this wasnā€™t possible.

Question: I am just using Premium - is my use case possible in Business with something like Portfolios? If so, is that why this is this feature not going to get implemented? And lastly, am I right in thinking duplicating sections used to be possible?

No, the Business License doesnā€™t have this feature either. :man_facepalming:t2: