🪄 Add a new Custom Field type: Reference / Relation / Lookup Field

[Ginger-Park]

I too would find this a valuable feature. Sometimes tasks are related but not dependant. Having another option to link tasks to other tasks that are relative would be amazing!!

[NicoleK]

Here, here! We often end up having tasks marked as “blocked” or “blocking” to tie things together, which creates confusion… when in reality we are simply wanting to tie two related tasks together. A formal “related” functionality would be much appreciated!

[FenwayJohnny]

This is fantastic! And youve already thought it all through. This would power up Asana in an amazing way. +1 here.

[Skyler]

@NicoleK - We do too. But we use the native dependency functionally to establish this relationship formally.

[Rachael_Chasse]

Hi all,

We use Asana across multiple departments that each have their own project and workflow. Department A is using Project A.

Department B is using Project B. This department needs to execute a single task that is related to multiple tasks in Project A, but has it’s own workflow. We have attempted rehoming the tasks from Project A so they also show up in Project B, however they show up as separate tasks and cannot currently be grouped into a single task in Project B via rehoming.

We would love to see a custom field type that would allow users in Project B to select multiple tasks from another project from a drop down list. This would allow a single task in Project B to reference multiple tasks from another project. Similar to how the people field would allow a user to select multiple collaborators.

Thank you!

[Stephanie_Oberg1]

It depends on the behavior you’re expecting from the multiple Project A tasks in a single Project B tasks. If you want simply a ridealong reference to the A tasks, you can easily link them in to the B task description or comment through use of “@…” autofill. Then all A tasks will ride along passively as the B task goes through its workflow. (The A tasks still individually retain all their A functionality, of course.) When you click on one of those A tasks in the A project, you will see the B task it is riding in.

If you need those A tasks to do something more active in the B project, then I don’t see how to address it.

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Rachael_Chasse , welcome to the forum

It sounds like you are requesting something like what I’ve proposed in this post:

Add a new Custom Field type: Reference / Relation / Lookup Field

Imagine being able to create a custom field in Asana based on: a list of existing tasks within a project a list of existing projects within a portfolio and then have those lists available as either a single-select or a multi-select field to be added to a project or portfolio, just like any other custom field! I have been dreaming of such an ability for sometime now so I thought I’d create a mockup to wet your appetites and hopefully nudge the Asana team towards this direction. …

If so, I could merge your post into that, in order to consolidate votes.

Let me know!

[Rachael_Chasse]

Hi @Richard_Sather–yes these do sound like the same feature requests. Please feel free to merge the two requests!

[Rachael_Chasse]

The deal tracker is exactly our use case for this feature. The sales department has a list of individual and separate deals to be tracking and make progress on, but at some point our marketing and creative team needs to prepare materials based on a customized cluster of these deals. Each has its own workflow, communications, and personnel.

[steveddan]

Others have mentioned this would be essential for a CRM use case, which I agree with. In fact without it, the CRM use case is completely broken in Asana and pretty much cannot be done.

I’ll also mention this would be extremely helpful for general project management. For example, I want to have a product roadmap board with high-level features being worked on over time. And then the engineering team, design team, art team, etc should be able to link tasks in their backlog boards to the feature in the roadmap. Each team needs their own backlogs separately from the roadmap because they have different workflows for prioritizing, completing, and approving work. I want to be able to easily track work across team-specific boards that is related to a feature in the roadmap board, and see all the work outstanding in the different boards. This could be done by allowing me to:

1. Link tasks across boards via a relation field
2. Filter tasks in a board according to the relation
3. Allowing me to see all the tasks that have been related to a task (or at least access the filtered view of the other boards with relations)

This is so core to how I work every day in Notion that it was shocking to come back to Asana after many years and find that they haven’t implemented this yet. Monday and ClickUp both have it.

[Richard_Sather]

Thanks for adding your voice @steveddan , great use cases! Hoping Asana will consider adding this soon