Since the May update to my Asana, I no longer see the comment bubble next to a sub-task to indicate whether there is information inside that subtask. My group uses that visual indicator to find if there are updates or status changes to the subtask. Since there are sometimes 50+ sub-tasks in one task, this no-click visual is a HUGE timesaver for my group and is crucial to our workflow.
I have been informed, after 2 threads and a month talking to support that I’ve unfortunately been designated as one of the A/B product change test accounts. Basically, myself and one other guy on my team are seeing this lost functionality, but no one else in my org. I’m told that this will deploy to a future version and is irreversible. I’m not entirely sure why functionality was taken away, without anything in patch notes/updates from the product team. If anything, in the past people have asked for the comment bubble that was there to be even MORE visible. To take it away with nothing left in its place is disheartening and will have a direct and immediate impact to my 60+ person team, and we are dreading it.
My feedback has been escalated to the product team (i’m told) so not sure what a forum post will do that’s different, but maybe others are noticing this? Would love to know if I’m missing something, or if I could get further explanation as to why this was removed.
Lastly, I’d like it to be known how confusing and annoying being unwittingly apart of what is effectively a beta version of the app. If I were told and could opt-in, I probably would… But having it done to my account without my knowledge really rubs me the wrong way. Hoping I can get some resolution on this issue.
@Forum-team, Can you confirm that this is an A/B test?
If so, can you also clarify the potentially incorrect info from Support whether they seem to mention both a) that it’s an active A/B test, and b) that it will be deployed eventually, which is not how A/B tests work (they are first conducted and only after completion is their disposition decided).
Although this is a common, industry-wide practice, I wish Asana would devote more effort to enabling Support to respond more quickly and accurately to questions regarding A/B tests, and that there were more Forum resources to share knowledge of the existence of more of the A/B tests to Ambassadors.
Welcome to the Forum, @user1830, and I’m sorry for the hassle.
I’ve reached out directly to our Product team to verify is this is indeed an A/B test, and will get back to you shortly. I’m also checking with our Support team if there was any misunderstanding in this case.
Hi @user1830, our Developers have confirmed that there is indeed an A/B test which moves the comment icon and count button from the right side of the subtask row to next to the subtask name, like in the screenshot below:
However, it is unexpected that that there is a full removal of this icon. Can you confirm if this is happening to all subtasks in your space, or only in one specific project? If you have more than one organization/workspace in your account, can you also confirm if the behavior is the same in all spaces? Thank you!
Thanks for looking into this - it seems that the functionality for the comment bubble to appear when a description was added to the subtask is what is missing here. We put links in the description of a sub task and that triggers our pipeline workers to know that task is ready to work on. Now, it only shows the bubble when there is an actual comment, not just any info inside the subtask. Wondering if this is how it always should have been and we just built around a feature that was not supposed to be there.
Thanks for the additional information, @user1830. It seems that the comment bubble is specifically for comments added to subtasks. However, I haven’t personally used this workflow, so I can’t confirm if there have been any recent changes. I’ve forwarded your question to our Developers for clarification and will keep you updated.
Hi @user1830, thanks for your patience. The Developers just got back to me confirming that you are correct, the description used to count as a comment, but this unfortunately is no longer the case, since the icon is intended to show comment count, specifically.
Just adding a note here, that they’ve filed your feedback as a product opportunity on their end, and I hope this can be rectified before it’s fully rolled out. I’ll move this thread to our Product Feedback section, editing the title to make it more clear to other users. This way you can also add your vote
Removing/changing functionality like this is certainly going to cause pain for existing users/workflows including many of my clients (and me). I don’t understand the desire to test something that’s incomplete and worse than before.
I appreciate the support. Never done a forum post like this, so not sure if there are ways to get it in front of more eyes. Hoping this catches their attention simply because it is a feature that is removed for seemingly no reason
This is INCREDIBLY frustrating - we use description/notes, subtasks for all of our projects - and all of my team users rely on that 1 icon to know when there is further information or steps for a project.
It has been fully deployed for all my coworkers now. Doesn’t seem to be something we can reverse. Having to change our workflow pretty significantly to accommodate this new change. Wish I knew why they changed something that only takes away features.
I think removing the indication for a description being there is a bad choice, which I hope will be reversed.
I’ve trained hundreds of people to see whether any additional info can be found in the subtask by use of this icon. Now I expect many people will incorrectly assume subtasks that have a description but no comments to have no additional information.
Another option is to add another icon to indicate a description. But I feel we need to know when it is useful to dig down into the subtask or not.
To mitigate this I don’t really see any other option than to inform people they can’t assume there is no additional information in the subtask if there is no icon, which would mean they’d have to dig into every subtask if they want to be sure they don’t mis any information.
On the other hand I’m probably going to make it a habit to comment whenever I add a description to a subtask to minimise the chances of people missing it, but it’s a hassle nonetheless. And since we can’t assume everybody adopts this it’s extra work on both ends.
I can’t understand the logic behind removing this functionality.
Hey @Jan-Rienk - I have no argument with the fact that removing functionality that people have been relying on is not good. But just in terms of answering your question, I think the answer is here:
My reading is that icon was always just supposed to show comments, and it was a “bug” that the Description was being included, and what they did here was “fix the bug”.
(Again not a defense of the change, just an explanation…)
I noticed that since the Subtasks have been updated, the Subtask Icons have also been updated. It used to show when an attachment was added to a task, now it doesn’t. Can we consider making Attachments read as a comment so the comment icon shows next to the subtask without HAVING to click into the subtask to see?
I’ve attached how the icons appear when there is a Description, Attachment, and Comment. Currently only comments show an icon, making subtasks hard at a glance to see if there is content in them or not. Imagine 15 subtasks with photos in some or just descriptions, you’d never know what may be in there unless you click each one.
I’ve merged your post into an existing topic where you can click the title to scroll to the top and vote by clicking the purple Vote button.
That topic includes only part of your request. If you don’t see another related request in Product Feedback
like yours re attachments, please create a new feedback topic for it, and vote.
Today a colleague asked me if I could clarify what I wanted, as he didn’t visit the subtasks as there was no indication visible from the parent task that there was any additional information visible when digging into it.
Now I feel that when I give subtasks a description I have to notify people that there is something for them to read there, or else I will just get questions back.
Or people will need to dig down into every subtask to check if it has a description.
