+1
Well said!
Asana promotes itself as a project management tool; I’d argue maybe its a project team collaboration tool. Unfortunately for my org its very polished for executives and directors that want to easily create and assign tasks to teams and don’t have to deal with the tactical PM realities. They write the checks so we’re stuck with this as our reporting/dashboard tool while running Project in the background to actually manage and track projects.
If Asana could implement even basic PM/Gantt controls it would be a world of difference, but supporting the tactical users doesn’t drive revenue.
1 Like
OK, here we are in Jan 2023, almost 5 YEARS since task duration was brought up as a critical issue.
The fact that Asana hasn’t addressed this glaring deficiency in all of that time positively eliminates Asana as a legitimate contender fro anyone looking for help project management. Asana should just peddle itself as a glorified, collaborative to-do list instead.
5 Likes
I’d like to share my vote for adding task durations to Asana. It’s basically impossible to use as a project timeline without this feature. I have projects that have hundreds of tasks/subtasks. It’s incredibly time-consuming to manually enter the start/end date (duration) and dependencies–especially since you have to move things in the timeline. My company recently moved from Smartsheet to Asana. As a PM this has been a nightmare. Why should I have to use an add-on, like Flosana, to do basic project management activities? I honestly don’t know how it can be called a timeline without this feature.
Hey, I’ll put it out there that I’m new to Asana and in some ways project management. I think I’m asking the same thing as this original post. Is there a way of creating a timeline based on estimated time and dependencies? At the moment there doesn’t appear to be any correlation between ‘estimated time’ and the timeline so you essentially have to do the work twice (boring, waste of time). I want to set up a list in a project with a bunch of asks that are in a chain (dependant on each other), with an estimated amount of time for each, and have this populate the timeline. If I set it up as a template, I can create a project, enter the start data and it should all flow out. Alternatively if a task hasn’t been ‘completed’ and there are dependant tasks in the future, the ability for those tasks to auto move until tasks are completed - essentially showing how a project is slipping in the timeline. Currently a dependant task may miss a due date but the timeline doesn’t move unless you manually move it… Or am I missing something?
1 Like
+1 +1 +1 +1
Left Asana… came back to work on a Gantt chart and this is still not implemented? leaving Asana again. Asana’s Timeline feature should really work like a Gantt chart.
with Premium or maybe its business you can set start dates and estimated tasktimes in any custom field you create. Then you can use Portfolios to track projected workload per user.
The issue is that there’s no way I can find to track actual time spent against the schedule… which is called float/free float time.
This works for now, but there’s other major issues that Asana cannot do well like permissions. I cannot prevent a staff member from accidentally deleting a task. and if they do it goes into their deleted items, not a shared deleted items bin which is a serious issue especially because there’s no way to recovery deleted items and no way to have a history / timeline of what occurred and there’s no way to back and undo changes.
Projedted workload per user is like a gantt chart… The issue is seeing how multiple projects and their task and timelines overlap.
Check into timeline view for more details as well. This is similar to a Gantt chart!
1 Like
This thread is very worrying. I just signed up for Asana and am trying to set up my first projects. I’ve convinced several other teams to join too.
If we can’t make tasks have a duration, what are we even doing here? What is the point of this software?
2 Likes
It blows my mind that this is still not available. This is one of the most basic project management requirements when scheduling. The first task is scheduled and has a second task depending on it, both have their own durations. When the first task takes longer or is delayed, the second task should automatically shift to show the new date of completion.
3 Likes
+1
Asana is really playing games without having this feature smh
Dear Asana, I’m a big fan of your product. Please add activity duration as a feature. This is one of the most basic requirements for project scheduling. Thank you!
2 Likes
Is there any update on this issue? We recently implemented Asana, but this lack of functionality is really slowing us down when it comes to creating new projects and tracking ongoing ones.
In most cases, if your project plan is well designed, the only date you should manually input is the project start date. All subsequent dates should be automatically calculated, based on task durations, dependencies and lag times. This way you can actually calculate the critical path of your project.
Making changes to durations and lag times is crucial for making the PM’s work easy when things are updated. All dependencies should automatically move when this happens.
3 Likes
ABORT. Asana is not ready for prime time due to missing critical features like being able to search by custom date fields, and Bundles are only available to Enterprise customers which is a required feature for any business.
I earnestly hope this is helpful.
1 Like
I can’t believe this is still not a feature that has been implemented… has anyone figured this out without having to use a separate plug-in feature???
Recently, Gantt view was released in Asana, which provides a solution for both duration and easier setting of dependencies (via multi-select), the two main requests here. Gantt view is an additional, new view, and an alternative to Timeline.
For the launch announcement and links to more info, see:
Thanks,
Larry
Was this ever resolved? I added durations and dependencies, but the due dates are not auto assigning. I need help … or do I need to build the project in Smartsheet and then export it and bring it into Asana because my team wants to use this tool?
Found the Gantt tool, also found bugs. The project durations from the list view do not transfer over the the Gantt view. Also, the order of the tasks from the list view do not transfer over to the Gantt view. I put them in sequence, then define dependencies, then durations… so it’s really confusing to put in the list view and not have the same info in the gantt view.
I just tested and durations (due minus start date) set in List appear in Gantt, and the order of tasks is maintained.
If you’re adding dependencies, I’d do that in Gantt view because it’s easier there.
Maybe you can include a video of what the issue is because I don’t think others are experiencing this.
Thanks,
Larry