Advanced Search to see Incomplete Subtasks with Completed Parent Tasks

Until there is some software updates to improve the subtask-parent task relationship (more on that below), I want to know if I can run an advanced search report to show me incomplete subtasks that are associated with a completed parent task?

The idea being that I could regularly audit / review these to either mark complete (assumption is they were done since the parent task was marked complete), so that they are no longer appearing in my incomplete / upcoming tasks view.

Thanks in advance!

Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to vote for some of the ideas posted on these forums that support what I believe would be significant improvements to how Asana handles subtasks:

Vote to Prevent Tasks being Marked Complete is Subtask(s) are Incomplete

Vote to Display Subtasks in Task List View

Vote to Give User Options for Handling Subtasks when Parent Task is Marked Completed

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Good point. And I can’t see a way to find incomplete Subtasks of complete parents with Asana Advanced Search.

Also, I can’t tell from a Task list with Subtasks listed or from the Subtask’s pane if the parent Task is complete or not. An indication from both locations would be helpful.

Unless someone is more clever and can find a way to do it. I would suggest moving this to Product Feedback for voting.

A workaround for not completing the parent Task of incomplete Subtasks is to make the parent dependent on one or more of the Subtasks. As discussed in this topic.

And if you haven’t already, please vote for these Subtask improvements.

I saw that recommended workaround with adding a subtask labeled something like “Reminder to complete all subtasks” to the subtask list and then making the completion of the parent task dependent on that reminder subtask being completed in order to (somewhat) prevent users from closing out the parent without addressing any incomplete subtasks. It’s not exactly an elegant solution since it requires user to not only create that reminder subtasks, but to build out the dependency.

I’ve voted for just about every feedback request related to subtasks and suggest anyone else who stumbled across this post do the same!

Still hoping someone can help me out regarding the advanced search for subtasks associated with completed parent tasks…

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Bumping this in hopes that someone from Asana sees this and has a suggestion.

I’d really like to find my poor orphaned subtasks and give them a proper home (or burial)…

That wasn’t a useful suggestion, especially without linking to a relevant video, but thanks?

It appears you simply responded to promote your app development company?

@Marie can you provide any assistance here?

@Ben_Brenner, I created a Product Feedback topic for this here.

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Thanks, @Vince_Mustachio, got my vote!

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Still isn’t possible. STILL when we search for tasks the results doesn’t show their subtasks, Useless. It needs to shows them like it finally does in list view, with a dropdown to show the subtasks.

With the right filter you can see them @Motor , what’s the remaining issue?

It doesn’t show the subtasks under their parent tasks.

Are you using a filter to show this?

We need to use tags as they would be expected to be used. Click a tag in a project? You get all the custom fields in the project with all the same features, with all the rules still available with all the parent tasks with all their subtasks underneath like in list view still with the interface sub-totaling the custom fields, in our case, time spent on each task/subtask.

For it to work as it does as a search view that requires the user to do a search that displays the subtasks and not as not connected visually to the parent tasks is not helpful whatsoever.

We need to track change orders and all the work that’s associated with a change order. There is no ability to do this I have yet to figure out.

The project is the client.
The section is called change orders
The parent task is the change order.
The subtasks are the tasks.

We have to track many change orders per project and must track what work is associated with which change order.

We cannot make a new section for every change order because a new dynamically named section cannot be triggered by a Task Template nor would we want it to be because we have the same sections across every client (project).

We have tried making new parents tasks as the work and then converting them to subtasks under each change order task but that’s not workable because the interface cannot show two levels of subtasks which is what would happen if we moved the parent work tasks under the task that has the change order name.

So we tried keeping the change orders as parent tasks in the change order section and assigning each a unique tag “CO_ShortName”.

Then we would create new tasks in the work section and then tag each task that was associated with a change order with its tag.

But there’s no way to sort the project by tag that I’ve yet to find that sorts all the change order tasks by tag, shows all the custom fields, allows us the click and change them in list view, and totals all the hours spent for all those tasks which is what billing needs to do invoicing easily.

Then when you click a tag, the tags interface is horrific. It cannot show what a user would expect unless you have a complex magic search term saved for it and even then, that would shows the task but not grouped with the subtasks and without most of the standard functionality of the standard list view.

Understood, you would want to expand a task within the search result. I am mentioning the add filter > more > subtask

I just edited my above comment to add more details for you.

All in all. What we are trying to track isn’t anything crazy.

It shouldn’t be this hard and now we have loads of tasks not connected to their correct change orders which is highly problematic. Unless we go back and tag all of them but then if we do that we can’t visualize them in a helpful way.

Open to any and all ideas you have.

@Bastien_Siebman See above?

Just had the idea to create a custom dropdown field with each dropdown choice being a Change order unique identifier string.

I then filtered the project by the custom field and sadly. Same issue. Cannot see Subtasks under the tasks.

This is a major issue for us. We need the invoicing team to be able to build invoices when a task or in this case a subtask is marked as custom field “Completed/Installed” and see have to see the add-up of the hours spent on each subtask.

Any ideas? Anyone?

That’s a different topic that has its dedicated thread if you want to find it and contribute!

I’d you want to provide a link that would be helpful.

That might be the one or at least related Display subtasks on List view when project is filtered/sorted

Thanks yeah, we have been following that one.

Bastien do you have contacts with product development at ASANA? There are many serious issues that need to be addressed meanwhile they are building new features like this Workflow editor that currently does nothing to address these issues and continues along the myopic project focused ideology that is causing many of the issues we are coming across.

They know really well about the various topics discussed on the forum and they bring them up often during meetings. If they don’t publish anything on those threads that’s because there is nothing new to share. If you scroll up on those threads there is always an official answer.

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