Allow task dependencies to be restricted to current project

Asana Community Product Ideas
1

When using the dropdown list for task dependency selection, tasks from all projects meeting the “type ahead” criteria are displayed. When the task name is too long to show the Project name in the selection box, it is impossible to identify the correct task.

Restricting the selection list to the current project would be helpful. Alternatively, expanding the hover function to include the Project name would help as well.

Note that the functionality works as desired in Templates

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Limit dependencies selection within a project to only select tasks within that project
Cannot add dependencies
In-project dependency dropdowns need to be clearer
Select Tasks for Dependencies rather than Searching
Searching for dependencies
2

I don’t thing they would ever do that, Asana is all about breaking silos.

Definitely. My trick has been to go to the target task, copy the link, and come back to build the dependency by pasting the link instead of typing the task name.

You can’t be dependent on tasks outside of the template itself?

Cannot add dependencies
3

Hi @anon378679, thanks for providing this feedback!

I’ll keep you posted and let you know if we have any updates :slight_smile:

4

Thanks, Bastien … I apologize for not being clearer. I was asking that the ability to restrict the selection list to the current project be an option, not the exclusive default. Sorry!

I like the target task link suggestion … was not aware that could be done

As far as I can tell, template task dependencies are restricted to tasks in the template itself.

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5

Thanks!

6

I tried to copy and paste the target task link into the dependency search bar and it does not work. I also would love to have the option to restrict the dependencies to the current project. I have several projects running simultaneously and they all have the same tasks. I need to be able to add dependencies for just that project and not accidentally add a dependency for an identical task in a separate project. Hoovering over the task dependency drop-down does not show me the project name. It’s really frustrating!

7

I just tested this and it’s working fine here. I would play with it some more as I’m 99% sure it’s OK. (Make sure you have access to the desired task from the project where you’re pasting.)

8

I think prioritizing the preceding tasks and then allowing you to select others would be helpful - currently, I am unable to select a dependency from my existing string of subtasks as it’s not appearing when I type out the name of the subtask (many subtasks are labeled the same) and it does not allow you to add the parent task name to narrow down the selection…

9

Develop a configuration option to limit the dependencies to only those tasks associated to the same project being worked on i.e. stop the reference to other projects tasks when adding the dependency. This is only required on some projects NOT all projects so cannot be a global setting. We’re having the situation where common task names are being used across multiple projects (as you’d expect) and the list to find the valid dependency is long making it hard and sometime impossible to select the right task from within the current project. I know you can add them in timeline view but because of the length of our projects, the drag n drop is not an easy task either. And I know you can paste a link in the dependency field but this is extremely time consuming on complex projects. Be great if the roadmap included an option for this in project settings.

10

Great idea, I’ll keep an eye on this.

11

This will be very helpful

12

Just voted for this as well. But let’s be clear — this isn’t a feature request

  • Asana is constantly encouraging templating for good reasons
  • This leads to many tasks with identical names
  • Being able to see which project the task is in when setting a dependency is not a “nice to have” — if we can’t do that (and we can’t), the product isn’t working properly. This is a bug fix, not a feature request
  • For me at least, it’s not always even that the list of identically-named tasks is too long, sometimes it’s incomplete, and sometimes the incompleteness results in the dependent task for the correct project isn’t even an option

Things that we should have to be asking / voting for:

  • Completed tasks should not be showing up as options in the list; we can’t make things dependent on them anyway
  • There needs to be an option to limit the list to the current project
  • Full names of both tasks and projects need to be able to made visible

Workarounds:

  • I haven’t had success with pasting the link-to-the-task, sometimes it brings up the correct task, other times it just sits with the url and doesn’t find anything
  • The quickest thing for me has generally been to make my best guess and then go check the task that’s supposed to be blocking, to make sure it really is blocking
  • In extreme circumstances, I’ll just temporarily add a few nonsense characters to the name of the blocking task so it’s unique, and then go searching again. Please note that it takes a little bit of time (a few seconds? A minute?) before the newly-named task is findable
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