It is not entirely clear why they don’t “fix” this issue. I am using quotes because maybe they consider there is nothing to be fixed. I am pretty sure they vision for subtasks doesn’t align with the way they are being used now, so they are faced with a choice: stick to their vision (but they should explain it) or move away from it (but they should go faster)…
This is just ridiculous. We’re in 2023 and this seems hard like going to MARS.
We desired to implement bundles to make the management of the projects faster and easier. The only way to get tasks into the Bundle is by using task templates. A limited number of task templates are allowed per project, which leads us to create more subtasks. I’m very discouraged by this thread. I have been a massive proponent of Asana in our organization. With thousands of tasks and subtasks per project, this topic really needs to be addressed.
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Did it occur to you that such a simple dev was not done because of other reasons? 
we don’t know them, but from a development stand point, that’s quite easy to code, so I am convinced there are other reasons why it is not being done.
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I literally want to cry. I am so frustrated. I am so angry.
I finally have a beautiful template that has all the things I need, I’ve set up them up for my team, and we had focused on keeping the tasks less overwhelming, and I have lots of subtasks with subtasks of their own.
I was so excited to finally be able to use My Tasks more efficiently and I can’t. I have hundreds and hundreds (not an exaggeration) of tasks that say something like Write Copy… Write copy for what??? Approve design for what??? Look real closely and I can see in light print that it might be for a letter, a landing page, an ad, a publication but no freaking clue what campaign or project it’s for.
I can’t go in and highlight and change the fields on mass because you have to open up each one to see what it might actually be.
I feel frustrated that there were so many challenges that I had to overcome in creating the template in the first place. I spent a loooot of time getting the projects set up and interlinked to other projects, and figuring out timing using a ridiculous calculation because you had to go backwards from the last possible end date in a project (like invoicing and reporting comes after… hello).
It’s going to take me hours if not days to get this fixed, and I feel like crap because I can’t work on things that will bring in money for our charity.
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This has gotten very bad for my team. They then add the name of the project to their subtask, which causes it to generate a new subtask that floats to the top of the whole workflow. I have to then stop everything I am doing and manually move a subtask so their can be two of the same name. For hundreds of subtasks!
Today, I quite literally did this same exercise for a person. Add the project to the subtask. Confirmed it was there. For some reason he turned around and did it again in his mytasks view. Same exercise again for 42 tasks.
The fact that Asana does not take something opened in 2017 … it just makes people not use subtasks and get very very long workflows because people like mytasks. Why should they have to create a separate report??? I am frustrated because I am the one that has to deal with all the hate towards Asana while leadership torments me into moving to monday.com or smartsheets or something else – each with strengths but serious deal breakers. Asana can I please have your CEO’s phone number so I can give it to my CEO?
None of this would be happening if for every parent task you did not have to manually hit the caret to see all subtasks, either. Losing this functionality seriously hampered us
I’d love to hear from @lpb on the mater, we have been discussing subtasks for years and I feel like a refreshed on his position would be good because I know he manages to make it work for his clients!
My position hasn’t changed, so prior threads cover it, and I won’t rehash it other than to say that subtasks are the best approach for many workflows and I don’t hesitate to use them, but I always make sure my clients understand their use. For more info, see this post:
I mostly avoid speculating about the Asana product teams’ past decisions or future direction for obvious reasons (lack of data, context, etc.). Regarding this topic’s feedback request, it’s complex; I’ll just leave it at that!
Generally, and from my perspective, the organizations that are the most successful with Asana are those that seek to work with, not against, the ethos, features, and current behavior of the app. (I’m not saying don’t advocate for changes or complain; just that if you’re using Asana, you have no choice–in the moment–but to accept how it behaves.)
A dog tethered to a moving cart can either pull on his leash and be roughly dragged along or accept his fate and run along smoothly beside the cart.
– Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism
Thanks,
Larry
PS Casually including a quote referencing fate makes the subtasks issue seem easy, no? 
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Very well said 
it is a fine line to walk!
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Do it
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It is so odd that this is not standard?
This was mentioned back in 2019 (4 whole years…) and the “solution” was that subtasks are not associated with a project.
Why?
This doesn’t make any sense at all. A subtask should inherit its parent task AND the parent task’s project.
In our use case specifically, this messes with a few things:
- We use one project template for all of our onboarding projects. Multiple projects have the same exact tasks and subtasks. When searching for a subtask, you literally cannot tell which project it was created in.
- When looking at the My Tasks dashboard, you literally cannot tell which project you need to complete X Task for. This is related to #1 because multiple projects use the same tasks via our template.
- I’ve built a comprehensive Power BI report to delve into our utilization of Asana. Since subtasks do not belong to a project (and assigning one to them makes them parent tasks… defeating the purpose of using subtasks at all), they do not appear in our project overview reporting.
Why why why in 4 years has this not been taken seriously?
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This has been highly debated and discussed on the forum. That’s the current way Asana designed subtasks. We are all hoping the situation gets clearer soon
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I understand that Asana has been kicking against calling this a problem for a while, but it is in fact a problem - clearly to a lot of people. I’ve had to create entire processes within our org to work around what really does seem like a significant design flaw for all the reasons people have been listing for years now. I have personally never worked inside of a process where this limitation makes sense. It feels a little bug-disguised-as-a-feature’ish to me. I do hope it’s on the roadmap to remedy someday.
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Is it possible to have subtask inherit a project, so it stays in it’s parent task, but still has the project? It’s a functionality I really need but I’m not finding anything useful.
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Welcome, @Allie_McAdams,
I’ve merged your post into a popular existing thread where you can click the title to scroll to the top and vote by clicking the purple Vote button.
Thanks,
Larry