Allow to automatically add subtasks to project

When will this and overall treatment of subtasks to be like main tasks everwhere in Asana be fixed. This is a HUGE issues in effective use of the tool and causes massive frustration with all project teams. Please, please update on when subtrask handling will be evolved.

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@Karen_Smart — It’s hard to tell. Asana doesn’t provide a public roadmap like other competitors. They sometimes resolve things in a few weeks while others are still open after 4+ years. They do a decent job at letting us know when they do finally fix something.

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On a regular basis, Asana adds capabilities around subtasks. They have been added to the list view, then the search, then the reporting… I can say without giving details there are other things cooking on the roadmap…

@Skyler the Community knows you are frustrated with subtasks :slight_smile:

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I too have been praying for this for some time. Still hopeful. In the meantime, I am using Zapier across about 50 projects to find new subtasks and add them back to the parent task’s project. It is very cumbersome and not 100% reliable.

A solution may be to add a rule ( ideally for all accounts, not just Business and Enterprise). Subtask added in Project → Set Project and Section

This would solve the “parent tasks could be in multiple projects, so which project is it supposed to be added to” argument. It would be added wherever the rule was in place.

Love you <3

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@Bastien_Siebman — It’s primarily the lack of communication and roadmap. Subtasks are second-class citizens in this ecosystem and maybe that’ll change at some point, but it’s just one piece of my frustration. That being said, Asana is not a customer-led company and that’s okay. Customers aren’t always right. There are other options out there and folks are free to explore those to find a better fit.

I do look forward to what Asana introduces in the future though and am glad they have such motivated champions like yourself to keep morale up and police things around here. :raised_hands:

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tl;dr FIX THIS

ASANA

Please fix this design bug now.

The fact that there is no way to automatically add subtasks to the parent project is a very severe defect.

The reason it is a problem for all of us is that it makes all of the subtasks invisible to our boards. If subtasks were automatically included in the project they tasks could be used as epics and subtasks as stories.

The way it is no breaks Asana and makes JIRA a more attractive alternative for scrum or Kanban.

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This is not a design bug, this is not the way subtasks were intended to be used :sweat_smile: :grimacing: even though it does feel like a bug, I agree.

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Bug vs Feature is in the eye of the beholder. The utter un-usability of most US States’ unemployment benefits websites is a design feature in the eyes of some legislators, for example.

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Hey, I work for Chessable, a company that works using Asana every day.
We would need to have this feature implemented to help our team members to easily track better which subtasks belong to one project or to another.
I attach a clear example of how much confusion can generate between tasks and subtasks.

In this example, the task Assets (Pub Manager) belongs to a purple project whereas the subtask “Blurb on course page” that belongs to this task doesn’t appear to be part of the same project. Does it mean that subtask doesn’t belong to the same project?

It would be really useful if these subtasks automatically appear to be part of the project.
Thank you,

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Yes indeed, technically they don’t belong to the project and what you see is “expected” behavior and a know situation. You can add the subtask to the project, in a dedicated section for example, as a workaround. You can have a look at F2 and F3 on 🔥 Hottest feature requests and their workarounds

Hi @Bastien_Siebman - with the number of feature requests for this (my creative agency included, Haddad & Partners) it would be ideal to see subtasks associated with the project. I understand that was Asana’s original intention but it’s confusing for users (for example: when a team member is looking at their my tasks they see a mix of tasks and subtasks in that list - the tasks have the project listed in the projects column while the subtasks do not list the project it’s a part of so it takes more effort to see where that subtask came from). It’s really not ideal to have to do a workaround for this. Our development team at the agency is in the process of migrating from MS Planner (and BugHerd) to Asana but this has been a pain point for us (and to others clearly). Ideally even being able to have that as a setting (allowing us to opt in to automatically have subtasks associated with their projects) would be really help. Is this being considered at all?

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Hi Asana, You’ve done a fine job with the software overall, however I am finding it difficult to get my fellow team members within my organisation to love it, as the confusion around ‘My Tasks and subtasks not appearing within projects that they are already linked to’ keeps rearing its ugly head. Please sort out this crucial part of ones individual management of their assigned tasks & subtasks. This seems to be a long term issue, and it would be great to hear from Asana in terms of at least identifying that its an issue that is being looked at. Thanks, Andy

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Is 2022 looking like a good time to have this. Everyone need this. Pls hear out. Anybody in asana software development hearing us ?
Have u guys in asana internal team ever tried to add subtasks to projects urself. I bet u will feel the pain of it.
Even our most bored employees in the team don’t want to do this everytime.

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Hi @Bastien_Siebman, can you reply when you have a moment (see H_P_Development)? This is almost making us consider abandoning Asana. We’re on the most expensive plan (and we love it) but our team is so confused over this one point that we may have to let it all go. Give us hope and PLEASE TELL US THAT THIS IS BEING LOOKED AT!

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@Monique4 we don’t know if that is being considered. We (consultants) explain the limitations with subtasks to our clients and try to help them work in a different way if necessary. Usually that involves not using subtasks so heavily, and instead of having a single project with tons of subtasks, move to several projects. It might not always work, if it doesn’t we find other workarounds. Many people just add the subtasks to the project as well, in a specific section they close.

Hey Asana team. I’m not sure if this is a solution for everyone but for our team we are looking for just the basic ability to filter our dashboard by subtask so we can track where a project is at. We don’t need every single subtask added to the project as this is a total pain to manage (especially if duplicating tasks or deleting items from project templates) if there was simple a way to sort a dashboard by subtasks that would allow us to at least do basic tracking and reporting on a specific project! Please please please can we get this added?

This filter is not available in Project Dashboard (yet) but it is in Universal Reporting (top left corner) so you might consider moving there for your project reporting when needed.

I understand both sides of this thread however I definitely support more investment in associating subtasks as part of the Project.

Lots of businesses use Tasks as mini projects, because creating a completing new Project is overkill in some cases. A task also involves multiple people’s support and time to make it happen, hence why everyone is shouting for sub tasks to be recognised on workload and capacity management.

How I see the hierarchy

  • Projects are seen as either a Parent or a Grand Parent .
  • Tasks become either Parents or a Child, depending on the above.
  • Sub Tasks are seen as either a Child or Grandchild depending on the above.

From what I can see here is Asana (at the moment) is not recognising the Child/ Grandchild level as being associated to the rest of the family beyond the line above it. This in my opinion is wrong and will hopefully be a addressed in future release.

This disconnect is also evident if you use an ‘Hours’ (effort) field at both Task and Sub Task levels, as the total on the ‘Task’ isn’t calculative to the sub tasks below it, meaning that a Tasks total hours is duplicated if both is populated.

Really hope that the Project, Tasks and Sub Tasks relationship is strengthen, as sub tasks (the detail) contributes to the overall capacity and successfulness of a project, just as much if not more so than the Task.

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I’m a new user of Asana and seeing that this subtask issue hasn’t been solved yet in 5 years is very discouraging. This software would be almost perfect if it wasn’t for this major flaw. Although it is a very difficult problem to fix, it shouldn’t take 5 years to fix it. None of this makes sense to me.

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@Bastien_Siebman Is there an update on where this feature request stands? I know Asana doesn’t publish a feature roadmap, but this one is important for us (and a lot of other people), and has a massive impact on how we structure Asana (using projects vs parent tasks etc).

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