I can’t find any way to show a simple task identifier of any kind. It’s much easier when we’re on a zoom call to say “task #123” than to try to say the title of a task and then have everyone comb the list or board for that task.
Is there no task ID/number?
There’s no short ID natively in Asana; the only available unique task ID is the ID that you can get from the browser address bar or the “Copy task link” button. The link looks something like this:
https://app.asana.com/0/883576482920561/1200441936770903/f
and the task ID is the last number (in this example, 1200441936770903).
If you want a true short ID, our Flowsana integration provides this capability; you can read more about it here.
Thanks for the quick response. I’ll see if we can’t get that integrated. The current ID is impractical for humans to use (imagine this zoom: “I’m referring to bug zero slash eight eight three five seven six four eight two nine two zero five six one slash…”). This seems like a big enough shortcoming that we’d look for a different product (no one here is particularly happy with Asana).
Ah, Flowsana seems like a lot just to get a simple task ID. I see there’s a feature request for this: Short task link with ID - #158 by Rick_Mann
I think we’ll end up moving to another task tracking system.
Please stay with us, Asana has so much more to offer 
@anon71542317 One way you may be able to work around this is by having your team enable task row numbers in your settings. Go to Settings > Display> Show Task Row Numbers. It is not a unique task ID, but it would number them within a project to make it easier to direct the group to a particular task during a meeting.
Task row numbers are dependent on one’s exact Filter and Sort options. That might be just workable, but when you add in the possibility of “multi-homing” Tasks from other Projects, and people possibly having different project permissions, and using a Report to view Tasks, it’s not clear to me that this would help much, unfortunately.
Right. Definitely not a perfect solution, but I could see it being helpful in say a meeting scenario where one person is sharing their screen so everyone is seeing the same view of the project for discussion purposes (and therefore the same numbering sequence).
True!
JIRA makes IDs based on the project where they were created. I’d argue that would be a fine solution, even for a task assigned to multiple projects (first one wins).
The row number doesn’t appear in the board view, does it? We usually confer over the board view.
Unfortunately, another issue I run into constantly is the poor Markdown support within tickets. I was about to write a new topic on the matter, looked for the existing ones first, and found this is a very widespread problem that hasn’t been sufficiently addressed despite announced intent more than a year ago.
I can’t do something as simple as reliably inline code, and it’s constantly a problem for me. Trello or even Github work better in this regard.
I’m not sure why you would need one. What are you trying to achieve exactly with a short ID number?
Because when a bunch of people are standing around a board (especially via zoom) it can be really hard to reference a specific card without it.
I’ve implemented this in a very kludgy way by using a spreadsheet to assign numbers for different uses (e.g projects, files, etc ) using an AAAAnnnn type format which I then use in Asana.
I have implemented a similar format in an access database we use to generate part numbers, and also did something similar years ago in Lotus Notes
I would also love it if Asana could do something like this - you select the prefix (AAAA) and then Asana generates the next in the list value of nnnn.
These would be generated in a project which was set up with the AAAA prefixes assigned. Can then be used in other projects etc as I do now - they don’t have to stay in sequence!
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Hi everyone,
I’m happy to share we’re rolling out unique and readable IDs for tasks! 
Find all details in our announcement below: