Biiiiig +1, new Sections make me sad
4 Likes
Agreed that instating an âArchiveâ feature for sections is much needed in order to clear the section from a project but still have it on-hand for historical purposes.
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another +1 here for the ability to archive sections (+5 if weâre keeping track of my whole team). we appreciate having the historical data that the section-at one point-existed and all the tasks within are now complete. i do not want to use the delete function.
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Another desperate plea to bring back the ability to complete sections and fill in richer metatada for sections (description, assignee, due date, comments). My workflow is completely broken and Iâm still struggling to find a way to salvage Asana as a way to capture my teamâs work.
I used to se the monday.com ads and not give them a second look, thinking to myself âbut I like asana, why would I look for something else?â. Fast forward to now, and Iâve been actively researching alternatives to Asana ever since this change to how sections work (or more accurately, donât work).
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I just discovered this shortcomingâŠitâs such a disappointment. Please keep us updated on when we will be able to better utilize sections!
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Currently I am just moving completed sections to the bottom of list and far right of boards.
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Just another massive PLEA to fix this. I recently did a big refresh of our Learn Asana template project (which teaches newbies some of our company specific Asana norms), and I cannot tell you how absolutely ridiculous it was when I got to the âSectionsâ part. SoâŠyouâŠcanât remove them. JustâŠsighâŠI guess leave them and maybe Asana will fix it soon.
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@Marie how many votes is it going to take in order for you to make an enhancement here to reinstate functionality you removed when you made the change to sections? 100? 1000? It seems like an oversight that you guys went ahead with a change which removed functionality and changed the way the product behaved for us all, but the fact you havenât said a peep on it in over three months is more concerning. Is Asana really going to just ignore this?
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As a paid customer with many projects, I am very disappointed that Asana has made this significant change that really messes everyoneâs existing workflows without consulting users or thinking about how it would affect everyone. Asana has been going downwards in the past year, putting their future vision ahead of customer needs and how these updates impacts people whoâve supported them from the beginning.
Whatâs worse, Asana has not been actively participating in the discussion here or provide any updates as to WHY WE STILL DONâT HAVE A FIX FOR THIS issue that is clearly affecting so many users.
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To share a couple of cents on this topic:
I like the idea of archiving sections, and here are a few suggestions:
- Perhaps they could behave like projects - archive them, drop them to the bottom, hide them under a âview archived sectionsâ link, and make them a different colour (grey).
- It should be possible to do this even if they are incomplete tasks in a section - sometimes tasks just get abandoned and you want to archive them as they are.
- Tasks (and subtasks) within archived sections should not show up in search by default.
- But then what if the task is in another project? This might be complicated. Maybe if the task is in multiple projects, it will still show up in search if it exists in at least one unarchived section.
Then for those who donât want their sections to be dropped down and moved out of order (e.g. if the chronology of sections is important to them), then just live with the collapsed sections in their position in the project.
I seem to be coping ok with this because my workflow is to create new projects which have a particular life-span of a few months, and projects that are passed get archived when the next iteration begins (even if there are some incomplete tasks in them - I may still have them assigned to me, but the bulk is safely stored and out of view).
This works great for focus, as well as making the search box more efficient. I know not everyone works on projects that have a fixed life-span, but you could still consider a workflow that creates new projects at intervals, e.g. per quarter or per month, and this would reduce an extensive build-up of âemptyâ sections cluttering your current working view.
4 Likes
This is making me absolutely crazy. I had my weekly publication project structured with a section for each week, with articles as subtasks. I could check off articles as they were completed and then check off the whole section. Done. Like everyone else here, I now have a long list of outdated sections. In order to get them off my project, I have to move all the tasks somewhere else, which is so very unhelpful and time consuming. Not to mention that this change just happened one day without warning, meaning my project management tool suddenly didnât have the same âmindâ that I have. I have loved Asana so much, but since this update, my project management has deteriorated, and who has time to learn a whole new process? It wasnât broke, so it shouldnât have been fixed.
3 Likes
Guys, the problem is, that once you archive a section, it affects the boards view.
On a board you canât just remove a column.
so there need to be real brain power on that one.
how to really get rid of sections.
One solution could be, that a section is not considered to be a column.
But it should be consistent at least.
Well they spent months developing just that so⊠
1 Like
Yep, exactly. But⊠I am sure, they have a robust and elastic architecture 
I donât see how this is a problem. If you want to archive a section by completing it, that would obviously archive the column in board view, meaning it would be hidden unless showing completed sections is enabled. What kind of mental gymnastics do we think we have to do here? It seems pretty straightforward. This is a management issue.
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Guys. You never built software 
oviously.
Thatâs simply not true. I happen to be a software programmer. That aside, even a user who isnât a programmer can understand that archiving a section in a list view where the section disappears from the list would also work to cause the equivalent column in a board view to disappear. Itâs not some wacky, unfathomable concept that only a programmer can understand.
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I am also voting to improve that.
I dont want to start a flamewar, but you should know, that building software is not building a system, as a developer.
Everybody is talking like it could not be easier to change some system like asana with a quadrillion users. 
Accusing others to do a bad job is not the way to go, imho.
1 Like
Coming here to upvote the need to archive sections. Our organization uses sections to identify both projects containing tasks where everything can be completed, as well as quarterly milestones/projections. Itâs important to be able to close/archive both of those types of sections when the tasks are complete.
I guess a workaround for List views is that now that subtasks are visible in the main list (via an expandable arrow), I could name the Main task as the section name and move all tasks under it. But doesnât that sort of defeat the purpose of sections?
5 Likes
Guys, the problem is, that once you archive a section, it affects the boards view.
Thatâs not âthe problemâ, thatâs a side-effect / symptom of the problem. The problem is that Asana changed functionality to suit the boards view and removed functionality that many of us had been using since Asanaâs inception. They either did this knowing full well they would be forcing a change on us with no workaround, or, they had no idea they would be creating this issue. Iâm not sure which is worse but itâs sort of irrelevant - theyâve created the problem and completely ghosted it for half a year now.
5 Likes