Archiving tasks - hack

tasks
#1

Hello,

I think others might find this helpful. For those of you that are looking to get rid of tasks in a projects, but would rather not mark complete, I have a possible solution. Possibly because you are setting up your reports a certain way or you have a catch all project that keeps getting more tasks throughout the year that you would like to clean up occasionally. Even though Asana does not currently have a feature to archive a task you actually can. What you would need to do is create and archive a project for the sole purpose of collecting archived tasks. When you have completed a task that you would like to archive, rather than marking complete, move the task from the current project into the archived project. The task will no longer appear in the current project or your My Task section, yet it will come up still in your reports.

I hope you find this tip helpful,
Katie

#2

Thanks for sharing @Katie_Reynolds :slight_smile:

Just wanted to add one little thing! If the task in your Archive Project are assigned they will still show-up in your My Tasks (https://asana.com/guide/help/projects/actions#gl-archive) so make sure to unassign them :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks, I realized that after I posted. I have it still assigned, but I have My Tasks sorted by project and I minimize the archived project with my archived tasks so they don’t clutter up My Tasks. It would be great if there was a different way to deal with it in the My Tasks area. I have individual tasks that I would like to push to the archive, but stay in reports under my name. If I unassign them they come up in the reports, but not under me.

#4

Thanks for the follow-up and additional info @Katie_Reynolds. What about creating a Section dedicated to tasks you’d like to archive but keep associated to your name?

You could also consider using a Custom Field with your name for archived tasks, this way you don’t have to keep them assigned to you :slight_smile:

#5

Both great options. Thanks :slight_smile:

#6

Great options… still not ideal to do so many steps to achieve something not so advanced. I also do something similar like Katie, but if anyone have other options… please let me know. Thanks for the great help

#7

Thanks for the post and comments everyone! The Asana team wants to learn more about when you would want to get ride of tasks in a project. If you have a moment, please reply with responses to the following questions or email responses to kplano@asana.com.

  • In what scenarios do you want to get rid of tasks in a project? Please explain why.
  • In what scenarios do you want to get rid of a group of tasks in a project (if different than response to above)? Please explain why.
  • What can Asana do to create the best way for you to get rid of tasks in a project?
#8

Hello,

We use tasks to track some things, such as final date completions and who worked on which projects. So when those tasks get archived they remain in My Task area. This just keep the My Task area cluttered. It would be great if the tasks could get archived but were still searchable by Advanced Search options. There are projects that we have that capture one off requests that end up accumulating really long list of little tasks that are marked complete. It would be better if we have the ability to archive those completed tasks so we don’t have to create new collectors regularly to capture those one-offs. Ideally, it would be great to be able to archive individual tasks where it moves that task to an archive in a project of the same name with something to note that it is an archived version of that project. I would still love any tasks that are assigned to me to be removed from my tasks when archived and only restored if the project/task is restored.

Thanks!
Katie

#9

Thanks for the thorough response! Can you tell me more about why you don’t want to mark those tasks that you want to archive “complete”?

#10

Krista,

It how we have reports set up for tracking things. If we add completed tasks it pulls in a bunch of stuff that we don’t want into the reports, so the better option is to not mark it complete so it still comes up in the report.

Katie