Archiving tasks - hack

Tips and Tricks
#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

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Project/Tasks Archiving vs Deleting - need HELP
Archiving tasks in archived projects
Archive Tasks
#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 Likes
#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:

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#5

Both great options. Thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like
#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?
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#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

3 Likes
Automatically archive "Done" tasks that are older than 30 days
#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”?

1 Like
#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

1 Like
#11

Hi, I have archived a project as we have handed it over to another contractor but the tasks yet to be completed are still showing in my task list. Is there a way to remove an archived project’s tasks from your task list?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Charlotte

#12

Hi Charlotte and welcome to the forum :wave:,

Unfortunately, the only way to get them out of your My Task area is to unassign those tasks. The only exception is if you have created those tasks. Even if you unassign yourself from the tasks they will still stay in your My Task area as unassigned.

Katie

#13

Hi

Having a similar issue. We create a new project every week for weekly check in/goal setting. These are more overarching goals/priorities for the week then smaller or specific tasks but the template is a very helpful tool to help us set goals and track progress week by week. I also like to use the portfolio function to help us understand how successful we have been in achieving our goals/tasks overall and by individual.

However, when someone doesn’t complete a task, it remains in their my tasks list and make it very cluttered. Ideally we would be able to archive a project and and have the option for any assigned tasks in those projects to not show up in a task list. That would be super helpful.

#14

HI Krista it looks like this is an old convo but I am also getting into the weeds with old tasks that we don’t want to delete and would like to archive – however, we are grouping our tasks within “sections” and I’ve just discovered I can’t simply move a section of grouped tasks from one project to another… this is frustrating. I was going to create a new project of “archived” tasks and can’t move them together as they’ve been organized…

#15

Thank you, this was helpful. :slight_smile:

#17

  • In what scenarios do you want to get rid of tasks in a project? Please explain why.
    A task is not complete but is no longer relevant. This often happens as project requirements change. But we want to have a record of those tasks that were once assigned in case someone wants to look at them in the future to understand why we decided not to complete that task. The current options are to mark as complete, which is confusing because it makes it look like we did a bunch of things that we didn’t do, or delete it, and then there is no record of it every being considered or the conversation around why we decided not to do it.

  • What can Asana do to create the best way for you to get rid of tasks in a project?
    There should be a third option (besides complete and delete). I don’t care what it is called. Archived, Iceboxed, removed.

    In terms of where it shows up in the UI, I would say it is a 3rd state option. Incomplete, Complete, [Archived]. So it could show up as a search option with the current Incomplete and complete states. As for actually archiving something, I would put it in the menu along with delete. No need to be able to archive tasks from the task list.

Note: If you could also archive sections, that would solve another similar problem with those.

4 Likes
#18

I agree. The Todo-app Things have a nice feature where you can hide task to a specific date. Then it pops back up again in the list. To have a clear mind it’s great to not see information that is not relevant at the moment.

So a suggestion would be to also (optional) be able to add a date when the the tasks is visible again, like 3 months from now. If it still is not relevant you can delete or complete.

A workaround that I use is that I have a tag called “dropped”. I use it when I complete a task that is not relevant but also not really completed. Then I can search for dropped tags.

Sections really need the archive or at least a complete-option. They are cluttering up my workspaces as I don’t want to delete our historical progress.

1 Like
#19

I’m new to this convo and mighty surprised that nearly 2.5 years after the original post that it’s still not possible to archive tasks. :flushed:

I’m also new to Asana, but I’ve used just about every other popular project management tool on the market that is embraced by marketing and/or tech teams (probably 8+ similar tools over the years).

Several people in this thread have already detailed very good reasons why it would be useful to archive tasks.

I’ll add two new things:

  1. If you aim to employ Agile methodologies, getting rid of project list clutter is essential to focus and limiting the Work In Progress. You really don’t want team members looking at or thinking about stuff that they’re not working on right this moment, let alone work items that are old.

Speaking of which, I’d love to see a true Kanban feature in Asana. We could probably make a Kanban hack work if there was a way to filter projects by tags (I tried it), but it would be better if the platform was set up to make Kanban native and easy.

  1. If projects can be archived, but tasks cannot, this tells me that Asana expects people to use projects for smaller, shorter duration work increments. I suspect a lot of teams don’t do that. In the team I just joined, they use projects to encompass all ONGOING workflow for any given team. In some cases, they use a project like a spreadsheet. That means a project will likely never be finished and archived. It will always be active. In that case, there needs to be a way to archive work increments that are within a “project” or team activities.

Short of that, Asana should have explicit instructions about how to set up work using projects, tasks, etc. I looked for that information and didn’t find it.

Bottom line: if you want your tool to be flexible enough for people to adapt it to their organization’s needs, you need more ways for people to order/reorder the work and save/archive it for reference.