Asana, show me your BUTs 🍑

We all love Asana, and the tool is growing really fast. They have an exciting roadmap, delivering often, but some features or use cases might be put aside for a while.

As an Asana user, champion or consultant, it becomes harder to follow those small “but”. For example, a portfolio can hold 500 projects BUT above 250 the Workload feature is disabled.

Let’s all work together and build a collaborative list of BUTs :slightly_smiling_face: and for each one, let’s try to link to the existing forum post where we can all upvote.

Word of warning: it might be hard to tell apart a simply missing feature from a BUT. A BUT is something that did not follow an early feature release, an expected fast follow that is a bit slow to rollout, or things that never got implemented at all but make a feature feel partially implemented.

:pencil2: To add to the list, just comment on the post!

T1. Portfolio-Workload

:peach: B1.1 Portfolios supports 1500 projects BUT Workload gets disabled about 250
:peach: B1.2 Portfolios supports nesting BUT Workload and Timeline are disabled as soon as nesting a portfolio

T2. Templates

:peach: B2.1 Templates V2 are replacing V1 BUT a few project related feature not possible anymore
:peach: B2.2 A project could be based on a template BUT changes in the template don’t re-apply to existing projects
:peach: B2.3 A template allows to define due dates relative to project start or due date BUT those tasks are never updated if the project dates change.
:peach: B2.4 A template allows to define due dates relative to project start or due date BUT a task converted to a project using a template in a rule will use the trigger date.
:peach: B2.5 A template allows for variable assignees BUT if a task is turned into a project using a template in rules, you don’t have the opportunity to choose the roles.
:peach: B2.6 A project has Saved Views but a template can’t define them.
:peach: B2.7 A project has a “Hide” button to define fields displayed but a template doesn’t have it.

T3. Rules

:peach: B3.1 Tasks have start and due date BUT rules can’t use the start date (specifically “Due date approaching”)
:peach: B3.2 Rules have names BUT the name does not show up in the sidenav
:peach: B3.3 Tasks can have tags BUT rules can’t use those tags
:peach: B3.4 In the rule editor, a subtask can be multi-homed into a project BUT it won’t show this project custom fields.
:peach: B3.5 A rule can trigger for “Task marked complete” BUT not for tasks marked incomplete.
:peach: B3.6 Rule actions can be added via App Components BUT not triggers (events and webhooks could be used instead) by @lpb

T4. Status updates

:peach: B4.1 Status update can include charts BUT they don’t show up in emails

T5. Subtasks

:peach: B5.1 Subtasks seem to be part of a project BUT don’t count in Workload
:peach: B5.2 Subtasks seem to be part of a project BUT don’t show up on Calendar
:peach: B5.3 Subtasks seem to be part of a project BUT don’t show up on Timeline
:peach: B5.4 Subtasks seem to be part of a project BUT project does not show up in My Tasks
:peach: B5.5 List view supports subtasks BUT subtask drop-downs disappear when list is sorted or filtered.

T6. Projects

:peach: B6.1 A section can host tasks BUT it won’t be collapsible anymore if too full
:peach: B6.2 You can tie dependencies between tasks BUT not between projects
:peach: B6.3 Projects have a timeline view BUT you can’t filter it in any meaningful way
:peach: B6.4 Projects gave a calendar view BUT you can’t filter it in any meaningful way
:peach: B6.5 A custom field column shows an aggregated value (usually sum) BUT value is disabled if there are more than 30 subtasks.
:peach: B6.6 A section can be closed BUT will stay opened if it contains more than 1000 tasks.
:peach: B6.7 Tasks in a search result can be sorted by Project BUT not in a project with multi-homed tasks.
:peach: B6.8 Timeline has a conflict avoidance system when a due date is moved to the future BUT nothing happens when a task is moved back in the past.
:peach: B6.9 Calendar can collapse week-ends BUT week-ends can’t be skipped with recurring tasks
:peach: B6.10 Calendar can collapse week-ends BUT week-ends can’t be skipped with rules
:peach: B6.11 Read-only links can be public BUT not from the start, another visibility must be chosen first

T7. General
:peach: B7.1 Profile settings have an away mode BUT you can’t define all your holidays in advance.
:peach: B7.2 Profile settings have an away mode BUT there is no way to take it into account in rules or template scheduling.
:peach: B7.3 Some actions can be undone BUT if you miss the popup, you can’t undo anymore.
:peach: B7.4 Audit logs are added to tasks BUT a user can remove some of them.
:peach: B7.5 A project can be exported for up to 140k rows BUT a search export is limited to 2k.
:peach: B7.6 Search allows to find tasks and projects BUT the attachments on a project overview are not taken into account.
:peach: B7.7 A submission from an org only form cannot carry the submitter identity unless “add as a collaborator” is chosen
:peach: B7.8 Form can be shared outside an org BUT not if you are currently in a trial.

T8. Custom fields

:peach: B8.1 A custom field can have many options BUT you can’t reorder them if the field is on too many tasks (25k+). (fixed)

T9. Tasks

:peach: B9.1 A task audit trail will show an incoming mention BUT it won’t show future mentions if the source task was recurring.

Thanks @lpb who came up with the initial idea for this pos, and @LEGGO @Phil_Seeman @anon99007907 @Jon_Cunningham who helped build the list.

I promised @Marie I would keep the list updated, so let’s all collaborate and co-build this list!

22 Likes

You are too kind. I’m not sure I contributed anything substantial. Loving the peaches. :joy:

4 Likes

Useful, bookmarked. Thanks Bastien for putting this together.

4 Likes

Great work, @Bastien_Siebman. I knew you could do a better job with this idea than I could!

To help convey the “BUTs” concept in case anyone is still wondering, my realization was that, as more and more features are added, GOTCHAs build up. They can be hard to keep track of (hence the value of this list) and they can even undermine workflows. For example, imagine you have a complex workflow and have a great solution in List view with subtasks for grouping and sub-subtasks for steps to carry out each subtask. Works beautifully with Sort = None because you can expand/collapse in main tasks view and easily navigate to see sub-subtask rows in the task detail pane. But if you rely on changing the sort, the workflow is no longer viable because of B5.5.

Here’s another to add, perhaps alongside B3.1:

Thanks for doing this,

Larry

4 Likes

I didn’t get a clear sense for how to add to the list. I hope it was intended that I would add my BUT in this Reply.
“Having the calendar is good, and due dates are good, BUT the calendar should factor out weekends/holidays when a rule applies a due date (currently uses a duration of days that count Saturdays and Sundays and doesn’t account for holidays in that duration.”

3 Likes

@lpb isn’t yours B3.1 indeed?

@Gerald_Thomas I added 7.1 and 7.2 what do you think?

@Bastien_Siebman, Your B3.1 links to a different product feedback request than the link I provided (which currently has 157 votes and isn’t in your list, I don’t believe).

Thanks,

Larry

@Bastien_Siebman I think that 7.1 and 7.2 go part of the way. Rules to trigger due dates only in business days addresses the weekend due dates. There are 116 votes for this and I’m sure that I have seen the same topic worded differently as well.

@Bastien_Siebman, perhaps this would be an addition:

Thanks,

Larry

@lpb Not sure we should list BUTs for integrations… but maybe that should be a new post, with integration list and their limitations?

I’ll impact the post with your other feedbacks, thanks.

1 Like

You can set task due dates relative to project start or end dates on creation, but if you change those dates later, the task dates do not change (solved by Flowsana but still seems like a miss on implementation for Asana)

@Ben_Brown_Bentley I created :peach: B2.3

I added :peach: B3.4 :slight_smile:

Ticket numbers!!

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What do you mean?

We use Jira and Asana, and I don’t think my team would use Asana without being able to identify the ticket for the task without a Ticket Number as they do in Jira. So we stick with Jira for daily tasks, which I keep the overview of the project in Asana, leading to an unintegrated system. If I could use Asana, it would like our waterfall plans to our daily scrums and I could just call out ticket numbers as shorthand during scrum.

I understand from reading others’ comments that there are numbers for each ticket, but it seems like they are long and/or hidden. I am a perpetual novice user without IT skills. If I ask for an add-on or have to pay for integration with another program, I will be questioned about paying for the add-on, or why I adopted a program that did not have what I needed in the first place. It would be ideal for us to have numbering for tasks as in a ticketing system.

In Jira, our tickets are created within each project so the ticket under our COVID project might be C19-148. Very easy to say to a colleague - “Hey, I sent you a ticket yesterday, deadline is today, can you take a look at C19-148.”

Thanks for your quick response - hope I explained it clearly enough.

There are several solutions to this, including Flowsana from @Phil_Seeman and astogi which has this auto-numbering feature.

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Yes, I anticipate push-back if I ask for another program. But some department won’t adopt without ticket numbers, so I’ll have to wait until an opportune time to try to get Flowsana or Astogi. The reply seems to imply that Asana itself does not have plans to add ticket numbering to the feature set. Thanks for getting back to me and for providing resources to take the next step.

Asana does not communicate on their roadmap. My personal guess: they won’t, for 2 reasons: other 3rd party do it well, a tiny portion of users need it. (I don’t work for Asana)

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For T3. Rules: You can apply rules based on any custom field, or all custom fields, BUT not only certain custom fields: Need “Contains only” option for multi-select fields in Rules

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