Assign multiple assignees on one task

We are now switching to MS Teams, alas, and the inability to assign more than one assignee to a task is quoted as the main reason for the switch. It’s a pity!

It calls the entire value of the product feedback process into question when the most widely desired/needed feature goes unaddressed for so long, replaced by official recommendations by company itself to use hacky workarounds (not an isolated event in this forum, it seems). I hope Asana can shed some light on why this is not being taken seriously.

3 Likes

While this is logical and good practice in many cases, it does not cover all cases, and forcing all paying users to adopt this mindset in their own work environment is not the role of a company in Asana’s position, in my view.

4 Likes

You can add “collaborators” at the bottom of the task - the little circles. These people become “watchers” and will receive notifications about any changes.

Hi Brian_C, if the new requests for help are added to a particular project in a particular section, then certain people can be notified each time a new task/request is added. Then the person who has time can assign the task to themselves, which can trigger the task to move to the “in progress” section, etc. You, as the organiser, can at any time see which tasks have not yet been taken by anyone.

This is how we’ve been running our help desk for the last few months, and it’s working really well. We use a form to get the information from users, and instructions/link are included in the “Overview” pane.

I don’t think this is a use case for “multiple owners”, I think this is a use case for “no owner yet”!

I’ve been working with/thinking about this issue quite a bit recently. There are very good reasons why there’s a 1:1 match between task and assignee, but it can be problematic. See Best way to assign a set of tasks involving multiple people and add your ideas and workarounds!

1 Like

I’m adding my name to this list.

The task needs to be undertaken by a person, but the Manager needs to make sure it’s done.

I will add my name to the list here.

We often have multiple people who are jointly tasked with work, which is where the 1:1 task assignment does not work well.

The other scenario involves estimating costs of our projects: We run estimated hours of tasks alongside costing.

For example: we may have a contractor assigned to do specific work at a specific hourly rate. As the assignee to a task this becomes an easy, trackable element. However, there may be 2 or 3 other people who also need to spend time reviewing this contractor’s work. This is where being able to assign them to the task would be helpful. Right now, in order to keep track of these extra people and their time, we create dummy tasks in asana to track their hours and more easily add up the total cost of a job.

1 Like

Please allow us the freedom to do this.
I need tasks to show up in “My tasks” section for multiple stakeholders.

1 Like

Adding myself to the list. I want everyone to be notified of the request in the request queue and once they assign someone on the team to work on the request it is moved to the In Process phase.

1 Like

Being able to assign a task to a group is an interesting idea. I would prefer to use the collaborator option and have Asana modified to make collaborator tasks show up in a new section of My tasks called “Collaborated on”. This would modify the OPs requirement somewhat but is a valid need mentioned by a number of posters.
Making a task shared by multiple people is logical only if becomes a completed task when all assignees have “finsihed” it.

1 Like

I am being forced to switch to Teams away from Asana due to this reason. Teams does allow multiple assignees and also integrates with Active Directory much easier. Teams planner is clunky though, and I wish Asana would at least give the organization the option to assign multiple people to a project. Why restrict this globally when it may make sense for some orgs?

My team has switched to constantly reassigning a task to different people as a stage in the task is needed. This seems to keep the ball rolling. I have to admit that it has negated the need for assigning to a ‘group’ in a fair amount of cases.

I am not sure if the Asana team envisioned a single task getting bounced around between people but admittedly it was a new behaviour for me.

1 Like

This is mentioned above but it’s a looooong thread, so to recap for those just joining: you can agree or disagree with this but it’s a philosophical decision on Asana’s part.

2 Likes

This sounds like logical behaviour to me. It’s how our Jira issues have always worked - the current Assignee is the person everyone is waiting on so that the problem can move forward.

I use Asana for scheduling and dispatch, but the limitations of the mobile app are such that I can't use the calendar section because it becomes too complicated for individual crew members to follow their schedule on their phone. We dispatch in various combinations of team members, and it would be great if we could create a task, assign it to all team members and then every member on that task would see it pop up in 'assigned tasks' on the mobile app. As it stands, we would have to duplicate the task for each member, but then the discussion thread wouldn't be unified.
We love so much about Asana and we've been using it for 3 years, but this is the only reason we haven't committed to the platform and upgraded to premium, as we're waiting for them to allow for multiple assignees on a task. 
Also, reading through the responses I'm disappointed in the attitude of Asana and the reasoning behind not allowing multiple assignees. This sounds like a lack of imagination in understanding their own product, and a firm line in the sand that is alienating some of their users, for a reason that's vague at best.
1 Like

Please allow us to have the option to add multiple assignees or AT LEAST for “watchers/collaborators” to be able to see the tasks they are collaborators/watchers of under “my tasks” or split the “my tasks” view to show tasks that are assigned to you - and watched by you (and be able to sort them together by due date) to see clearly if there are any overlaps with tasks on days etc.

So perhaps one list of the tasks with a small eye icon beside tasks you’re watching but aren’t your responsibility…as per Asana philosophy :wink:

I use Asana for business and personal planning and having the ability for others to at least be able to SEE the tasks in their my tasks area is vital if the tasks aren’t specifically assigned to them.

2 Likes

It would be really helpful to not have to go into 12 different tasks and reschedule them every time a meeting gets rescheduled. If I need 12 people at a meeting, I would like to be able to assign the same Asana task to all of them and have any changes to that task reflected for everyone. It’s a frustrating limitation.

@Hallie_Gammon,

In case you weren’t aware of it, I like to put just a single copy of the meeting/info details in the parent task and only the minimal assignee and title in the duplicates which I do in subtasks. I’ve explained it here:

Hope that helps,

Larry

1 Like

I see this is already a highly-requested feature, so I hope I’m not repeating suggestions already made. But this would be a way to keep the focus on tasks having a directly responsible individual while also allowing teams to work more collaboratively on individual tasks:

Has Asana considered making multiple assignees work like dependencies? Assign one “lead” assignee to receive updates, and all other individuals assigned to the task could each click when they’ve completed it, but the task won’t actually be marked as done until all people and/or the assigned “lead” have clicked “complete”.

3 Likes