Assign multiple assignees on one task

Thank you for expressing this point here. There is an obvious need here (maybe not for all users, but for many) and multiple users have outlined the fix which would in no way hinder collaborators of the 1 assignee philosophy. I am honestly disappointed in the Asana team’s lack of action on this after so much time and discussion… easier to make excuses i.e. “redefine the problem” rather than just implementing a no-brainer fix

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It would be really essential to have this feature, please add this!!!

It would be really essential to have this feature, please add this!!! This is a weak point of Asana that may lead us to quit the platform. We, users, should decide if we want to assign more than one assignee to the task or not.

But assigning it to multiple people is essentially the same as assigning it to a team, no? The only functional difference is instead of it saying “Assigned to Team X” it would list each member of that team as being assigned to it.

This really is a pretty large functional constraint for a lot of businesses. I know our company is a small one that doesn’t operate with the level of micromanaging needed to break each task down to its smallest components/steps and assign it that way. It is quite often that multiple people will help with a single task, either operating on it concurrently or swapping it off as available. It is how we have to operate by necessity. While philosophically this might make sense for a lot of companies, there is a significant amount of us who just can’t function that way.

Making it a setting one can toggle on/off as needed seems like it would be a good implementation as then it really is a choice left up to the individual organization.

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Our company has some conferences coming up in the coming months. We are using Asana to coordinate/collaborate details (who’s going, when, accommodations, etc). We are also using this parent task to track (and assign) subtasks for the conference (booking accommodations, carpet, electical, etc.). These subtasks should be assigned to individuals, but it would be nice to assign the multiple attendees to the parent task so they each have all of those details directly in their My Tasks, particularly on the day(s) of the event. Being a Collaborator is OK, but an actual assignment would be better.

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I’m reading this thred periodically each month. I have one more word to say. I have no power to convince asana management to add this feature. But I’m pretty certain that telling to us, customers, how we should deal with our businesses and being deaf for customers needs is a sure thing short way to quit business.

Sure thing, your system is different than the other, It need some time to learn how to deal with assana if you’re switched from the other platform. Adding multiple assigners could be blocked by the owner/admin what ever in the setup section. Problem solved and topic to be archived.

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100% agree with Grzegorz and the hundreds of uses above. Having more than one assignee would be great in many cases, at least for my firm. Telling us that doing so would mean a loss in accountability sounds a bit patronizing. We know that that may a risk in certain cases but we are sufficiently mature to deal with that risk (You can add risk warnings if that makes you sleep better at night!).

If you don’t add this feature it means that (1) Asana is not listening to MANY of its clients who arguably know how to run their businesses and know what they need, (2) Asana remains a less powerful tool than it would otherwise be, and (3) those clients could potentially migrate to a platform that better suits their needs.

I think it is clear from this thread that this feature would be very valuable for many clients. Therefore, why don’t just add it and move on?

Thanks,
Jorge

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When are we getting multiple assignees?

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Please add a feature to assign multiple assignees to ONE task.

Thank you

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Please add a feature to share tasks. We are a highly collaborative team of two within a large office. We split up a task by chipping away at it when time allows and make notes of our progress. Please stop gatekeeping folks work habits and add this feature in!

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I honestly cant’ believe this isn’t a feature? I have multiple teams where the team is responsible to get tasks done at regular intervals. There are multiple members of the team who could complete the task depending on workload. The ability to be able to assign a task so an entire team can see it and then once one person checks it off, it’s complete should be basic?

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@Asana: When you go ahead and implement this, please consider the following point, as I feel it is an important one.

I’m curious about the multiple assignee per task model. Would there be an expectation that if a task is assigned to N people, all N must complete the task? Or would the default be that completion by one closes the task for all? (I see people talking about both above.) Or, would people want that choice (“complete by all” vs. “complete by any”) to be a setting? If so, would it be global to a team or per project, or maybe decided task by task?

People have made well-thought-out arguments for “complete by all” vs. “complete by any”. (A fringier case might be…“complete by N”, where N < # of assignees.) PLEEEAASE take some time to consider the difference and the fact that users are more or less split as to the “all” vs. “any”. If you just go ahead and implement one or the other, especially without communicating, you may hear more disappointment from the users who you thought would be thrilled.

I would also suggest that you provide a global or project-level setting as to whether multi-assign is permitted. For many of us, multi-assign breaks our model and gives tasks cracks to slip through. Clearly, for others, multi-assign is the RIGHT model that massively aids in their productivity. Please consider all these major usage models and also the amazing variety of tasks being done and environments people work in.

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I agree by the whole “being held accountable” concept. However, I use Goals for my team and sometimes we work on the same goal at the same time.

I don’t mind copying the tasks, it’s pretty easy. But maybe add a way to section off sub-tasks so we can separate the duplicates assigned to other team members in a more neat way?

@Stefano_Kefalianos,

In case you missed it among the nearly 300 posts here (!):

That answer is for a recurring meeting, but the key part is the automated way to create the multiple subtasks.

To section them off, use Tab-N when on a subtask to create a subsection, and then drag that into position.

Hope that helps,

Larry

Exactly! Just what harm is there in just giving the team leader the flexibility to try it out by flipping the setting in the admin? If they find it’s not working, they will learn and switch it back to single-task.

It’s 2020. are diverse teams, diverse management styles, diverse cultures around the world. Just empower the team leaders to make the decisions with subtle yet important features like this instead of forcing a “philosophy” upon them.

We’re bootstrapped ecommerce startup with a lot of remote workers and external vendors part timers, interns. In a perfect world I would know exactly who is the best fit to own a project, who has room in their workload right now, who is OOO - and find all that out before assigning the exact person. But we’re an ecom business in December. Time is not in abundance. Often when defining a project on short notice, I don’t know exactly who is the best person yet. But I have a few people in mind, and I know if I delegate to a group of to 2-3 people, they will get the notification that they are assigned, see the other assignees, and understand they are responsible as a group, and will figure it out and communicate amongst themselves. This would save an immense amount of time and stress. We are getting around this lack of functionality by manually posting comments, Slack messages, etc. But it’s a great deal of extra steps/communication clutter that would be eliminated instantly by allowing the flexibility to assign multiple people to a task.

“Just collaborators!” Collaborators we just want people to be notified of comments as passive participants, not active participants. The assignees designation is important because they know they are jointly responsible a team to figure it out amongst themselves.

“Just use subtasks!” First of all, even if we used subtasks it forces us to pick the exact person for each element. However, we have tried using subtasks and have since stopped because it adds multiple layers to the project. We have found breaking projects that have multiple moving parts into Sections to be much better than using subtasks.

“Copying tasks”- this creates a lot of clutter, especially since we heavily rely on the slack integration and have to select from a list of tasks. But more importantly we want the comments and description updates to live in one place. So this hasn’t worked for us either.

You may disagree with our way of using the tool, and our desire to assign multiple users. But this is what works for our team. You may come from a different organizational style, a different culture than ours. Please be pro-diversity, and just allow us as the team admins the flexibility to adjust this functionality.

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Also just for context our company is paying several thousand dollars per year for Asana, not using free version.

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I agree, this needs to have happened awhile ago… it’s been almost 3 years and this still isn’t implemented? The highest voted feedback change, and nothing… I also want to mention our company is paying several thousand dollars a year too.

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Just chiming in that this would be a huge impact to our project management with time savings and less clutter. before I’d just use subtasks or just leave the responsible user. so I can see how that can be a decent work around. HOWEVER, now that we’ve upgraded to business and using the workload tool that’s no longer a decent workaround. It adds more time and room for project confusion for our collaborative projects we run. To have 1 task and need to create 4 copies of it, for a 1 year long complex project definitely adds time to our project management.

I’d be happy to work with the Asana team to help come up with a impact study to help make a case for a feature or option to be able to assign multiple users to a task. Just a thought, I can understand that you’d also have to factor in with workload how to split the time, it would be nice to have an option to split evenly or assign the same to each.

As a matter of fact, it would be good even with the current setup to be able to tell the tool how I want to split the time for any one user. For example, if I have 10 hours for a user in the workload spread between 2 days, I’d like the ability to say 4 hours one day and then 6 hours the next. otherwise it appears to my upper management as if the employee has room on one day when he really doesn’t or that he is over on another.

Thanks,

Jorge

This is disappointing. I asked my team for time to explore Asana instead of automatically deciding on using your competitor, because I was attracted by the Workload function. But all of our work always have two assignees - one manager, one supporting staff, and we manage our managers’ and our support staff’s workload and work assignments separately. If there can only be one assignee… well then the whole Workload function becomes useless to us.
Best scenario for us is if Custom Field type includes people - thus we will be able to create one field for managers and one for support.
Too bad that I don’t think I’ll stick around long enough to see if you will finally work on this function. I will no longer recommend Asana to my company.

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Agreed, this would be a great feature. Assigning copies isnt really good enough a you have to monitor multiple tickets and collate feedback rather than all feedback in one place.