Assign multiple assignees on one task

Product Feedback
#452

Weighing in because I came here searching for a solution to this problem. Using subtasks as a way to assign a single task to multiple people is a workaround we have started incorporating, but this is still not ideal. Subtasks play an important role for many of our team’s tasks, and so I have to choose whether to make use of them as subtasks or sub-assignments. I’d prefer to have both options available, because otherwise things can get messy (i.e., multiple ways of assigning a single task to multiple people = confusing).

As another aside, I don’t mind making copies of tasks, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to link them (unless I’m missing something). Therefore, if I assign one task to 5 people, but later want to make an update to the task description, I’d have to make it individually for each task. This is frustrating, and is a reason I’ve gravitated away from assigning copies (in most cases).

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#453

This is one of the reasons why I use Assign Duplicates in subtasks–because the parent task becomes the sole original and updates can happen with one edit, not an edit per duplicate.

Could you use subtask-sections to allow both regular subtasks and assignment subtasks (within an Assignments subtask-section) to co-exist for a parent task?

Larry

#454

We love Asana , but the number one complaint that keeps coming up is not being able to assign multiple people to a task. One of our most common use cases is that we have a list of follow ups between people in a project, and every morning we have to parse the titles of all of the ones scheduled for the current day for the list of names of the people that need to meet, since there can only be one assignee. It’s extremely time consuming and often some important ones are missed. Creating subtasks for each person was even slower and we gave up on that idea.

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#455

I agree that the lack of ability to assign more than one person so a task is going to cause issues for my company.

My team currently uses Asana, but my company is on the hunt for a platform for the whole agency. Currently, the inability to assign more than one person to a task is making our creative team reject Asana. They want to go with Monday, that allows tasks to be assigned to individuals or whole teams. They also also allow multiple use columns - so there would be a column for, say, Account Director, Copywriter, Designer etc.

In fact, Asana’s custom column functionality is very limited in general compared to Monday.com.

#456

As much as I love the function of duplicate assignee, I got 50 people getting the same assignment. I have to write in 50 names to file it to them. That’s fun for the first 10 times, after that it gets a bit… bad.
Would be very great to have a function to “assign to Team” - and then it duplicates. Wouldn’t kill your design decision that one task is a person and all that - that’s fine - sure, but manually inputting names… gnah.

#457

There are many use cases for adding multiple assignees on a task. For example, when a document moves to the “review” stage, then there are multiple people reviewing. No, we do not want these as subtasks because they get lost in the weeds and don’t appear on the main project’s task. No, we don’t want to create multiple tasks with each person assigned because it creates clutter and cuts from the main task. This allow doesn’t allow people to collaborate in one task chat. Please make this a feature. The fact that it’s not due to ‘task ownership’ theory is not right. It is closed-minded. Perhaps when someone adds a new assignee, put a pop up warning that its’ recommended to have one task assignee. But it is not your place to make the decision for users. This absolutely ruins the user experience.

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#458

Actually, @Arno_M_Scharinger, that’s exactly how it works. You can assign to individuals or to teams. Try typing in a team name.

This is not so well documented at How to designate a Task to an Assignee & add Collaborators in Asana | Product guide • Asana under “Assign Copies,” but it does say “If you’d like to create the same task for multiple people, you can easily assign multiple tasks to individuals or an entire team in your Organization.”

Hope that helps,

Larry

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#459

Dear Larry, thanks a lot for your reply.
The issue with that is, I have one team, but multiple sub-teams. One does - let’s say static images, and one does motion images - and I was looking for a way to assign people to “sub-teams” so to say, or departments.
Which is not possible, afaik?

Thanks again for reaching out.

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#460

@Arno_M_Scharinger, Couldn’t you go ahead and also create each subteam you need, even if only for the purpose of Assign Copies usage if it helps you? I guess there’s more to keep in sync if there’s turnover. Perhaps even a use to store some projects in some of them?

#461

@lpb I could not find any way to build deparments. Could you elaborate?

#462

@Arno_M_Scharinger, Are you asking how to create a Team in Asana? If so, Team basics: create, join, and manage teams | Product guide • Asana?

Larry

#463

@lpb Hey Larry, not at all. You suggested Sub-Teams, so I was asking how to make Sub-Teams or departments. Because my initial problem stands.
I have ONE Team, that is SPLIT into two departments, right now I have to input every name in each department if I want to assign and duplicate tasks. To which I said - that’s a a lot.

#464

@Arno_M_Scharinger,

By “subteam” I meant just another team.

You now have one team:

MyTeam

  • Person1
  • Person2
  • Person3
  • Person4

Go ahead and one-time-only create two more teams:

MyTeamSubTeam1

  • Person1
  • Person2

MyTeamSubTeam2

  • Person3
  • Person4

You will now be able to Assign Copies to your subteams without typing anyone’s name ever again.

Larry

#465

Not sure if anyone else has suggested this - but if there was a way to do this following the RACI matrix, that would be awesome.

In general, its not a good practice to make multiple people responsible (ultimately one person has to own on their shoulders if things fall through… or things quickly become nobodies responsibility and politics ensue. )

For those not in the now:
R - responsible
A - Accountable (here is where I would put all the others that need to take ownership of something, and will share some burden if the work is not completed accurately, etc)
C - Consulted → No work needed, but they need to engaged and given a chance to speak prior to any action that could impact them is taken.
I - Informed - To me this is basically the ‘collaborators’ now. They can then decide if they want to peace out on notifs etc. Really anyone can, but once they take that action its on them if they we properly categorized (assigned/tagged ).

I get this is unlikely to be where things go immediately… bit i really think it would be awesome and powerful from a digital/team culture perspective.

3 Likes
#466

I often have tasks where it doesn’t matter who completes it as long as it gets completed. For a large team this doesn’t work but when there’s two of us, it would be helpful to assign some tasks to both of us so that it appears in both of our task lists and either of us can take care of it if we see that the other hasn’t yet completed it.

For tasks that require multiple people to do them, for example if multiple people need to sign a contract, we can use subtasks for those. But subtasks are not efficient in the “either or” scenario I described above where either person could do it.

At the moment we use the Collaborators feature but it’s too easy to forget to go in and add a collaborator, so we are constantly missing messages because someone didn’t assign the task and then also go into the task, scroll down, and add a collaborator.

Hopefully you can understand that one management style does not fit all scenarios.

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#467

Today I wanted to give Asana a chance against our previous tool and set everything up. When I was done with it and I didn’t find a way to add multiple responsible people in a story / task, I ended up here.
We practice pair programming not only in software development, but basically try to pair every value-creating activity. Sometimes tasks are done more than in pairs, especially when it comes to jointly developing new technologies within a Sprint 0.

Without this feature, Asana is unfortunately not an alternative to our current tool.

2 Likes
#468

Can you not just make them Collaborators of on the same card?

#469

I do that too, but all the other features that you can see with the assignee, just work for one person.

In Asana some functions are based on the assignee feature. For example, only one person has the tasks in the “My Tasks” area and as a product owner I only ever see the “Workload” for one person in the portfolio.

To clarify: In a pair, both people have the same responsibility, otherwise pair programming would not make sense. Since we apply the principle here to almost all roles (e.g. UX, Marketing, Writer), the problem affects at least half of the employees. We have about 300 employees ;)…

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#470

Why is Asana clinging on to limiting this functionality. Is it an internal cultural issue where someone in Asana just doesn’t want to back down now the decision has been made? This discussion has been going on for 3 years, why not just allow this feature, it can’t be that hard to implement??

6 Likes
#471

we do need an option where we can assign two and more people to one task. This is case when the conversation is going and the decision depends on 2+ people. If we assign a task to only person only - other people will not see their role in the task. Multiplying tasks is not an option as it does not show that this is a mutual decision. Moreover multiplying tasks makes list big.
I would be great to hear Asana current position to this question. It would be frustrating to setup a project here and then move it somewhere else.

2 Likes