Assign multiple assignees on one task

I agree with Asana that a single task can only be completed by a single person as tasks should be specific in nature (unlike projects, which involve multiple tasks or key tasks/milestones, which may involve multiple sub-tasks).

We assign the main/key task to the person accountable/responsible for completing it and then use the ‘Multi-assign duplicate tasks’ function to simultaneously duplicate the task for multiple people in the team who also have to work on the same/similar task. Alternatively, if we want all the tasks linked, we create sub-tasks under the main/key task/milestone for each additional person.

We also use the ‘collaborators’ function on a task to add extra people to follow the progress or collaborate on a task assigned to the person that is accountable/responsible for completing it.

I think having multiple assignees to a specific task can result in ambiguity around who is actually accountable for the completion of that task and may cause unnecessary duplication of work or confusion around who is responsible for different aspects of a task. If a task is large enough for more than one person, then the ‘steps’ to complete that task should be created as sub-tasks or duplicate tasks.

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This would be an amazing feature! (I’ve been waiting for it for 4 years and I am not the only one in my team)

I sometime assign a “QA copy” or “QA design” task to a few people of my team and I would love everyone to collaborate on one task.

So right now, I am assigning the task to myself and tagging my colleagues, but it sometime gets lost in their inbox.
The other option I found (not very efficient) is to create sub-tasks to each member of my team with link to the parent task, so they can all comment on the the parent task but “complete” their individual task when there are done. Again, not the best. And I don’t like the “duplicate” idea. It clutter the project.

If you are afraid of “accountability” why not marking the task completed only when all people assigned to that task are done. So if there’s 2 people assigned to one task, they can individually “complete” their part but task remain until they both hit “complete”.

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This is my workaround.

Tags

My Team Is using Tags to assign people instead. And have every individual favorite that Tag. I don’t think there is a limit to Tags but this is not perfect and this would make it so it won’t show up on your own workbench but only the workbench you are working on. Also if you already have the structure of a very complex tag for classification already adding more tags for assigning work might not be a good idea.

5 years later and this still isn’t a feature…

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Reading through this, I think this comes down to there isn’t 1 solution that fits everyone’s needs and Asana has said we aren’t changing to deal with it. If you read through all of it there are plenty of people that are begging for this feature. (I’m one of them) Why not add it as an option that can be turned on/off in the admin console so the customer gets the choice.
For me I run a small team where people from 34 locations will send in requests for help/information. Right now they have to pick 1 person out of the team to assign it to and if I’m lucky they tag the manager or another person. (Yes in a perfect world they’d look up a flowchart of who what where, but then again that perfect world, nothing would break.) I can’t expect all these people to know who’s on my team and who to assign it to.
I’d love a solution to where you assign it to a team, it notifies everyone in the team and with that someone can then take ownership of it or it can then be assigned to someone specific by someone in the team. What this also does is then add the entire team as collaborators.
This way I can tell everyone that needs my teams service to open an asana task and assign it to “My Team” and everyone gets the alert.
I can appreciate that only 1 person can solve it or can close it, but that’s not always the case and 2 people are working on the solution together. If it must be 1 person at the end then fine, before it can be closed have a feature that it needs to be assigned to a single person whether they accepted the task as theirs or it was assigned to them, and then it can be closed.

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I’m surprised we’re still not able to assign multiple people to a single task.
Do you think it’s better not to do it? Ok, but why not leave the client chose?

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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