Assign multiple assignees on one task

Hi @Josh_Vaughn,

While i agree that the one task one assignee restriction can seem a bit restrictive, i think in your case i would use subtask. Create the task “google doc1” create a sub task called “review google doc1” and use the special feature to create copies for as many individuals as you like. The fundamental structure would be the same as have the possibility of assigning several people to the same task, as far as i can tell.

But in general Asana lacks a “approval” flow, i.e… a feature that would let me design a specifik order for which the different people can “approve” a document… i.e… in your case, if employee1, and employee2 and your self need to approve “google document 1”, then it would be helpfull to have a feature that automatically used the “depending on” function to create a work flow. But thats for the future of Asana :slight_smile:

/Peter

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Yes, this is what I ended up doing.

I think a better solution would be to leave the current “single responsibility” paradigm as the default.

Then build in the ability to assign more than one user to a task as an option. It seems a feature that a lot of people are intuitively looking for - its one of the first things I searched on as Ive been setting up my account.

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There are pros and cons on allowing multiple assignee per task. The pro side is as believed by Asana team that there will be and will always be a person responsible for the task. The con side is definitely prominent when a trial user is trying to switch from Microsoft Project to Asana.

Maybe we can have multiple assignee in Asana but set only one of the assignee to be the owner of the task? In this way Asana can keep the philosophy of “one task one owner” while users who liked Asana’s other features so much can still enjoy planning project with Asana in an even more agreeable way?

Agreed… sometimes teams need to work on a project or task together and it doesn’t make sense to separate these out into individual tasks. I do understand Asana’s reasons for wanting to maintain individual responsibility, though, and I think that is also important. What I would like to see is a new type of task that can be assigned to a team… Each member of the team would need to “complete” their part for the entire task to be completed. I imagine it would work sort of like the subtask feature.

A project management tool should enable good practices but not seek to prohibit bad ones. This is because it is not possible to envision every possible situation in which a team might need to adapt their approach, and thus have a good reason for breaking a rule that applies in other situations.

If two software developers are pair programming, e.g., they really both are responsible for the task. Add in a product manager or other persons working on a task and you might have easily several people who “own” it, according to their respective roles. Creating separate sub-tasks, in many cases, would simply be adding unnecessary overhead. Tools such as LeankitKanban support multiple assignees, and in the couple years of experience I have using that tool on teams, never once did we somehow get confused about who was responsible for getting something done.

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All the feedback is interesting and valid. I don’t think Asana should “force” users to work a certain way, but rather give us the option to assign multiple people to a task, if needed. Today, for example, we just completed a brainstorming board. All meeting participants are to review the board, add any additional items or comments, then define what they see as priorities prior to our next meeting. It is ridiculous that I have to copy the task title into 8 subtasks. Even if I did that, there is no indicator on the front of the task “card” that there are sub-tasks and who they are assigned to. Asana should be a tool that supports our workflow, and not micro-manage how we do the work.

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Yes this would be extremely helpful. I hate having to duplicate tasks to assign to a team of 4.

This is aside from the semi-philosophical discussion about multi assignees, but @Nathan_Buchman do you mean manually duplicate or are you using the ‘assign multiple copies’ cloning function? Not that it’s an appropriate work around, but if you’re duplicating manually that’s horribly frustrating and I sympathize.

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We really need to be able to assign multiple users to tasks!

We at least need to be able to set “Task Owner” and a “Task Manager” responsibilities, it’s causing us all sorts of problems when managing external agency partners,

We need the overall direction of a task to be with the client, and the actual management of the task and subtasks to be managed by the agency – who also need to assign multiple people to tasks!

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This seems to have been going on forever! YES we REALLY do need the ability to have multiple people assigned to one task. Asana Please?

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I’ll be honest, this feature lacking is a reason Trello is a good alternative.

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I use Asana free for my personal tasks and my department is considering going pro so that we can all get on board. I thought that with pro we’d be able to add more than one person to a task, something we desperately need. I am extremely disappointed to find that is not the case. You guys were in our top three and now I’m sad to say we may not be using you at all.

This is a feature that would be foolishly useful for many occasions. Not all tasks are solo tasks. have any training tasks? Need 2 people to be completed, and both are responsible. Why a design decision was made to limit functionality of project & task management software seems strange to me.

While I think it’s useful to have limitations on the number of people being assigned to a task, it is obviously not universally useful to every team. The limitations should not be set by the app developers, it should be set by team managers! Asana doesn’t run people’s businesses, it is an app to assist in the businesses’ work flow. When you forget that, you’ll loose customers because your limitations are creating huge bottlenecks in some business work flows.
Here are few feature suggestions:

(1) There should be a feature that allows the assigner to add multiple/unlimited assignees. Because if the said task is a team meeting then you need to add it everyone’s radar/calendar/agenda.

(2) There should also be co-leader assignee positions to distinguish tasks that are led by one person but multiple people are working on it as co-leaders.

(3) There should a feature that limits assignees from just adding additional assignees. Make it so that assignees have to request from the assigner that additional members be added to a task and have an additional feature where the assigner can give an assignee, assigner rights.

Optionality is key!

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Asana team, any plans to implement this feature in 2018? Would LOVE to see this feature. It’s the one thing about the platform that is really frustrating… and something that comes up in convo at our business on a weekly basis. Any update would be great!

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I honestly found the easy workaround of having sub-tasks that are called “Participate in meeting” and assigning it to each person. I check off who showed up for the meeting as a reminder.

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If I assign subtasks to multiple people, how can I get their avatars to appear in the project task board view? I see their avatars at the bottom of the task when I open it, but I would like to see the list at the high-level view. I do not need to “assign” the task to more than one person, but I’m drawn to want that feature because it is not immediately clear who is working on the task when viewing the project task board.

As Asana is probably painfully aware, their decision to over-constrain the problem has led to a lot of us switching back to other tools (i.e. Trello). Eventually when the lost of potential revenue becomes evident, hopefully we won’t be too well-rooted in our other tools that we can’t revisit Asana. The point that this feature request is almost a year old, I don’t think they will change their strategy.

Hi Katie!

I would like to assign one task to multiple users when that task is a meeting.

The reason is that I would like that meeting task to appear in all the attendees’ “My Tasks” list, because all those people must attend to the meeting.

Now the only alternative would be to make copies of the meeting task and assign it to each person.

Any better solutions??

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Thanks for clarifying. For that case, I would recommend having a parent “XYZ Meeting” that is assigned to the meeting facilitator and is where meeting notes are captured.
57 AM

Then, on that parent task, I would create a subtask for “Attend XYZ Meeting”
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Then you can assign copies of that subtask to every meeting attendee with expectations on their participation in the description.
49 AM
This will give you one clear owner and source of truth for the meeting on the parent task, while still having a participation reminder for each meeting participant by assigning copies of the subtask.


Do you think this would work?

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I think it would be a good workaround. Thanks!! :slight_smile:

What about calendar syncing?? How can I make sure that everybody who has to attend a meeting gets that meeting sync’ed up in their calendar but not others (the ones they don’t have to attend to)??

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