Assign tasks to people who are not team or organisation members

I found a way to do this. Its a technique I use when I sign up for things so I can see who is selling my email address. If you append your regular email address with a label or tag you get a distinct email address that you can create an Asana account, but all the notifications will go you your main inbox. For example if I want to assign tasks to John virtually I do the following: my normal address is, myemail@mymailprovider.com to create a virtual John, I add a user with the email address, myemail+john@mymailprovider.com. I get an email to create an account and I proceed to do so. Now I can Assign John tasks so I can keep track but John doesnā€™t have to sign up. It works great.

Hope this helps someone.

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Any answer on this?
Thatā€™s exactly what I want too. Imaginary team members as assignees just to keep track to who is involved

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I would also like to add Virtual users. Some external contractors whose time I have to manage. We have 10 people, so unused email addresses is not an option. Please add virtual users

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It just should be done like in Trello! Anybody with the email address can create cards. I got back to Trello as ASANA isnā€™t able to provide this capability yet.

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Hi, what is the best way to manage a team project with different departments if I donā€™t want them to view the other departments tasks but still work on the same project. Iā€™m trying not to open a project for each department. For example- new product starts from Purchasing moves to Marketing and than to Media > PR > Sales.

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I looks like this thread hasnā€™t had much activity in over 6 months now. The ability to assign tasks to people who donā€™t have an asana account, so that project managers in my organization are able to keep track of task ownership, would be immensely helpful. We have a small startup and we just have five seats that are assigned to people who have project management responsibilities. In our projects we are often working with other contributors who donā€™t need access to Asana. Me and the other project managers want to be able to identify who is responsible for appropriate tasks, even if they are contributors who donā€™t have access to Asana.

In the Business and Enterprise plans, I assume you can do this by adding guests using some of the methods shared in this thread, but for my Premium membership I donā€™t see a way to to this. Hopefully this will be solved at some point.

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Hi Asana team - Could you please answer this thread or offer a solution? This is such a frustratingly missing feature: have the ā€œAssigneeā€ field be an open text field if no email or person match, please.

Thanks
Yas

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I have the same question as @Ray_Mayfield and @Jessica3 - Iā€™d like to assign co-op students or board members to some tasks, but I dont need to create a new user or have them access the account or receive notifications. I just want to see their name (or event a generic ā€˜studentā€™ ā€˜contractorā€™ ā€˜boardā€™), in the assignee field for my own reference.

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My current workaround is to fill in the Assignee field with a made up email address (eg. Rachel from HR - Rachel@HRCompanyX.com). Asana is going to send this email address a request to join Asana, I will receive emails saying ā€œRachel@HRCompany.com hasnā€™t accepted your invitation yetā€) and that will be it and I will have a placeholder I can identify.

Hope this helps other people.

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This is what I desperately need as well. I need to be able to assign tasks to, say, Tiler A, drywaller A, Plumber A, etc. They will not do anything in Asana (and actually wouldnā€™t do it even if I wanted them to. A tiler we only use for a few jobs a year will not be willing to join up and learn new software). I just need to be able to assign such tasks to their name for our own records and so that I know who is working on what for each project. Even just placeholder names (with no email.) Anything. Please.

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Iā€™m very surprised and disappointed this feature is not in Asana. This is a fairly basic feature to be able to identify / assign roles to people when first creating a WBS, then assign people. Another use case is that we know we would need developers in 6 months, as part of a project, would need to have a placeholder role added to it. Many other similar solutions like Clarizen, etc have this feature. Highly recommend that you add it. Would you please provide some insights as to whether this is in the near term roadmap. Otherwise, unfortunately we may need a different solution.

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When you get a real person for this project, have you found a way to replace that fictive person with the real one?

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I am new to Asana. I am managing project and would like to assign team members to the task without sending them eMails. I canā€™t figure out how to assign just a name. it prompts me to give an eMail address. Why? I wish assignee could be initials, or name, or number or letterā€¦thatā€™s it. WITHOUT eMail
Thanks,
Val

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Julio, Did they solve your problem? I have the same insanity.
thanks, Val

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Hi was this ever solved I would also like to add virtual assignees. Is there a way?

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Hi, Chantal ā€“ not that Iā€™m aware of.

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I know Iā€™m like 3 yrs late to the party, but Iā€™ve been checking the forums for an answer to this question, and nothing answered aside from ā€œUse Tagsā€ or ā€œUse Custom Fieldsā€.

Just want to check with you to see if you eventually got an answer around this, or if itā€™s just these workarounds??

Thanks!!

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I know its not idea but Instagantt provides this feature.

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Chiming in here to agree with the folks asking for this feature. Would love to be able to simply type someoneā€™s name in the assignee field.

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Good idea, thanks!

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