Assign to 3rd-party

Business have 3rd-party services: legal team, contractor, accounting, even service providers should be able to be assigned tasks. Assigning 3rd party gives clarity to who is responsible for this, or who is completing it.

As a manager I find many tasks that rely on outside services and for clarity it would be great to assign tasks to 3rd patty. No visibility necessary, but clarity to who/what is responsible.

Tags are a find solution for now, but assigning would be best.

1 Like

You can create fake email accounts within your company, that nobody reads but that have a real account with a nice avatar, and assign tasks to them!

Dig the creativity! This is a nice hack to the problem, yet from a UX perspective it’s not the easiest to pull off and requires extra consumption of paid seats.

One day I hope to have multiple-assignments and auxiliary-users (just to put a name on this feature request). Much like creating a new tag, one could assign a task to a new auxiliary-user understanding that that user will complete the task under your authority.

Thanks for the quick patch Bastien :smile:

1 Like

@Steve10, I think you could at least avoid the extra seat consumption by using non-company-domain auxiliary email addresses (e. g., gmail.com).

And you could benefit from a Gmail feature such that you’d only need to create a single new Gmail account:

Create a single Gmail account like stevecoaux@gmail.com. For each different third-party, just start using addresses like these (a “+” followed by the role/name):

stevecoaux+legal@gmail.com
stevecoaux+accounting@gmail.com
stevecoaux+website-developer@gmail.com

Hope that helps.

2 Likes

Interesting. In theory you could add unlimited auxiliary emails (like “steve+random@gmail.com”) to Asana? Fantastic.

1 Like

Does this approach really not lead to being charged for additional team members? I’m currently on the free plan and want to upgrade but don’t want to be charged for “dummy” accounts that no one uses and essentially work as reminders for me.

1 Like

@Jon_Goldman, If you want to cite something in Asana’s pricing or other info that gives you concern that this isn’t the case, please do. Pricing for paid Organization plans is based on users with the org’s domain. (I’m not sure about workspace/team/.edu/etc. plans which could be different.)

Larry

It appears that for a team plan, billing is by seat regardless of domain. Is there a workaround? Thanks!

@Jon_Goldman, I’m not sure. Perhaps @Natalia can weigh in, or maybe you need to contact Asana Sales or Support. Also Understanding the Asana pricing by @Bastien_Siebman is useful, though not sure it addresses this questions exactly.

1 Like

Not sure you can give a seat to a guest… Interested by the answer from Asana though.

1 Like

Is there any way to assign a task to person/role who acts only as a placeholder for some unknown person who will complete that task in the future? I have task “Build graphic images.” I’m not going to perform that task but at some point in the future, I’ll hire a freelancer to build those images for me. I’d like to make the Assignee for that task just some general role like “Designer”. I don’t know who that person will be and I will never be giving them access to my Asana. If I click “Assignee”, I have to enter a name or email address. But I can’t type “Designer” in since I’m the only one in my Asana database/project. I should add that I have the Basic license so I can’t add other people without paying for a Premium account.

Is there some way to accomplish what I want to do? Thanks!

1 Like

Hi @Robert_Flaugher, welcome to the Asana Community Forum! As it stands, you can only add existing members or guests as Assignees in your Organization. We already have a thread on this topic, you can see some workarounds and upvote for this feature here: Assign to 3rd-party.

I’ve also gone ahead and merged your post with the main thread to consolidate feedback.

I hope this helps!