Assignee field should only show members of a project or team

@Kevin_Walsh at this stage, we don’t have any workaround to offer .

How is this still not fixed to this day?

I believe according to Asana there is nothing to be fixed, this is against their vision. Asana has no silos, so you can’t really limit the list of assignee. My personal opinion (I don’t work for Asana): this will never be a feature.

I’m using Asana to work with clients and manage my workload. Companies 1 and 2 each have their own team and projects, so Company 1 can only see its own projects and tasks, as can Company 2.

The issue is that when in one of those projects, I can still see all users appear when I go to assign a task in a project; I don’t just see the people with access to that project.

Is there a toggle that can be developed as a quick win to enable/disable this, so I only see the people with access to the project in the dropdown menu?

The reason for this request is in this example, I have two clients with the same first name. As a result, it would be very easy to assign the case to the wrong person, thus potentially sharing information with them in error that they shouldn’t have access to (and that’s an absolute no-go when it comes to GDPR).

I can see this as being a big issue for other clients as well as ourselves. Does anyone else have any thoughts to share on this?

Hi @Aaron_Longbottom , welcome to the forum :wave:

I have merged your post into this existing topic where your vote has been consolidated.

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Absolutely - we appreciate that some organisations need this feature for their usage of the platform. As a result, this could be implemented as a toggle or organisation setting, so you hit the sweet spot for both types of organisation (those that do want to see everyone, and those that don’t).

Hi Bastien, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.

Whilst you feel this may be against Asana’s vision of reducing working silos, there are still legal requirements that ensure that companies keep data access locked down so people have access when needed.

Within the context of UK and EU GDPR, as we need to protect personal data, and names alone fall under that remit. Having everyone be visible in the assignee list poses a risk in someone choosing the wrong name, and sharing that task’s data in error. You also can’t undo it easily, as the user gets emailed the detail of the task straightaway, so they’ll have a record that they were assigned at that date and time.

A key example would be if your team is tracking a complaint process, and you need to assign a task (a complaint raised) in that project to a member of the team of 3, John Smith. Unfortunately, in a slip of the mouse, you click the guest John Smart, who’s actually a client. In a click, you’ve then shared details of a complaint with them that’s not related to them (with the description and timeline visible in the email).

It’s a bit disappointing that, despite this having been raised since Jun 2018, there’s not been an update or even just a quick-win toggle developed for this. For example, in Trello, when assigning someone to a card, it shows ‘Suggested people’, Board members and then an option for ‘Show other Workspace members’. This would be a perfect way to resolve this issue, without limiting the ability to assign tasks out to who’s needed.
Image 12-07-2023 at 10.06

Is anyone in the Asana team able to provide an update on this? @Marie @Natalia

I understand.

If I play the devil’s advocate role, I would argue that you can also email the wrong person, but you wouldn’t expect Microsoft to restrict the recipient you see in Outlook… The same thing apply to people expecting Asana to lock down fields, prevent deletion etc while using Excel for years where you can usually do the same things.

But I agree that Asana should at least communicate about whether or not this is being discussed!

Any updates. The fact that this is not a option to enable/disable is mind boggling. After 5 year Asana is still dragging their feet on it?

This will prove extremely useful as we look to potentially extend our use of ASANA to support User Acceptance Testing (UAT) by our customers. Very important that they see evidence that their data, the users with access and the resources tasks can be assigned to for resolution is limited to a controlled list.
As we scale out business further, this become even more dramatic in terms of the benefit. Hope to see this introduced in the roadmap soon.

This problem is affecting so many Asana clients and I am amazed Asana has not yet provided a solution. It make sense to keep the default to the entire organization, but allow the option of filtering potential assignees to the members of a team.

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