In reviewing the Future of Asana video (yup, I’m a bit late to this party), it seems like y’all are pursuing a lot of AI-based things. I work for a small software company and a lot of those problems of scale aren’t things that would directly address problems we have.
However, that got me to thinking about how some of the AI you’re developing could be used, and I do have a use case/feature I’d love to see you work on.
We track our entire product backlog in a single project in Asana. As you can imagine, we often have problems with duplicate or very similar tasks–different coworkers might phrase things in a different way, or simply forget to search if we already have a request for a given feature. Usually, we end up relying on our memories as to whether something sounds familiar/similar to an existing request.
It would be amazing to have some kind of “This looks like it might be a duplicate of xx task…” functionality, where there might be either a report or an on-screen warning when, based on the task title and description, it seems like there’s a potential duplicate in the same project. I realize our use case might not be the most common, but it would be incredibly helpful to have something like this (similar to the “Your topic is similar to…” warnings I’m getting right now as I type this )
I didn’t see a request like this but I know for our use case (product backlog with hundreds of tasks), it would be incredibly useful!
I agree this would be useful, and I actually think many users would agree. Perfect application of AI/ML, as you note.
There’s a possible slight hitch when an org relies heavily on templates to create tasks. But if implemented well, this feature would have no trouble determining that 50 occurrences of “Release artwork to printer” are not true duplicates, based on factors other than task title.
Sometimes I have an idea , and I quickly create a task for it so I do not forget about it. a few Month later I have that same idea again or someone else suggests it. It is not a priority so nothing has been done about it and the result is I create duplicate tasks in my project.
I find duplicates that I have created a few month apart and that have coexisted for a while… Sometimes they have a very similar subject, sometimes it’s worded differently; one could be assigned to someone else, the other one to me. and I end up jotting ideas in both tasks.
I realise it is my fault for creating the task twice but similar to when we create a new post in the Forum, it could be handy to have a warning: “Your topic (task) is similar to…”
I realise this could be annoying every time you create a task and repetitive tasks would throw a spanner in the works.
Upon re-reading myself, I wonder if this feature is really worth creating so instead I might ask the community: Do you suffer from the same problem ?
Hi @Jonathan_Stern, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us!
I agree, I think this is a good idea. We already have a thread on this topic so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with that thread to consolidate the feedback.
Yeah, this feature for sure will be amazing! Just as simple as the Excel but in Asana so we know that the task created was done already by someone else. Since this is ia PM app it could be amazing to add that extra right? Just as simple as - if the task created has the same name as before > then > prompt user - what do you think guys?
I couldnt manage to create a rule based on it but maybe someone did it successfully already
Was there a resolution to this? We have a HUGE issue with businesses submitting requests for things we already have and it’s causing undue stress and overworking.
Yeah completely agree on it. Since for organizing ideas that may be similar, I understand that you will need some IA but for tasks that are exactly the same, Asana could have a basic feature to prompt about “That task already exists, do you want to continue with this with the exact same name?”
In our workflow, our tasks convention name are numbers and letters.
Sometimes the same task is set on hold for weeks, but we manage to work a little on it. So it happen that after some weeks we forget we created that task, so when the task comes again in our company workflow, we start creating the task in Asana from zero, but actually later we realise somebody already advanced a little on it few weeks ago.
It could be nice to avoid the Re-work for this specific situations when the task has exactly same name.
Adding my +1 to the feature request of “duplicate task warning”
We also have a huge project within our funnels, where several incoming customer-requests end up - submitted by an asana-form.
The problem we regularly face is that they often tend to do it double with some information in one and the rest (or added) information in the next form. In some cases with several days or even weeks in between.
So I also add to the request for a duplicate warning system or even an option to run a “duplicate-search” over a whole project (maybe manually triggered with a click or on fixed timeframes)
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, and I quickly create a task for it so I do not forget about it. a few Month later I have that same idea again or someone else suggests it. It is not a priority so nothing has been done about it and the result is I create duplicate tasks in my project. 