Best Practices when deleting a Project

[LEGGO]

As you work within Asana you might occasionally find that a project is no longer needed. Asana offers the capability to Archive a Project, but you might find in specific instances that the data within a project is no longer needed. As shown below, the Asana Guide highlights steps to take when deleting projects and things to consider when performing this action.

This is great information, but what about subtasks? What are the necessary steps to ensure that when deleting a project you aren’t left with an “orphan tasks”?

When deleting a project, tasks that meet one of these conditions will remain within Asana after deleting a project:

1. Tasks that are assigned
2. Tasks that are multihomed to another project
3. Subtasks where the parent task remains (not deleted)
4. Subtasks that are multi-homed to another project (those that are assigned will be deleted, if not multi-homed or having a parent task that remains)

Knowing this, what is the “best practice” to completely purge a project where none of the tasks or subtask are required any longer? - >>> un-assign at all levels with no multi-homing assignments! This can be achieved by performing an Advanced Search if you filter to the project in question AND add a subtask filter to show all tasks associated with the project, as seen below. Simply bulk-select any items that are no longer needed and remove the assignee and any other projects the task (or subtask) is mapped to.

While deleting projects might not be a “best practice” itself, we all may have situations where information might need to be purged (such as when you import to project via CSV but learn your import file has some errors that need to be addressed/imported against). To prevent uncovering orphan tasks over time, consider the steps listed above. Cheers!!!

[Emily_Roman]

Excellent topic @LEGGO! I create so many test tasks and projects in Asana and I always make sure I remove all these test tasks/subtasks using Advanced Search!

[Bastien_Siebman]

I do have a rule about deleting project: never delete project you never know if you’re gonna need those tasks, and for the few cases “yes Bastian but…” I’d say it is easier to have a rule without exceptions

Otherwise good read!

[Rashad_Issa]

This is an excellent tip!
While I too operate by the same rule as @Bastien_Siebman
While I opt for archiving them, I do however encounter situations where a project was either imported incorrectly, or a project has been built as a sample / option to consider - like giving the project team a choice on how best to organise their work - and that option was not selected. Therefore the delete option is required and this is an excellent tip @LEGGO

Thanks for sharing!

[LEGGO]

Correct, @Rashad_Issa. This tip is specifically targeted for those one off scenarios. Basically when things are setup improperly and no real work has happened against the tasks

I, too, very much live by the same rule as @Bastien_Siebman and side with you on archiving being the preferred option when the work needs to be retained.

[LEGGO]

@Bastien_Siebman - I also have to point out that within the following awesome tip… 💡 Templates can also be "task factories"

What happens when all the fabricated tasks move to the respective projects… the project that was generated by the template doesn’t get deleted does it?!?

[Bastien_Siebman]

You got me

[Getz_Pro]

Great read! I would only add that if you do delete a project by mistake, you can reach out to support@asana.com to recover. They don’t delete projects from the server, or at least the retention is over a year.