🎯 Can a task in Asana be assigned to multiple assignees?

Single Responsibility!

I think if we are talking about sharing responsibilities on internal tasks, that can be correct. However, Asana is used by organizations that differ from an office/executive setting. Our company fixes espresso machines, coffee brewers and grinders for coffee shops of all kinds. When we send a Technician to a service call that requires 2 Technicians due to the scope of the work, we assign the first Technician and duplicate the appointment for the 2nd. They are together doing the work. We initially tried using Subtask for the 2nd Technician, but they did not notice that they were assigned to same task, resulting in few surprised Techs re: going to the appointments. Since duplicating, we have not had that issue. I think the single responsibility may not always work for service industry companies where more than 1 Tech is needed or if they are training a 2nd Tech.

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I think that for high volume, low value tasks it is appropriate and kinda standard to use a queue system and then assign a team as responsible for that queue. Whoever has capacity picks up the next task in the queue and on you go until the tasks are complete. For me, multi assignees makes sense in this instance.

Creating subtasks creates a legitimate pushback, typically from lower level staff, who complain they are now spending an inordinate amount of their day updating subtasks, getting confused in asana or being micro managed.

I love asana btw and agree on single assignees for high value, low volume tasks, just think that catering for this type of scenario would be useful.

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Regarding assigning multiple people to a task

  • When two staff members should have joint responsibility
    The task with joint responsibility (50%, 50%) is the parent task, with no person in charge. Create two subtasks, and assign each to a different staff member. What about then?

  • When maintenance work is performed by two people
    Isn’t there someone who instructs (assigns) the work to the two people and supervises them?
    That supervisor is in charge of the parent task, and the people in charge of each of the two subtasks are the actual workers. How about that?

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Given we have a flat organization we also have the need for multiple asignees. However, our workaround is to have a custom field with field type ‘people’ called ‘Relevant to/people involved’. We can then call up team members and add them so the task owners know how to add for meeting etc. This also has the benefit of being visible on the board tab.

I wonder if there is a compromise that hasn’t been considered yet.

We all understand what an Assignee is. We also all understand what a Collaborator is. What if there was a third role distinction? Something along the lines of Accountable? (I’m sure there’s a better name for this.) We need more role clarity for tasks that don’t have tangible steps that require separate tasks.

My thoughts are that the Assignee is responsible for the Asana task itself—watching the comments, ensuring the tast gets marked complete. Those Accountable however, see this task in their My Task list, and get alerted on it. They know that they are accountable for the task in some form or another. They are involved in it directly. There’s not enough distinct steps that dictate they need subtasks or separate tasks. They are not just a collaborator meant to watch. It treats it as though they are the assignee, but they are not directly responsible for the Asana task itself.

One way I think our team could use this is with our tasks used to track our recurring meetings. I have a Weekly Huddle task used to track our time against. I wish those that attend this meeting are set as Accountable so this shows up on their list so they can easily reference and track time against it. The driver of the meeting should be the assignee. Any collaborators are just the informed parties. This is a simple task that doesn’t need subtasks or duplicate tasks.

I just think of how we assign roles at our agency with our clients. We always have the Driver, the Contributor(s), and the Informed. This is how I’m visualizing their relationship to a single task!

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Hi Erin :wave:

What if there was a third role distinction? Something along the lines of Accountable ? (I’m sure there’s a better name for this.) … Those Accountable however, see this task in their My Task list, and get alerted on it. They know that they are accountable for the task in some form or another. They are involved in it directly.

I think that you could easily achieve that with rules and projects.

  • :one: Create a people field called “Accountable” and add it to all your team’s projects (via the field library)

  • :two:Create a rule in all your key projects to add those

  • :three:Create a project called “Team accountabilities” and Group it by the field “Accountable” (the field should be in the project)

-:four:Create saved views to recreate My Tasks views for each user (with filters and Group by).
For example, Group by due date to create a similar view as My Tasks.

Please let me know if that could make sense :wink:

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