I’m creating a project template for my organization, and I ultimately have three levels of information I need to track. Stage, major stage task, and minor stage task. The team will be working at the minor stage task and dividing work at that level. However Senior Management primarily cares about reporting at the Stage and major stage task level. What is the most effective way to set this up to meet all needs?
Things I’ve tried:
Attempt 1:
-Stage = Section
-Major task = task
-minor task = subtask
Pro: Reporting was great for Senior management
Con: Many of the most powerful features are lost as the team is working at the subtask level.
Attempt 2:
Stage = Custom field
Major Task = Section
Minor Task = Task
Pros: This is exactly the level the team is working at and leverages the collaboration perfectly.
Con: Senior Management finds the project too cluttered, and difficult to see the status of key items buried in the activity.
Ideal: Some for a report or roll-up that looks like Attempt 1, but functions like attempt 2 for the team.
Thanks! This does have potential. I’ll try it out.
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Feel free to mark my reply as solved the problem 
Tough question! Here’s my suggestion:
- Stage - Project named as the Stage (encourage this as there is so much more flexibility at the project level. Plus, you can add each one to the dashboard for a full consolidated report. If you can add a regular cadence of status updates at the project level from Major task owners, you will fill the gap between minute details from minor task workers and impact generating details that Stage leaders need to see.)
- Major - Tasks (I would use this and avoid the sections. There’s no reporting, no way to update statuses, no timeline separating, and the page gets really busy.
- Minor - Sub-tasks (This will not only allow you to manage the accesses, but still provides the flexibility of tools. I understand that it’s more difficult at this level to work, but if you use the advanced search to create reports that will help employees see everything in one place, you can bridge the gap. Also, if you practice the art of moving sub-tasks back to the primary task for manipulation, you’ll get the features along with the structure for just a short amount of extra time.)
My concern with this solution is the level of overhead required to make it work. If we have 15 - 20 projects per year, and each project has to go through 5 stages - that’s 75 - 100 projects per year to manage, of just one project type.
That solved my problem in the short term, but created a new one. (Ideally I would like tasks on the summary project to move between columns on the board view automatically based on custom fields from the detailed project, rather than having to update both the summary project and the detailed project.
If you have a task in two different project and you updated the task, that update will reflect in both projects.
Explain this with a scenario please.
@Andrea_K Here’s another potential solution to help with your new issue. Instead of managing the tasks using normal team/project view, create a report using the advanced search. Each person could create their own or one person could create a template for everyone to use. You could now filter for all tasks in one place throughout the various projects, task/sub-task, stages, etc. Asana seems to be much more manageable when you use the reports for your structure.
Reports currently only present in list mode. Ideally I would like to leverage the board view for the visual impact. In addition, reports only seem to allow for one level of grouping, not two.
My summary project is essentially a pipeline. I’ve created a custom field called “stage”. As you indicated updating the stage on the task reflects on both projects. However, those stages also represent the board columns on my summary project. So in order to have the summary project show where a task is in the pipeline, I have to both update the custom field, and drag the task to the next stage. If I create my summary project as a list, this is not an issue, but the visual impact is lost. I think at this point I have a workable solution by using list based summary and detailed projects as a starting point. Thank you for your assistance!
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