Computed Fields on Tasks

I have two custom fields Impact and Urgency[1,2], and I want to be able to calculate a Priority field from the two without having to manually set it. This is because I want to enforce a sort order that looks at both custom fields instead of sorting by just one or the other.

[1]: Impact/Urgency/Priority should very much be first-class fields so that they can be viewed in My Tasks and understood by the product on a deeper level.
[2]: I wish I could set these as workspace-wide project fields instead of setting them for every project.

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MS Project can do that (as of 15 years ago), but Asana is so far from being able to do it that…umm, I can’t even think of a metaphor for how far Asana is from having a calculated field capability, let alone a globally-useable Sort applicable to even 1 level (whereas we want multiple).

I agree totally with your thought process and your methodology about how a manager can zero in on the items that really merit action. It requires full-featured filtering and sorting in every view, plus user-definable fields as you suggest. Asana is not the place for that.

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Hey guys, I just created a new feature request which solves exactly this problem but is mouch braoder than this suggestion. Maybe you would like to give it an upvote so Asana sees how important this feature is? I think, the main problem here is that no one has made it clear to the Asana team, that this feature is really missing. Let’s change that! :slight_smile:

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Forgot the link, sorry. Here it is:

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I just came into a company which is using Asana since years and I can’t apply even very basic project stuctures, like creating a field which combines the values in two other fields into one (e.g. calculating the product or sum). The use case behind this is to use this combined field for sorting our tasks. It’s just not possible at the moment. I already checked the Scrum guide and also watched the university for any tips to work around this. But there is no way.

Thus I would like to suggest to add a new custom field type named “Formula” where we can do basic calculation (meaning +, -, /, *) and reference other fields of the same tasks in order to do this.

Please note that it should also be possible to convert “Dropdown” custom fields into numbers if the values are numeral strings. E.g. if we have a field called Complexity and we have options like 1 , 1/2 , 2 , 40 then those should be convertible to numbers for the formula field.

Of course, the formula feature can be improved upon over time by adding more options and functions to use. See how notion.so solved formula fields which I think can be applied 1-to-1 to Asana over time:

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This is really weird now, my post was merged into this one and apparently “6 votes were moved” while “2 were already given here” which can’t be true as this topic only has 5 votes, but it should have at least 8 (which is the count of my thread), no? @Marie

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Hi @Cihat_Guenduez, and thanks for the mention. Votes are merged along with threads, so if a same user votes on two separate thread that we end up merging, their vote will only count once, hence why you’re seeing a discrepancy here. If you look at your initial thread, you will see teh following automated message: “6 votes have been moved. 2 votes could not be moved because their users already voted in the other topic.”

Hope this helps!

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@Marie Sorry, but your answer doesn’t help at all. I knew all the things you stated in your answer. But it still doesn’t make any sense: 6 votes were moved. But there are only 5 votes on this topic here. The other topic had 8 votes, 2 of which couldn’t be moved. This means they should already be voted here. So there should be at least 8 votes in this thread, but there are only 5. You see the discrepancy? :slight_smile:

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I’m looking to calculate a scores based on the value of (multiple) other fields as well – (R)ICE Score.

This should not be a left-field request, as this is a common scoring method for both product development and growth marketing frameworks for prioritisation. We already use Asana for SCRUM, but may need to look for another tool if we can’t achieve this here.

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Not sure why this hasn’t moved much - this is such a simple and basic functionality.

For example, if I am trying to use a Custom % complete field on the parent task with 8 subtasks, I should be able to just input the % complete for the subtasks and it automatically tells me what the % complete for the parent is. It’s wasting my time right now manually calculating out %s just to keep stakeholders correctly informed.

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I know I am late to reply to this, but I am wondering if this has moved forward at all? I would love to be able to use Asana in this way, as well. It still feels relevant.

Hello,
Is there a way to input a custom formula that would sum custom fields across a row? I know that it will automatically sum a column where you input numbers, but I’m wanting, for example, a column that is the variance between column 1 and column 2. Is there a way to do custom formulas like that, as if it were an excel spreadsheet? Is this an option through flowsana?
Thanks!
Kelsea

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Hi,

It does not exist yet, sorry! You can add your vote to New custom field type: "Formula"
I am pinging @Phil_Seeman regarding Flowsana

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Hi @Kelsea_Nemcek! I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the main feedback thread to centralize votes :slight_smile:

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Thanks @Emily_Roman !

@Andrew_Szeto, @Kelsea_Nemcek, and others,

Until/if this is natively available in Asana, consider (disclaimer: I’m the creator):

@Andrew_Szeto, specifically regarding your OP and the Urgency/Impact need, consider also:

image

Hope one of those might help some folks,

Larry

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+1 one for that feature :slightly_smiling_face:

I’ve created 2 columns(custom fields) adjacent named as Quantity & Rate. I’ve a third column next to these two which shows the amount spent for each task by multiplying Quantity & Rate.
So, we need the ability to set a multiplication formula(And a few other basics like Addition & subtraction) when creating a new custom field. Please request asana developers to consider this as we can track the budget on each task

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Hello @Adamya!

I’m sure @Emily_Roman will look to merge this suggestion with the following post: Computed Fields on Tasks

Don’t forget to upvote the #productfeedback

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Thanks @LEGGO! I’ve gone ahead and merged this post with the main thread. Thanks for sharing your feedback with us @Adamya!