This might be a wild suggestion - but hear me out:
Ability to consolidate projects into tasks
Here’s an example use case:
In our hiring process, we have a main task that drives the entire employee workflow - when they apply, they get a task in Asana, and then it appends subtasks as we progress them through onboarding. At one point, that task becomes a training project. Once it’s complete, we’d love to consolidate all the tasks into subtasks automatically that fall into a “training” task that can be appended to that original employee’s task that follows them through their career with us. Right now, we have to just add a link and archive the completed project - and completing the project doesn’t create a task automatically to do any follow up so it’s just a manual step I don’t think needs to exist.
That’s a really interesting idea, @KristinTHorowitz . I do think it would be helpful to have an easy mechanism for moving everything ‘up’ a level or ‘down’ a level when it comes to Project > Task > Subtask structure.
The use case that comes to my mind is for organizations that recently adopted Asana without first building out best practices when it comes to structuring projects. As they learn more about the platform’s capabilities, they’ll gain a clearer picture of their structuring options and the associated pros and cons, and it’d be great for them to be able to adjust their existing content to fit a newly-defined structure without it being a massive pain.
With regard to your specific need right now, I think you might be able to achieve the desired result with the help of Zapier (in fact, it sounds like you might already be using it, or another automation platform, to facilitate parts of your existing process…?)
Alex, you are amazing. It would never have occurred to me to do it in Zapier, wouldn’t even occur to me, but I will definitely check it out! Thank you so much.
And to pony on that, it’s not just orgs who haven’t built out best practices - I find the software wags the dog. Asana adds new things constantly that change our business practices anyway - we’re increasingly becoming less dependent on Google sheets and Zaps, so altering on the fly is key to adoption without total overhaul.
Because I’m over here pinch hitting our HR admin while she’s out on leave and I’m doing exactly that because so many new rules have come on board since she was trained.
Hi @KristinTHorowitz , if you are sure that all of the tasks will convert to projects at some point, it might be better to setup a portfolio with projects. I’m not sure how easy this would be for your workflow, but it might be worth a test since this is free. Do you have access to portfolios in your current plan?
Portfolios would allow you to see the status of all projects and when it is finished you would just have a completed project instead of needing to go back to a task.
I used this to convert a list of tasks to projects after a yearly strategic meeting. Portfolios allowed me to track progress on all projects.
so altering on the fly is key to adoption without total overhaul
^ THIS!
I’m over here pinch hitting our HR admin while she’s out on leave and I’m doing exactly that because so many new rules have come on board since she was trained
^ Whew, that’s a lot to juggle on top of your normal workload! It’s especially impressive that you’re also looking for opportunities to add value rather than just staying afloat. Good job—and best of luck!
Incidentally, my company specializes in helping other organizations optimize their business processes with the help of strategically-implemented SaaS platforms and workflow automation. Feel free to DM me if you’d like to chat more!
I think they’re actually describing the opposite situation: they want to convert projects to tasks/subtasks, not tasks to projects. Unless I’m misunderstanding your suggestion, I don’t think Portfolios are the answer.
@AlexRussellFalla I agree with you, and I did see they were trying to get back to tasks. I was asking the question of why do they need to get back to tasks. Is it just because they don’t have a way to figure out the progress being made on the projects and ensure they are complete? If that is the case, they might not need to go back to a task after all. Let’s see if that could be an option for @KristinTHorowitz
Task created when an applicant applies for a job . . . all the way through to the new “make project from task” triggered after initial onboarding.
New hire goes through their training project and completes it.
Upon completion, project is archived AS A TASK that can be attached to the original applicant task that’s been converted to personell file.
Issue:
I have a training board archived (yes, in a portfolio) that has no reason to be there anymore and has to be searched for or linked to . . .
separate employee task file
It’s just the singular use case. But I have done a lot of turning projects into tasks lately because the automation is so much better within tasks for what I want. Alex definitely gets it.
And Alex, I’ll be in touch in the future, probably, but right now I’m not in a space to train anyone on our systems and hire externally
In case you haven’t tried it, I think you can easily and quickly do this now to convert a project to a task (until/if the feature otherwise becomes available):
In your training project, create a new training project task
In list view, one-by-one drag every other task into the above task’s detail pane in the subtasks area, in order, thus moving all top-level tasks to subtasks (even if there are several dozen, it can be done one minute)
For the one remaining top-level task, use the “. . .” overflow menu > Convert to > Subtask to make that task be a subtask of the employee’s main task, then drag and drop it if you want to change its position (it’s not clear to me how Asana chooses where in the subtasks list to move the new subtask)
Hope that helps,
Larry
Note: Not a solution but marked as such to elevate a key reply
That’s pretty slick. Didn’t know you could do that!
Kind of a bear if you’ve got a LOT of tasks to move over, though. I’m not sure I’d do that for the use case I’m describing but it’s a nice way to consolidate projects if you want to spend a lot of time clicking and dragging. I just don’t think it’s worth the time for that.
