Custom Date Field Needs Start / End Date Range Support

[Maricar_Dela_Cruz]

@notify waiting for updates for date range column options.

[Anand_Perala]

I’ll give you our example. I work in the PR department of an organization and would like to create an Asana project for tracking various awards & conferences we apply to attend. I’d like it to include dates for submissions for award nominations (Which has a date they are open, and hard deadline), but also a separate date field for registration deadlines to actually attend the conference (there are usually discount fees depending on how early you register), timelines for booking hotels & transportation, as well as the date range of the actual conference, which is usually more than one date. I can’t do that with the current limitations.

[Melanie_Matthews]

>> We need a custom date field that mirrors the default Due Date field functionality to set a Start Date and an End Date to create durations/timeframes relevant to a task/project<<

Our team uses Asana for several project and workload management purposes, however one of the main reasons we use it is for managing communications projects/marketing plans.

In many cases, there are a more than one set of relevant time frames and ‘due dates’, including firm dates, flex dates (those with slack), and timeframes. We’ve noticed and raised with Asana support that there is no function to create a custom date field that mirrors the functionality of the default Due Date field, whereby you can select a start and end date, as well as set a due time, and set it to reoccur at a set frequency following task completion.

With even a basic communications plan promoting a public consultation and an event, for example, we would have a series of relevant dates that would be useful to capture for our project oversight:

Note: We include a task in every Comms Plan to appear in a project entitled Comms Plans Overview so that we can see them all captured with more fields and details than are currently available in a Portfolio.

Example:
Task: Comms Plan (CP) - Have Your Say - Township traffic flow in Morningside

Project(s):

• Have Your Say - Township traffic flow in Morningside
• Comms Plans Overview

Relevant date fields (* custom date fields) to appear in the task & for Comms Plans Overview Project List View:

• Created date: [When the CP was requested and the Asana task created]
• Completed date: [When the CP was completed in full and the Asana task was marked as complete]
• Due date: [GO LIVE date - when the first major comms tool is due to be delivered]
• *Consultation period: [Start and end dates for public consultation being open]
• *Promotional period: [Start and end dates for when internal and external comms tools are delivered]
• *Comms approach approval due: [Latest date comms approach can be actioned by required approvers]
• *First event date: [Date of the earliest event for public consultation]

We have recently set up a formula custom field to calculate the duration of the delivery of a project (i.e., a CP task in the Comms Plan Overview project), which calculates for us the time it took to complete the project from start to finish, but this is only useful for our reporting and future workload and business planning purposes, not for the actual work and delivery within a Comms project.

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @Melanie_Matthews,

FYI I merged your post with an existing thread on the same topic. (The votes have also been transferred.)

[ka_nishiyama]

It’s a shame that this feature isn’t available.
Setting a period, which is different from setting a start date and due date, is essential as a PM tool.

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[Lauren_Vasu]

Hello we are running into the same issue . We would like to see a new date range custom field for activity dates in our global marketing calendar. We will use the due date field for now

[Kevin_Clark]

I completely agree that custom date fields need start / end date range support. Just as important, I will argue is for us to be able to view custom dates in Calendar View (vote for this feature here if you haven’t already).

[Marcos_Santiago1]

This would be extremely helpful for us as well. Hoping enough people see this and upvote!

[Neal_Davis]

Also voting for this feature.

[Thomas_Henry_Duthie]

Also need this! Many marketing teams could use this. Otherwise might as well use monday.com

[Jan-Rienk]

I’ve come across this a couple of times.

Asking for a date range in a form is a handy feature, but it loses almost all of its usefulness once you realise you can’t connect it to a custom field.

To facilitate for sorting the project would need sorting on both start- and enddate of the date range, so this feature might be a bit more work than people realise, but I’m still hoping this feature gets some attention.

[Matthew_Willcock]

Agree, we’re using Asana for some WIP reporting and we’d like the task to have a custom reporting period field and a date range would fit perfectly for this use case. Start date and end date is cumbersome.

[Marc_T]

+1 voted.
Really need this. Here’s my use case for this:

We have long term leases on a number of poster sites and we use Asana both to plan in what we’ll put on the boards each month, and also brief the creative in to our Design Team.

We use one project to track each poster site using calendar view, but the design jobs themselves need to sit in the designers’ main design stack so they can be prioritised correctly amongst all the designers’ other work.

Currently we have to create two tasks: one for planning the poster sites into the rotation (using start and due dates), then a separate sub-task for the creative which is added to the design team’s work stack (a separate project) with a separate due date.

The ideal situation would be to have one task that uses a custom date range field for the dates it will be live (and be able to use this in the calendar view), leaving the “due date” free to be used as it is intended – as a deadline for the designers to have the artwork ready by. That way each poster can simply be multi-homed in the poster site’s calendar project AND in the designer’s work stack.

[Nova1]

If you see this comment, please “Vote” on this issue to be resolved by clicking the black button at the top of this page.
The company I work for would greatly benefit from a “Job Length” portfolio field, as well. This would allow us to easily see how long we spent on a job. We will find many other uses for it, though.
Asana admin, adding what we are asking for could be used in so many ways, positively influencing many companies’ data organization. This Post is from Aug. 2022 but there is another similar one from 2021. It is 2025 now. We would love for this option to be added. There are many views on the posts related to this topic, and there are multiple votes. This addition would make a lot of your customers very happy!
Thank you for your consideration!

[Aly_Ben-Yehuda]

Adding on that this custom date range would be incredibly useful for my team as well.

Example use case: We are working with influencers who have a due date for when their content is due to us, and also a date range for when they are supposed to go live. Having the standard due date field as the due date is critical, but tracking a second date range would be really great. For now we are mitigating this by labeling the custom field as “Go-Live By” and putting the end date of the range.

[Ian_Jenkins1]

Wholly agree with many of the use cases defined earlier. I myself have a requirement for a custom date field (supporting a date range) to track on-site activity duration by a third party and show it is the Gannt view as a single activity line so I can review third-party capacity.

[Jay_Robinson1]

We have a use case in which we are looking to log visiting workers and the time they are onsite with us. Inputting a date range to the custom field would be super helpful.

[Vanessa_Y]

Most of Asana’s competitors have the DATE RANGE feature which means we don’t have to use 2 different dates on the ticket, which is extremely clunky and gives us this clutter that is very irritating. Please work on this.

[Esteban_Giannini]

@Jan-Rienk

I’ve come across this a couple of times.

Asking for a date range in a form is a handy feature, but it loses almost all of its usefulness once you realise you can’t connect it to a custom field.

To facilitate for sorting the project would need sorting on both start- and enddate of the date range, so this feature might be a bit more work than people realise, but I’m still hoping this feature gets some attention.

I’m experiencing the same issue. For multiple forms, it’s really helpful to let people select a date range, for example, one of our use cases is a “Registration Timeline.” But once the field is marked as a range, you can’t tie it to a custom field or even split it into two. It would be a great feature to have.

[Jan-Rienk]

Found this topic again, as I again wish I had this.

Our use-case is for campaign briefings through a form. Indicating a date range through a form is quite handy, but I wish I could connect it to a field other than the due date of the resulting task.

The introduction of rules trigggered by custom due date fields probably didn’t make this easier to implement, but I’d say having the date range as an option would already be an improvement. To which the rules could be a fast follow. (And probably use the same rule functionality as with start date/due date rules)