Custom fields needed on subtasks

HI @Jonny_MacEachern, you can learn more about this in the following post: Custom fields needed on subtasks - #63

I get “It looks like you don’t have access to this” when I click that link

Apologies, the link was wrong, you should now be able to access it :slight_smile:

Hi Asana admin,
Any news yet?
right now Asana doesnt want to list all sub-tasks in the same list view page.

If you give us an addition list view page where all subtasks can be listed/viewed in the same page as Wrike or many other online project management tools out there, then we can see all custome fields for all subtasks easily. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for you guys to do this?

See example how Wrike list all subtask in either Table view or Ganttchart view here

Please consider that it might be a design/product decision, not a technical decision.

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Hi Bastien,

If it’s a design decision then Asana should announce it directly to everyone that they will not implement this feature and close down the topic.

I am following many topic feedbacks in Jira community, Atlassian team is very clear and determined. If a requested feature will not be included in their product roadmap within 2+ years, they just close down the topic. Here in Asana is different, some topics still last for 3-4 years and still not much progress.

Just an example, list view is some of the very fundamental view for project managers, and just now Asana implemented a new list view Introducing the new project List View: More clarity, less clutter - The Asana Blog . I do appreciate Asana implemnted the new list view, but we still cannot re-order the columns, neither can we adjust the column’s width.

I belive many Asana users here wish the development process could be faster than it is right now.

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Hi @Kimi,

You can actually re-order columns in the new list view, and while there is not yet a way to make a column any width you want, you can choose between two widths, smaller or larger:

image

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Thank you for your tips @Phil_Seeman.

You are right, we can move and resize the column, but drag and drop is so much preferable and much more user-friendly :slight_smile: Right now we can only move the column step by step. If there are 6 columns in the list and the column you want to move is located in the far left side, you have to click, click, and click several times before you can move the selected column to the far right position.

There are columns that take lot of spaces (See my screenshot) we cannot make shrink them smaller. Drag and Drop would be so much better here :slight_smile:

image

What’s the status on adding Custom Fields for Subtasks? It would be nice to be able to track issues with custom fields.

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I wish Asana would have the basic functionality available, such as Subtask view, good description fields within tasks, subtasks fields. It’s SO behind of what for example Wrike is doing. Asana is pretty much like a To-Do solution, not a project management at scale. I hope this will improve soon, otherwise I feel I need to do some change management and move away from Asana. :frowning:

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I agree to have fields on Sub-task is imperative. Many people treat Project for managing a portfolio of projects, hence the requirement for having custom fields available in sub-task is imperative

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+1 to wanting an option to allow subtasks to be automatically attached to their parent task project. Maybe an option in Hacks so it’s not required if not needed :slight_smile:

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Absolute must have and it’s been over 3 years since it’s been brought up without a solution. The fact that the expected user experience is to take all of these manual steps is infuriating when all other work management software out there (JIRA) do this very well and have for a long time. I’m close to piloting a move to JIRA and abandonment of Asana at this point. Custom fields should simply be available on subtasks and should not be technically difficult.

As for my need – I want to set up CSV upload templates for deliverables types. Specific deliverables will always have the same steps to achieve with an easily calculable estimate associated with them (like a landing page needing 1. UX 2. Editorial 3. Design 4. Proofing etc). I’d love to build a CSV upload that contains all of the tasks (deliverables) and subtasks (steps to achieve deliverable on a per-resource basis) where the subtasks are uploaded with an associated estimate. It would make building a project board out take about 10 minutes instead of an hour+ depending on complexities due to all of the manual steps.

IMO this is unacceptable that this functionality does not exist.

One other thing to note - I tried to work around this by associating (in the CSV upload) the subtasks to be created with an associating to an arbitrary project called “subtasks” to work around this and it doesn’t work. So even though the functionality is there to do it manually, it still can’t be done in an automated fashion. So a projects with 15 deliverables and 5 subtasks per deliverable means that I have to go and manually touch 75 subtasks to associate them to a project and add a time estimate. UNACCEPTABLE.

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I found half a hack/workaround for this. Not ideal, but at least it’s something that might be useful to some:

Duplicate the parent task and move that duplicate as a sub-task in it.

Your custom fields will show there, with it’s parent task content. But they won’t be editable, and if they’re links, they won’t be clickable. They’re like placeholders.

What didn’t work about that approach?

It sounds like something that should work, provided that (a) you make sure that the custom fields (CFs) you’re dealing with are organization-level CFs (i.e. are in your custom field library) and not project-specific custom fields (i.e. not in the library), and that (b) you pre-add the relevant CFs to both the real project and the “subtasks” project before doing the import. (If any of the above conditions are not met, then right, it won’t work.)

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I would love to see the Custom Fields auto-add into any tasks that already have fields on them.

For example, here I have task that has a few custom fields to track our progress.
I created subtasks within this main task, but the custom field area is completely blank.

The reason this is crucial to us, is because we use a syncing program to sync these statuses over to our top client into the program they use (Wrike).

Thanks.

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I agree, this would be very helpful. Also, the ability to see a drop down of all sub tasks under the high level primary task view would make navigating subtasks much less awkward.

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I share this sentiment. In order for the Workload feature to be useful, we’re currently unable to use sub-tasks at all, because we need to track time for each individual – and sub-tasks are often performed by other team members. This results in large, unwieldy project plans because every task needs to be broken out separately. Completely unacceptable given that the whole point of this platform is to make the lives of project managers a bit easier. All it’s doing is adding layer upon layer of complexity. We’ll likely have to reassess once our contract runs out, which is unfortunate because the team really likes Asana.

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If you just keep the update, but add a setting to show or hide the field in the subtask you’re done, see below. That would most likely solve it for us all.

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HI everyone :wave:t3:

We’ve just rolled out an update allowing you to see project Custom Fields on your subtasks :tada: Please check out You can now see and action subtasks directly from your Project task list! for more details!

@Magnus_Ostlund and @sydouma I’m closing out this thread as the update we rolled out answer the vast majority of comments in this thread, but I’d highly recommend creating a new #productfeedback for the feedback you submitted just above as I expect other users will want to vote for these!

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