Drag-and-drop tasks anywhere in a project

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User story:
As a project manager working in both board and list view, I want to drag-and-drop either single (or multi-selected groups of) task(s) anywhere within a project so that I can restructure my project fast and easily which would save time and avoid mistakes.
I do backlog refinement and re-planning on an ongoing basis and my projects are huge and complex, with lots of subtask nesting (up to 6 levels deep). Asana’s current features to allow this are lamentably poor.
Acceptance criteria

  1. With a task open in board view, be able to drag-and-drop a subtask onto a board column to make it a parent ticket.
  2. With a sub-task open in board view, be able to drag-and-drop a sub-sub task higher up the hierarchy by dragging it to one of the URL links at the top of the ticket.
  3. Be able to drag-and-drop a parent task in a column on the board into another open task or sub-task to make it a sub-task.
    Issue in detail
    Currently the only way to do the above in board view is on single tickets only, using the ‘convert to subtask’ action which requires finding the destination task and copying its URL first. Or by creating a duplicate of a subtask without parentage so it is created onto the board and then deleting the original subtask. These are incredibly inefficent and error prone ways of doing a very simple thing and incredibly time consuming on even relatively minor project restructures, never mind on major ones. Other PM tools such as ‘Workfront’ do this and its a very basic feature, akin to being able to move files between folder on my windows desktop by drag and drop. I am stunned this has still not been addressed in Asana.
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Hey @Cedric_Taylor

I understand the problem. They way you describe your work reminds me of jira, where you can just pull a subtask and move it somewhere else.
This doesn’t work in Asana because Asana is task based not subtask based.

I try to use a simple rule: If you have too many subtasks for a task, make it a project.

When using convert to subtask you could have two windows of asana open, this way you can copy the exact task name and use that to quickly paste the parent task for convert to subtask. (You don’t need the URL, The nam is enough)

Here’s an idea:

  • make a custom field with the name of the boards
  • make a custom rule → when the above field changes move to corresponding board

This way you can move around tasks to where they are needed without ever leaving the task. We use this heavily as it saves alot of time and makes it possible to control nearly all aspects of a task within the task itself. You could even do this directly in your backlog.

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Some really good feature requests and great workaround @_josh

If I may suggest that you break down all these features into 3 different product feedbacks because each one warrants its own space. @Cedric_Taylor

I personally do not work with more than one layer of sub task. It is a way of working with asana. So we do tasks, and subtasks. That is it. But I can see the use of the 3rd scenario.