Duplicate tasks are displayed as completed

Hi all,

I’m fairly new to Asana, but it’s helping me a great deal, particularly being able to mark tasks as duplicates because our projects rely on lots of shared work packages that are then used in different ways. However, when I mark a task as a duplicate, in that project, it is automatically marked as completed… Firstly, can someone explain to me the rationale for this, and secondly, if there is a way to instead track the status of the original task in the second project (i.e. it doesn’t appear as completed when viewing project progress).

Thanks
Andy

Hi Andy

I might be missing it but I can’t see an option to mark tasks as duplicates. I wonder if you’re actually merging duplicate tasks. When you merge a duplicate task with another, the two tasks are combined and the duplicate task is automatically closed.

I’ve just tried it with one of my tasks by creating a second one with the same title - Asana reporting - and choosing to merge the two. It looked like this:

So, the duplicate task has now been closed and merged with the original.

If you’d like to have duplicate tasks that are separate and distinct, you could use the ‘Copy task…’ option, which you’ll find in the three dots in the task window.

Hope that helps.
Mark

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Hi Mark,

Thank you for your reply. I think you have the gist of what I’m saying. I guess what I would like is to be able to have a task that is `shared’ between two projects. It seems logical that if one project is reliant/the same as a task in another project/subtask in the same project, one would mark it is a duplicate, i.e. there is one task that needs doing, but is monitored by two different projects. It seems odd then to mark the task as completed and closed as soon as it is duplicated, because then when you look at the progress of the project, it is marked as complete regardless of the status of the original project.

I guess what I’m sort of getting at is project dependencies, which I realize is a premium feature but is there a way just to force the status of that task to track the status of the task from which it was duplicated from. I had a go at the copying solution you suggested, and although useful in certain circumstances, this just clones the task and doesn’t link the two. I think over-use of this feature would lead to multiple duplicates existing across projects, resulting in work being repeated/pausing because people are unaware it has been completed elsewhere…

Cheers,
Andy

Hi Andy

Sorry, I did misunderstand you there. If you’d like to have one task sit in more than one project, you can do that by going into the task window, hovering over the area above the task’s title and clicking on the plus sign:

Start typing the title of the other project in which you want the task to sit, then select it from the suggested list. The task will now sit in both projects, and any changes in either version will be reflected in the other. You can do this for multiple projects.

I hope I’ve got the right end of this stick this time! :slight_smile:

Mark

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Hi mark,

Stunning, that’ll do the trick! :slight_smile: I’ll push my luck here and say do you know if there is a way to drag a task from another project into the current project? The solution you suggested is absolutely fine, it seems like there should be a way to do the opposite if you get my drift? Like, instead of placing this task into another project, i should be able to say i want a task from another project to be monitored in this project also.

I must say though, i’m sure i’ll get used to what you suggested and never look back!

Thanks,
Andy

2 Likes

Hi Andy

No bother. I’m glad that did the trick. As far as I know, you can’t do it the other way round. You’d always have to send the task somewhere else rather than drag it in.

It would be a great feature request though.

Cheers

1 Like