Essential Improvements Needed for Subtasks, Sections, Workload View, and Dashboards

English Forum Tips and Tricks
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Hi Asana Community,

I’m Alaa Almaktoum, and I’ve been using Asana for managing a team of over 50 people in my organization. We create hundreds of tasks monthly, and while the service is generally excellent, with a very good UI/UX, great reporting features, automation rules, and beneficial custom fields, I have encountered several critical issues that I believe need addressing.

Here’s how we’re using Asana:

  • Project: Represents the main project (contract)
  • Section: Represents the sub-projects or phases within that contract
  • Task: The individual tasks to achieve the sub-project
  • Subtasks: Any change requests or additional sub-tasks needed for any task

Problems:

  1. Subtasks Not Shown in Workload View Subtasks are crucial for detailing changes under the main task. However, they do not appear in the Workload view, which is essential for my resource management. This limitation forces me to use a third-party tool to manage this aspect effectively.
  2. Sections Not Included in Dashboards Sections are not reflected in Dashboards. For instance, I can’t generate a report on the number of tasks under a specific section, which significantly hampers my reporting capabilities.
  3. Sections Not Shown in Workload View In the Workload view, you can only see the task name and project name. The section name is not displayed, requiring me to click on each task to determine which section it belongs to. This lack of visibility is inefficient and time-consuming.
  4. Rules Cannot Be Applied Specifically to Subtasks I can’t apply Rules exclusively to subtasks. The current options are either tasks or tasks and subtasks, which limits the functionality I need for more nuanced automation.

Suggestions:

I believe Asana should reconsider its layering architecture to support all layers (Projects, Sections, Tasks, Subtasks) in Reporting features. This change would greatly enhance the usability and efficiency of the platform for large teams and complex project management.

Thank you for considering my feedback. I hope these suggestions will be taken into account to improve the service further.

Best regards,
Alaa Almaktoum

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Hi,

Thanks for sharing. We suggest you split your posts into several posts, but most importantly look for existing posts if possible :slight_smile:
Thanks

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Hi @Ala_Almaktoum , thanks for the feedback, which as @Bastien_Siebman suggests, indeed would be best split into separate threads which likely already exist.

However, to respond to your list of ‘Problems’:

  1. In both Insights>Workload and Portfolio’s Workload subtasks can now be filtered to be displayed or not

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  2. Section can be selected as a chart’s X-axis in a project’s Dashboard:

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    image930×1408 52.9 KB

  3. Instead of using sections, you could use a single-select field that you could ‘Group by’ in our project. If the single-select field’s options are colour-coded, then you could use this field to colour your tasks in your Workload view.

  4. You’re right but you could either multi-home your subtasks into a project that would treat them as parent tasks and therefore trigger rules for these. Or you could use the great 3rd-party tool, Flowsana.net.

Hope the above helps!

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Hi Richard,

Thanks for the elaborate answer. Allow me to respond to them:

Regarding #1, is there an option to show both tasks and subtasks at the same time in Workload? If not, I would like to suggest that.

As for #2, I attached a screenshot showing that I don’t have that option available

Screenshot 2024-05-26 at 12.50.12 PM
Screenshot 2024-05-26 at 12.50.12 PM862×1482 50 KB

#3 I have color-coded custom fields already but I don’t know how to view them inside Workload view. It shows in (Workload) under Portfolios, but I’m talking about (Workload) in Reporting.

#4

you could either multi-home your subtasks into a project that would treat them as parent tasks and therefore trigger rules for these.

Can you please explain this more as instructions?

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Hi @Ala_Almaktoum , sure no problem! So, in response to your further questions…

  1. The default is that the Workload will show both tasks & subtasks. If that is not what you want, then by applying the filter, will provide the below options:
    image

  2. I don’t think you are in a project’s dashboard tab, as I described above. You seem to be in a dashboard in Insights>Reporting, which is also known as ‘Universal Reporting’. You can still get ‘Section’ to appear as an option, ONLY if you select to Report on ‘Tasks’ and Include from ‘Specific projects’ and only select one project.

  3. Thanks for the clarification. Indeed, there is no way to force a colouring option in Universal Workload, sorry. The colours are applied based on the project’s colour.

  4. Go into a subtask and click Tab+P or from the ... select ‘Add to another project’. That project could have other fields and rules that would run on these subtasks. Your subtasks could also be added to such a project upon creation using a rule and the action ‘Create subtasks’ where you can define where these subtasks can also be added.