Ability to delegate a task

Would love to have the ability to delegate a task so that I can assign it to someone else and have it remain in “My Tasks”.

For example, my boss assigns me a task with a due date. I can’t personally complete the task assign it to one of my team leaders but I still need to track it in my task list.

At the moment I create a subtask with the same name and assign it. I then set the main task as waiting on the subtask.

1 Like

Hi @Kevin_Grant

Welcome to the community.

I like your idea. I have been thinking about similar issues.

The broader concept your are in is about handling “approval” through the company hierarchy. Fx if my boss gives me a task ie. Create X (x could be code, a letter, anything) then when i am done, i could mark it is done, attach my solution, and then a “flow” would be started that started with my boss. If he “accepted” my proposed solution, then X would automatically be send to next person to approve, undtil the last person approves.

It does not have to be me, boss, boss of boss, it could also be me, co-worker 1, co-worker 2, boss, boss of boss.

What do you think of that? :slight_smile:

/Peter

1 Like

Hi @Kevin_Grant. I can think of a few simple workarounds. They’re not exactly what you’re after, but they might be better than what you’re currently doing:

  1. Delegate the task but make yourself a collaborator. That way, you get notifications when the task is altered or marked as complete.
  2. Create a project title ‘Delegated’. Every time you assign a task to someone else, add it to the Delegated project, too. Then you can easily see the tasks, assignees and due dates for all projects in that one place.
  3. Mark all delegated tasks with a custom field and save an advanced search for everything associated with that field. You can then filter and arrange the search report any way you want.

I know these options take you out of My Tasks, but they still allow you to have an overview.

Hope that’s helpful. :slight_smile:

5 Likes

I don’t think this is in the philosophy of the software, BUT Asana has thought of it =)

Whenever this happens, I just create a follow-up task when I reaassign something. I follow the task, of course, but in order for it to stay in my tasks and keep it in my mind, I create a follow up task by hitting the options of the task + selecting ‘create follow up task’.

It pops up with a create task window, I set a due date and go from there - it’s now in my tasks, and I can set it as recurring (to check in every few days on it). OR, instead of recurring task, you can enable the inbox shortcut for it under ‘My Profile Settings’ → ‘Hacks’ → ‘Reminder Tasks from Inbox’. I have this enabled so whenever I see a notification in my inbox that I want to follow up on later, I select it. IT does it automatically with a due datge of like tomorrow or whatever.

Hope that helps =)

2 Likes

Good one! I’ve never used that before. One of our teams does a lot of proofreading, where a document gets passed on to two or three different people through the process. I can see the follow-up task feature coming in very handy for them.

1 Like

That would be a great way to use it yeah!

Early on, we would just reassign the task to the next person, but if you use any kind of completion rate kpi at all,that’s a bad idea =)

1 Like

Hi! Thanks for the tips.

How would this work in the iOS app?

Hey @Alvaro_Cuadros, I’m not sure as I don’t use iOS, but the create follow up task is really just an easy way of creating a task and linking to the task to follow up in the description. So it’s a nice short cut, but AFAIK is only on web version.

For app stuff you would probably just have to create a task normally and link the old task in there yourself.

You could also tag tasks with something like follow-up and then favorite a search for all incomplete tasks that have that tag, so you can access the search easily in iOS?

Hi everybody! :wave:t5:

I’m more than happy to announce that it is now possible to create approval tasks in Asana :slight_smile: In case you have missed the announcement, you can learn more about it here: A new type of task is available in Asana. Meet Approvals!

I’m closing this thread now but if you have any follow-up questions or feedback to share please let us know here or in the #productfeedback category !

We hope you enjoy it! Have a great Wednesday! :slight_smile: