Expand All Comments by default

Hi there. I commonly use Asana as a designer. A team assigns me a task and I look to the ticket to read the information.

I experience friction with the interface when I have to select “see more” on every comment thread. Having to take an action to access the information in the ticket feels like a hurdle. My expectation would be that all comments would be open by default.

If your user testing has shown that people prefer a collapsed view, I wonder if it can be a preference setting in a user profile.

Is this something that already exists or is being explored in the Product development pipeline?

Thanks,
Nica

Hi @nica, welcome to the Forum! :tada:

Very good question, we actually have a thread on this topic so I’ve merged your post with this main topic. You will find the answer to your question in this reply: Expand All Comments by default Let me know if I can help with anything else :slight_smile: Have a great day!

Thanks so much Emily. Sounds like I’m not alone.

If this thread influences future product changes, my preference would be for the “expand all” to be a preference or perhaps be the default.

Some of the others above have suggested great solutions as well. For myself, I almost never want to collapse anything. It creates a cognitive load to remember what was said behind the hidden collapsed comments.

2 Likes

Thanks so much for sharing this incredible feedback, @nica! It is very important for us and our Product team to know how this feature could help you and why it is important for you. I hope we can built this feature in the future :slight_smile: Let me know if you have any other questions, I’d be happy to help :raised_hands:

I find it difficult to believe this conversation (and similar?) has been going on for more than a year. The “see more” expando pingpong prowess needed to have a conversation with a task of any substance is sustained only by the energy of illegal workplace profanity.

What where those number Sarah mentioned yesterday?

  • let me see what’s behind door number 1. No… door 2. no… door 3… no… door 4…

Joey mentioned x last week, can we do that?

  • I don’t know I’ll get back to you in an year after I’ve clicked this button 3.14 billion times.

Let’s circle back to that idea Darla had last month

  • never happens. Darla’s idea is lost to the aether. Darla may be as well, we can’t find her.

Why does your ux team hate everyone?
And no, this doesn’t improve the conversation in any way, but I’ve gone mad clicking that button.

2 Likes

@dantep, and others, as a workaround, perhaps you could benefit from this:

What the…? No.
Not happening.

1 Like

I have also wasted too many clicks expanding individual comments. Please add an expand all button!

2 Likes

Why do we have to waste out previous time to click “See More” ?
What is the point on hiding information ?

All comments should be expanded as default, so I won’t have to do any other action than READ feedback from my colleagues.

1 Like

Absolutely. We are not on Twitter. We are on a paid platform for business.

1 Like

Yes please add this feature. I’ve lost AND misinterpreted tasks because critical comments were either truncated, or hidden completely!

1 Like

I hope Asana will consider implementing this feature request soon. As it stands now, I find it frustrating to have the comments hidden.

In addition, these visual cues are far too small

  • x more comments
  • See more

I would prefer to have a global option to have all comments expanded by default. If that’s not possible, a second option would be a single button that expands all comments in a task.

Thanks!

2 Likes

Current behavior annoying me from the beginning.
It’s the ambiguous decision to hide part of information by default without any choice.
Seriously, it’s required 2 years to develop requested feature?

Would love an Expand All comments feature that allowing us to expand all comments at once.

Would also be really helpful when searching for particular text on a task as well.

Often I go to a task and try and use the browser search function (Cntrl + F) or (Command + F) to search for particular text but often it doesn’t work because the text I’m looking for hidden within a comment and the comments need to be expanded before I can properly use the browser search function.

Would really improve efficiency!

2 Likes

This would be ideal!

2 Likes

I echo everyone above: The need to auto-expand comments — for the entire thread and for long comments — is so necessary. Finding a colleague’s remarks about a task becomes a herculean effort when there are more than a few comments on a thread. Team Asana: You’ve got to work on this; it’s such an easy fix.

In the meantime, have any users tried the Auto Clicker extension for Chrome?

I installed the extension, and while it looks like it can work for our mutual need to auto-expand comments, it’s a little too technical for me to understand. But if I’m understanding correctly, the extension can be used to auto-click on any element on a page.

Examples:

In a long thread with lots of comments, the “25 more comments” is inside the element <a class="TaskStoryFeed-expandLink">25 more comments</a>. With the Auto Clicker extension, you could define that class to be auto-clicked.

For a single comment that’s too long for Asana to display, and thus creates a “See More” link, the “See More” text is inside this element: <a class="TruncatedRichText-expand">See More</a>

If anyone how more technical prowess than I and knows how to create the settings for the extension, please chime in here because we could all benefit!

The settings of the Chrome extension look like this:

1 Like

is there a feature available to be read comments without having to tick seel all or more?

it is so annoying to click so many see more in task. Please have option to expand all or have it as a setting.

2 Likes

I need this feature to replace mails and establish asana in our company.
Asana potentially “hides” important information, as the users will overlook the “See more” button.
Not all information can be that compact that they fit on a post it note.

I’ve noticed that too many subtasks leaves part of the subtask list unloaded.
I found myself trying to create a new subtask and it was creating at the end of an unloaded subtask list.

I also find that collapsing the comment threads in a task hides valuable information that needs to be present, at a glance, while first opening a task. The collapse / hide habit of the software may be an asset to some, but it assumes a fully literate and current audience. Not every project participant can assume the content of the collapsed/hidden comments. It’s dangerous.