I was afraid that may be the case as my partner @EricLegault in the development of Sendana explained something to me about attachments having there own world in an email. I don’t know if he has anything else to add to this or not.
Did not know about this! Cool. Thanks, @James_Carl.
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Some great comments in this thread about improving file management. In general, I think the issues come from lack of clarity around Asana and how it relates to archived information. To borrow some concepts from GTD, when faced with new information you need to decide (if not just throwing it away) to 1) Archive it or 2) Do something with it.
Asana was not created to be the best archival system in the world. What I mean by that is if there’s some information you just want to remember but don’t need to do anything with (like a policy update or an article you liked), I wouldn’t put it into an Asana task just to be able to recall it at a later time if need be. There are some examples of using Asana to keep a document library through tasks, but for the most part people do this because it’s nice to have everything in one system, not because Asana is better at maintaining files and archived information.
I think better archive systems include Gmail (it saves your email), Evernote, or storing a document in a file sharing service (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive).
If Asana wants to become better at managing archived information, here’s a few thoughts:
1) Sorting/Searching - I ask myself, “Why do you even need to search for files in Asana?” Can’t you just search for the task and find it that way since every file is married to the related task?
That’s the way Asana designed it because it’s all about the work, not the stored information.
The problem is users don’t want to only use Asana this way. It’s easier to use Asana for everything if possible. But if that’s the case, Asana has to improve as a way to store archived information. This starts with better sorting/searching as @James_Carl and @FATBOY mentioned above. But this also leads to…
2) Project-level files - Isn’t the project-level really where a document library should be? If Asana doesn’t intend to replicate a full file-storage system, I think a solution is to allow the inclusion of folders from the file-sharing services at the project level, which then let Asana users search the folder and add files to the file-sharing service directly from Asana. I don’t know how this would work with permissions, but this would keep the organization of files in the file-sharing system rather than Asana needing to replicate it.
TL;DR Need tighter integration with file-sharing services so that the organization of files is occurring there, but Asana is making it easy to search and add files from Asana.
3) Versioning - Many teams, especially marketing, want to see the progress of designs and keep multiple options available for viewing. A way to group or organize these types of files is key. This is simple in file-sharing services since you can use folders or tags for files, but some type of file organization is necessary if Asana wants to become better at serving up archived information.
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Inline attachments like images can still be considered “real” attachments. However there is a way to distinguish them from regular attachments files added by the user, but I guess Asana just doesn’t do it.
Thanks so much! This is helpful. But, as you note, it doesn’t apply to signature attachments. I guess deleting the attachments, including the signature images, before sending would work, but that’s an extra step that people would have to remember to take before sending the email. Not ideal, but at least there is a way!
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Hi Todd,
I agree that Asana shouldn’t be used for document archival or long term storage. However, we work on many projects that can accumulate documents throughout their duration. Due to the cross functional nature of these projects (ie. team members or task assignees residing in different departments or organizational units) it’s typically easier our users to access the documents through the project than a separate file sharing system. I think it’s conceivable that Asana can provide some level of file organization similar to the features already mentioned in this post (sorting, folders, or even manually dragging to order) while staying true to it’s core purpose of moving work forward. I hope you can use the information collected here to help prioritize some of these features on the backlog.
Thanks!
Does anyone know if files are archived from your files view when a project that houses those files is archived?
Hello @anon48025832 not aware that this is possible.
However here is a feedback request you might be interested in upvoting: File folder and view options
This would be very useful. We do an annual cleanup and all attachments that need to be kept get uploaded to Dropbox then re-linked. As I’m going through my file list, I don’t have any way to tell which files are in Dropbox and which are uploaded directly to Asana, so I find myself going into the same tasks over and over.
ETA: Even then, I have to click into the task and then into the document since it’s not easily viewable right in the task whether it’s Dropbox or natively hosted. I’ve attached a screenshot- that’s a file linked from Dropbox, but there’s no way to tell without clicking it- even in the task and the comments it only says that I attached it, not HOW I attached it.
My team is having the same issues. Now that there are more users in Asana the use of attaching files to tasks has increased. Now trying to find attachments has become a struggle. Is there a way to convert this post to be a vote for a feature update? @Vanessa_N
*Update: I found a post that has an upvote feature and realized that I already upvoted on that post.