🔥 Hottest feature requests and their workarounds

[Skyler]

Thanks for consolidating this list of workarounds @Bastien_Siebman.

[Bastien_Siebman]

W4.4 and W8.2 added with a solution from our friend over at Flowsana @Phil_Seeman

[Olive]

Thanks for this!! Lots of great workarounds to consider. Regarding F2 and F3, I usually take the subtasks and “Add to Project” so they stay subtasks - consolidated within the main task - but can now be seen in the mainframe of the project and calendar. Or is this what you mean by “multi-home”. This is a new term for me if you could elaborate on its meaning.

[Phil_Seeman]

@Olive

is this what you mean by “multi-home”. This is a new term for me if you could elaborate on its meaning.

Hi @Olive, it just means associating a task with multiple projects (so that it has “multiple homes”) - see:

Task fields and tags

[Shirlyn_Adkins]

@Bastien_Siebman - can you explain F1 more? I asked Asana about it and they told me not to do it. So would not explain.

[Bastien_Siebman]

I agree with them it is bad practice to have multiple assignees. It is the best one to have no accountability with no one responsible. If you really need to do it then I shared some workarounds. Why do you think you need it?

[Shirlyn_Adkins]

We are a small office of 15 people so I am not concerned with the if you have more than 1 person assigned it won’t get done. In the situation I want to have multiple assignees is where the director is the overall accountability owner of a strategic task but the actual work to be done or part of the work to be done will be handled by one of their direct reports. I want to assign the task to both parties so they know they need to work on it together but I want to be able to just see it on the the Director’s list so when I review the director’s tasks, I know to get an update on that item. Yes, I know that I can make copies of it and have 2 copies but that does clutter things up. When we first got Asana we broke things down into smaller tasks using subtasks. We realized subtasks didn’t work well for all the reasons everyone knows about. We also found that getting to granular made Asana too busy for us and people didn’t like wasting time checking off the small stuff. We try to keep our tasks more big picture and link to procedures that break down the smaller necessary steps to accomplish the bigger goal. I don’t see any work around to the guest things. Did you mean you will share the workaround? If you shared it please link to where it is shared. Thanks!

[LEGGO]

@Shirlyn_Adkins might I suggest that in lieu of multiple assignees you could perhaps use a group email account to assign the “grab bag” tasks that different individuals might take on. Once someone commits to performing the work, they could re-assign the task to themselves. If they are to work on these tasks together, can I ask what their individual roles are? Depending on this answer it might suggest tasks are either broken down more or duplicated to ensure everyone understands what they are responsible for.

As for the ability to see what remains to be completed on the Director’s list, I would suggest the work being done is either:

1. A subtask to the final task assigned to the Director, perhaps even have this parent task be of the approval type. [it seems you have tried to use subtasks in this way so it might not be the preferred approach for you]
2. A dependency which is “blocking” the task that is assigned to the Director.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Thanks for the discussion, you should probably have it on the actual thread about that topic

[Bastien_Siebman]

I have added F13. Ability to add sub-sections cc @Kenichi

[Phil_Seeman]

Hey @Bastien_Siebman,

I just posted this: How to have multiple forms for one project.

You might want to add an F14 for Allow to have multiple forms attached to the same project and put my above workaround as a W14.1.

[lpb]

And perhaps, @Bastien_Siebman, my workaround below can be W14.2:

How to have multiple forms for one project

Nice post, @Phil_Seeman! I think it’s worth adding that with form branching (Create Forms in Asana | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide, a Business plan feature), you can often make one form serve multiple purposes (like Hardware and Software requests with both shared and unique form fields). Nitpick: Maybe you should put the word “one” in quotes in this post’s title? Larry

[Bastien_Siebman]

I have added the workaround W13.3 & the features F14 F15 F16. Thanks everyone!
cc @Kenichi

[Bastien_Siebman]

I have added F17. Make a project public with the workaround to use Instagantt cc @danielguajardok

[AjD]

Did this get added, I don’t see it?

[Phil_Seeman]

Hey @Bastien_Siebman,

I have an addition for you - you can add my solution for creating unique task IDs as W9.4:

Reference numbers for tasks

@KarenV @jeremyw OK I dug this up - here is what I did to generate unique IDs using Zapier. Create a Google Sheet, let’s call it Asana Numbering, with these 3 columns headings: [image] Create a Zap, let’s call it Create New Auto-Number Spreadsheet Row. The overview of steps is: [image] Build Step 1 like this: [image] Under “Customize Task”, you’ll select the project where you want the tasks to be uniquely numbered. Build Step 2 like this: [image] [image] What this Zap wi…

[Bastien_Siebman]

Added to the list, thanks @Phil_Seeman
@AjD that’s Feature 9

[anon10267241]

Hope I’m replying correctly since this is my first community post!

F4 - Certainly this stems from the same issue, but one main problem we’re having is the template tasks showing up in our master calendar. This gets quite frustrating because almost all of our tasks are related in some way to a project that stems from a template, resulting in calendar boxes that show only multiple versions of the same tasks. Further, because the calendar box real estate is small, one always has to make sure to expand to see all tasks. I will put a screenshot below by way of example.

I need to assemble a briefing book, SS needs to assemble a briefing book, and because we both always need to do that, the two template versions of the task are also appearing. Easy to see how things get lost quickly).

TL;DR I heartily support templates being templates and not being a real project

[Bastien_Siebman]

How is your master calendar build? Is that the result of multi-homing? A report? A team calendar?

[Bastien_Siebman]

I have added the workaround W4.5 for template tasks showing up in My Tasks, thanks @LEGGO