How to complete a section?

I agree with @Tevya this is not acceptable. It is a feature that we’ve been using. Now we have open sections. Deleting them is not acceptable. Please fix this right away. I’m literately recommending Asana to everyone I know because how good it is, but things like these are so frustrating and makes me want to contemplate O365 again. Please @Tech_Support just hear us out and provide the ability for us to complete sections. it is becoming a big mess.

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What a horrible user experience! I need to have the completed tasks so I can bill them but I don’t want to see the section. Are they trying to go away from Sections or avoiding the storage space of completed tasks? Asana used to be real responsive with issues, but this response is terrible. What made them great is the ability to quickly create and get through lists and now we have to un-hide all tasks, copy completed tasks, and move them to another board. So ridiculous. Let’s go back to rotary phones too.

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Just adding another voice to this specific issue. Seems unclear why if the tasks under a section are complete, why we would want to keep the section remnant around. Currently this is adding noise to the project view. I will add in the title [Completed] for sections. Please resolve this. Thanks!

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ATTENTION everyone here!

Make sure you go vote here: Mark Sections as Complete (in new spreadsheet List view) - #53 by Tevya and leaving a comment wouldn’t hurt either. I guess they look more at that forum when it comes to future features/changes. So lets keep that thread regularly voted/commented on to it stays at the top.

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This change is incredibly frustrating. I find myself not wanting to use Asana anymore because I can’t make it work like I need to and that’s interrupting my workflow and organization. Which is the whole reason I use Asana in the first place. The idea of a ton of floating sections that are done drives me bonkers. I’ve been looking around and it doesn’t seem like there’s a good work around for this. As much as I love Asana is being a big enough issue that I’m going to start looking at other platforms for my team to use.

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So I’m having this frustration, too. My workaround possibly is to instead of having sections, I have milestones for each weekly publication issue. Then I can mark the milestone as done. Hope this helps someone else out there.

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One workaround (requires Asana Premium) to the can’t-complete-a-section is:

Instead of using actual Sections, use a custom field, perhaps called “Section”.

For each new “section” add a dropdown value for the section name. (This can be cumbersome if you frequently create many sections, but if not, you may find this workable.)

One time only: Sort (which is actually grouping more than sorting) the project by the “Section” custom field and then Save layout as default.

Now, the grouping “Section” values will come and go automatically based on whether they have entries in them. For example, if showing only Incomplete tasks, and their are none in a section, then no header for that “Section” will appear. But if you change the view to Completed tasks, then it will automatically appear because now it’s needed again.

I often use a custom field like this instead of using Sections themselves in certain cases, including those where I might want to sort (group) by another field (say Assignee) at times and I don’t want two levels of headings appearing (Assignee heading > Section heading(s) > tasks).

Hope that might help someone,

Larry

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It’s a good idea, Larry.

One of the drawbacks is that without Sections, the Timeline has no swimlanes and can become quite unwieldy.

I sometimes feel that Asana users are called on to become amazingly adept and creative with workarounds - can’t think of any other software that requires so many of them, so routinely, for core functions. We also become very nimble in revising & rebuilding them when we come in one morning and find that the UI has changed drastically overnight. :disappointed:

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Thanks, @Stephanie_Oberg.

I agree, the workaround I proposed may only work in some contexts and will cause the problem you mention if using Timeline and you need the swim lanes.

And I agree that there have been some disruptive Asana changes. I think each one has to be evaluated individually, but certainly some have been problematic and sometimes surprising.

I feel that Asana is in between “utility” apps (MS Word) and proscribed workflow apps (Wordpress, say). It’s a tool that every kind of person/team/organization uses for every conceivable purpose. Given that, I’d expect it to be harder to manage changes/new features. Not an excuse for every disruptive change, but I just wanted to convey the context in which I see the Asana upgrades landscape.

Thanks,

Larry

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Almost 2 years later, and this is still a problem for me, unless there’s a good solution I’m just not seeing

No @Tania_Maduro no solution for you sorry.

Needs to be a way to complete a Section and have it moved. It does not make sense to delete anything. I want to be able to reference things we have done in the past. Monday does an excellent job with comms calendar organization.

This is exactly how we lay out our comms. Would be awesome to be able to complete sections and have an Archive of sections similar to Monday