How to see a user's tasks and sections

[Edmond]

Hi there, I’m struggling with something that to me seems like it should be easy to do.

We use sections in projects to indicate what stage/status a specific task is in. For example, oftentimes we use simple To-Do / In Progress / In Review / Complete sections. We then move individual tasks from one section to another to indicate overall progress.

We also have many projects running in parallel, and I may be working on multiple tasks in multiple projects simultaneously.

I’m trying to find a way to see an overview of all of a user’s tasks (eg. my tasks or a coworker’s tasks) where I see the project section the task is in, in addition to the default due date and project name.

For example, having an additional ‘Project Section’ column in ‘My Tasks’ would accomplish this very easily. This would allow me to quickly see all the project sections my tasks are in, and therefore give me a quick summary of what I’m currently working, what tasks of mine are ‘To Do’, what tasks of mine are ‘In Progress’, ‘In Review’ etc.

I realise I can accomplish this using the default Asana ‘Task Progress’ custom field and then creating a saved search for this specific custom field. However, this then involves me introducing another workflow/convention in my team where everyone has to constantly update their Task Progress custom field in addition to updating their task statuses/sections. The more conventions I introduce, the more friction my colleagues face and the longer new-user onboarding takes.

This also means that I need to create multiple saved searches for every user… one for Task Progress = ‘To Do’, one for Task Progress = ‘In Progress’ etc etc.

Seems like a really roundabout way of doing something that one would expect to be basic functionality in a platform like Asana… the ability to see a list overview of one’s tasks that’s sortable by Project Section.

I simply want to answer the following very simple question - what is User X working on right now?

Thoughts anyone? Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

Edmond

[Emily_Roman]

Hi @Edmond, welcome to the Asana Community Forum and thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! As it stands, it’s currently not possible to see the project section a task is associated to in My Tasks.

As a workaround, we recommend creating a Task Progress custom field instead of sections to prioritise your work. In your project, you can sort tasks by your Task Progress custom field and save the view as default. By doing so, you will have a layout as if you have sections so everyone can automatically remember they need to add an option to the custom field (same as they do now when they move tasks to specific sections).

Then you can use the new Reporting tab instead of creating separate saved searches for each field or project. You can create a dashboard and charts to report by projects, a team or the whole Organization. You will be able to click through the charts and see a report by tasks:

To make the process simpler for your team, you can create a template that includes the custom field so they don’t need to add it manually everytime they need to create a project.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions

[Edmond]

Hi @Emily_Roman thanks for the suggestion.

That could work but I presume that we would then always have to work in List view and that the Board view would then no longer be of use to us. Is that correct?