🎨 If Van Gogh used Asana: a study about colors on Asana

[Bastien_Siebman]

Hi ,

If you want to be serious about using Asana for some advanced workflows, then you need to understand its color system. By color system, I mean how colors are picked by Asana to show as the main color of a task in Calendar view and Timeline view, and also the color of the squares in Calendar view.

I was convinced the main colors of a task was based on some priority between the multi-homed projects, the tags, and the custom fields. And I was surprised to see that this is actually the most occurring color within projects, tags and custom fields that took over.

Conclusions first

The color of a task in the Timeline and the Calendar comes from the project color, the tags, and the custom fields.

you can’t change the order of the tags to “choose” the task color

you can’t change the order of the custom fields to “choose” the task color

you can’t change the order of the projects to “choose” the task color

the color of the currently viewed project is never used

the main color is picked from the most occurring color within projects, tags, and custom fields.

the squares are picked from the projects, tags and custom fields, ordered by decreasing order of occurrence.

Legend

: red

: blue

: orange

: color of task in Calendar view

: color of task in Timeline view

---

A TASK WITH JUST TAGS

Context

No multi-homing

No custom field

3 tags:

Result

:

: as background color, then 3 squares

Control

You can’t change the order of tags on a task.

Conclusion

The colors’ order and the main color are defined based on an unknown order.

---

A TASK WITH JUST CUSTOM FIELDS

Context

No multi-homing

No tag

3 drop-down custom fields with values:

Result

:

: as background color, then 3 squares

Control

Changing the order of the custom fields in list view has no effect on the colors order.

Removing a field from the project and adding it back does not change the colors order either.

Conclusion

The colors’ order and the main color are defined based on an unknown order.

---

A MULTI-HOMED TASK

Context

Projects color:

Project viewed:

No tag

No custom fields

Result

:

: as background color, then 2 squares

Control

The order of the project is an alphabetical order BUT changing the order does not change which color is picked. The order in which you multi-homed also has no impact.

Conclusion

In the calendar, the task takes the color of the first project it is part of that is not the currently viewed project.

The colors’ order and the main color are defined based on an unknown order.

---

A COLORFUL TASK

Context

Projects color:

Project viewed:

3 tags:

3 custom fields:

Result

:

: as background color, then 3 squares

Conclusion

The main color is picked from the most occurring color within project colors, tags, and custom fields.

Then each square is displayed for each color used in projects, tags, and custom fields, ordered by the decreasing number of occurrences.

---

I am pretty sure I only scratched the surface and there is more to discover about colors. Any insights on other rules, corrections on mine, or ideas on what to study next?

[lpb]

@Bastien_Siebman, Are you saying that you found that these are no longer true?

How to color tasks by project color in calendar view in an advanced search?

Hi @Adam-Involute! Very good question. I checked this from my side and I can see the color of the task in your calendar view is actually correlated to the first project/tag you added to your task. Let’s say, if you added the project color first, the task will show the color of the first project you linked to this task. You can check more information in this post: Tasks showing tag colour instead of project colour in team calendar I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.

and:

Tasks showing tag colour instead of project colour in team calendar

Hi folks, After speaking with a few people on my team I’ve learned that the color you’re seeing is actually correlated to the first addition to your task. So, if the tag was created first, then you’ll see the tag color; whereas if the project was created first, then you’d see the project color. This is something we know is not ideal, so we have a PM exploring possible updates. I’ll keep you posted on what happens next and I encourage you to visit the monthly release notes in the Announcements c…

I haven’t done any testing; just recalled those posts and was wondering if you had tested what they assert before you posted?

Larry

[Bastien_Siebman]

I can confirm that this is not true, if you play around with tags, custom fields or projects, the color changes. However, when it comes to tags, there seems to be a default order, that gets defined when you first add tags. But that default order seems to be shared across projects somehow. This is still blurry.

[anon32683947]

I’m pretty sure that when you use “default Asana colours” in the calendar view (which defaults to tag colouring of tasks from what I can see), the colour of the task uses the lowest ID tag colour. The order of the tags that you add to that task is not important, nor is alpha.

And another tag “Blog” with ID:
https://app.asana.com/0/1200200815977423/list

e.g. If I create a tag “Social” with ID:
https://app.asana.com/0/1200246573419366/list

And another tag “AMA” with ID:
https://app.asana.com/0/1200290815977423/list

And assign different colours, when I tag the task with all the above tags, the “Blog” colour takes precedence since it has the lowest ID.

Interestingly you can actually see the order of tag ID’s as you add them to a task since they get re-ordered in the tag field based on their creation ID.

Another thing to note is that “grey” is not actually a colour and is effectively hidden:
<label class="ColorPickerCell--deuteranopia ColorPickerCell ColorPicker-cell ColorPickerCell--colorNone">

Given the importance of colours in this regard, I’m thinking of switching to custom fields with colours to denote types but there is a concern that I would run out of colours very soon given there are only 15.

[Rashad_Issa]

I cannot believe I just saw this post! Beautifully written @Bastien_Siebman

[Bastien_Siebman]

It’s like 4 years old I am not even sure this is still true, but probably is