Including Subtasks in Dashboards

I love the concept of Dashboards so far, but the metrics don’t really tell me much since most of my team’s work is within Subtasks.

Seeing two other comments on the blog that seem to agree with building Subtasks into this as well!

Would love to see Kayin’s comment a reality:

One thing I’d like to see added though is some sort of tracking for our sub-tasks in there as well. Such as a callout in the top after Completed/Incomplete Tasks that refers to sub-tasks, or a filter on the 3rd customizable box that shows sub-tasks by assignee.

A lot of the work we do in our department is made up of tasks that have multiple parts to them so we assign out the sub-tasks to different people underneath the main task. So I’d love to be able to track those as well with something like my suggestions above.

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Hi @Cindy_Cheng, welcome to the Asana Community Forum! :wave: and thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us!

Subtasks do not inherit the project or assignee from their parent tasks right now. You can affiliate subtasks with projects by going into the subtask details and using “Tab+P” to open the project field or by going to the upper right drop-down and selecting “Add to Project.”

I also suggest you to add your vote to this request: Allow to automatically add subtasks to project

I’ll make sure to keep you posted once I have any updates about this feature!

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The Dashboard feature doesn’t really offer any value for our team if it doesn’t include subtasks. Ideally, we’d like to see incomplete tasks by assignee for a given project, but subtasks need to be included for this to provide us with any value. Thank you @Cindy_Cheng for this excellent product feedback request, I’d be happy to pay for this feature!

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Emily - tell me if Im incorrect but the problem I’m having with adding a subtask to the project is that is not just a “tag” per say but it actually generates a duplicate item, now at the “task” level. For those who are trying to keep the “task” level as purely milestones and having “subtasks” under milestones it kind of messes up the look. If Im incorrect would like some guidance.

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I’m having the same problem… Not sure why that the subtasks don’t inherit the project that they are in. That just seems lazy and it really screws up the function of the dashboard view. Why have a subtask duplicate into a task when setting the project into the subtask details?

It also makes it hard for the collaborators when they look into there “My Tasks” because they only have a long list of tasks from many projects (if you have many projects) and each of them have no information telling them which project the task is for. Unless they click on details of course.

subtasks are also tasks! Inheriting the project information and being able to count the subtasks is quite important, no?

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Hello, I’d like to up vote this request.

Specific use case we have is that we’ve begun using a custom field to measure complexity points associated to tasks.

The Dashboard feature is great, because I’m able to create a view of how many points someone has allocated to them in a given sprint. However, it needs to include sub-tasks and report on the point allocation of those as well. We do this because we don’t want a cluttered project board.

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You are right. A workaround you can use is to add the subtasks to the project and hide them in a section called “Duplicates,” or something. (You can save the default layout with this section collapsed.) It’s not the best solution, but at least gives you an option until Asana updates the functionality. :woman_shrugging:t2:

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I’m doing the same thing. Upvoting as well!

Use case: I love the Dashboard feature of projects especially the ability to create customized charts and filters. This is what I did along with a limitation that I encountered:

  1. Created a Custom Field called Task Progress > fill out tasks and subtasks with data for this custom field
  2. Open Dashboard and Add Chart
  3. Select type: Donut > Group: Task Progress > Measure: Task Count > Task completion status: Incomplete > Assignees: Someone on our Team
  4. Task Type > Task

Already I get a great donut giving me a quick and interesting view of the team member in question along with the progress status of all their incomplete tasks. Awesome!

However, I soon realized that I am missing 1 crucial piece of data, the progress status of all Subtasks.

Feature request: Subtasks are an integral and crucial part of how we use Asana. So a chart that only shows Tasks does not represent the full picture for us. It would be so wonderful and impactful for us if the Dashboard charts could also take into account Subtasks.

Asana has already done a great job giving us 3 choices for Filter Task Types:

  • Task
  • Milestone
  • Approval
    Could you kindly add just 1 more radio button?
  • Task+Subtask
    Or allow us to checkbox multiple checkbox buttons? For example: Task, Subtask

It would make the Dashboard so much more useful and meaningful for us since it would more appropriately reflect our actual project status and progress (Tasks + Subtasks together).

Without Subtasks, Dashboards become an incomplete picture for us and therefore loses a large portion of its usefulness. If I do not get the full and true picture, then my analysis of the project via the dashboard becomes less meaningful and therefore less useful.

Thank you for taking this request into consideration! :pray:

Workarounds : None that I am aware of.

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Since forever subtasks are not part of the projects, so this is intended behavior… However they did add options in the search for example, I’ll vote your request!

Workaround: add the subtasks to the project, for example in a specific section

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Hi @EmmanuelY, thanks for taking the time to provide this feedback!

Thank you, @Bastien_Siebman for jumping in! :slight_smile:

This is a popular request and we do have an existing thread on this topic in the forum. I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with this existing thread to consolidate feedback!

I’ll keep you posted on any updates in the main thread :slight_smile:

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Hi @Bastien_Siebman I am curious regarding your workaround, can you please help clarify?

Thank you :pray:

Hi @Rebecca_McGrath sorry I missed this. I did do a search before creating this post and did not locate the forum thread. Thank you for your help in merging my post. :slight_smile:

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That’s the W2.2 from 🔥 Hottest feature requests and their workarounds. You make sure the subtasks ar emulti-homed into the project so they are both subtask and task at the same time.

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Hi @Bastien_Siebman thank you, I will check this out. Thanks for your help!

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100% Mitchel. I do not want my subtasks to be shown at the task level or on the timeline but I would like them to be included in metrics and status updates so that all the hard work that team members are doing on the project can be appropriately demonstrated.

Currently when I do status updates I need to individually promote subtasks to the task level by adding it to the project but this has made my timeline view cluttered and almost unusable.

Would be nice to show stats on subtask completion status.

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Agreed. This is why it would be much better if they could be collapsible/expandable on the timeline as part of the parent task the same way sections can.

Any word on when this feature will be available? This thread has been open for close to a year with users constantly asking

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Asana never communicate on roadmaps :stuck_out_tongue:

Would very much like to see this resolved!

The workarounds are messy - I have tried creating a separate project that has all tasks and subtasks at “task” level and using that project for dashboard … while the original project (with sub tasks) is used for everything else.

1 Like