Is it just me, or do private tasks make you crazy?

[Virginia_Mowery]

This may just be a “me with my OCD-ness” problem, but as a super admin who is trying to keep our Asana environment lean and clean, it drives me crazy that I can’t search out private tasks to request they be added to the relevant project.

We used to use a Workflow project to get around the limitations with using My Tasks, such as:

• not being able to do a status update
• not being able to apply rules (even as the super admin for our Asana environment) but having to get team members to add their own rules

Then we decided to simplify and go with using My Tasks.

Prior to this, I had a rule running that grabbed tasks that existed only in the Workflow project for the assignee but in no other project. I’d multi-home tasks as needed. Now, with switching to My Tasks, that is no longer working. I attempted to implement the same rule, but the AI seems confused and started flagging every task. I tweaked it to no avail.

The private tasks issue is a major one for me, as I’m responsible to make sure the work is getting done, and tasks get created that aren’t seen or reported on.

Am I just complaining about this? No… I’m saying that as Super Admins, we need more functionality when it comes to issues like this. Either allow me to disable “private tasks” completely, or at least give me access to implement rules to the My Tasks for everyone.

Does anyone else run into this or has found a workaround? I’d be thankful for any input!

[lpb]

@Virginia_Mowery,

I look at it differently. When I train Asana users, I discourage ever creating collaborative tasks that are not homed to at least one project.

I offer the option to client organizations to start with this if they feel it is beneficial either initially or on an ongoing basis:

"Default Workflow:" Enable team and organization-wide collaboration in minutes

tl;dr Quickly create <Team Name> Main projects (see screenshot below) corresponding to each of your Asana workgroup teams. Unleash this Default Workflow immediately to foster intra- and inter-team collaboration, accelerate onboarding, clarify projects in which tasks should be added, and avoid lengthy discovery and workflow design initially, yet still bootstrap fast, effective, and orderly Asana usage. Overview I routinely help organizations new to Asana as well as those who have used Asana but…

Thanks,

Larry

[Virginia_Mowery]

Thanks Larry. I’ve done the same, and am continuing with ongoing training/reminders. It just would be awesome to be able to deal with these things, such as private tasks and rules in My Tasks, as a super admin.

[lpb]

@Virginia_Mowery, Note that you can vote for this and perhaps other English Forum > Product Feedback requests:

Super Admins need access to users' My Tasks

The “work mode” access is helpful in most situations but it does not apply to My Tasks. This is the top place where we encounter issues/errors. Because each team member develops their own rules in My Tasks, they can create problems and Admins cannot help them or stop the errors from occuring because My Tasks is treated as a restricted, private area. For context: we are an Enterprise customer with ~100 active users and our Super Admins serve as the first level tech support. We get a lot of reque…

Thanks,

Larry

[TheAnswerLady]

Thanks to lpb for recommending my product enhancement request!

Something that we have been able to implement with success is to have every user create a project for their tasks outside of My Tasks which is always like “Bob’s Tasks”. New users are coached to create 1 rule in their My Tasks which is “when a task is assigned to me, multi-home it to Project Name (eg, “Bob’s Tasks”)” and then ignore My Tasks altogether after that.

I created a template called “My Work” that creates the individual user projects (“Bob’s Tasks”) that already has the rules for sorting tasks by section, has views and dashboards, etc. so it saves them individual effort which helped a lot with adoption.

The benefits are:

• one click to create a project that has all of the rules needed
• they can share project access/visibility with management
• they can share project access/visibility with the super admin (even if only needed temporarily; I can leave the project when I am done helping them)
• super admin has access via Work Mode
• easy reminder for weekly reporting to send a summary to their manager
• managers can easily use a dashboard or portfolio view to track their team’s progress and drill through to the individual details

[Virginia_Mowery]

More My Tasks functionality would be amazing.

Great solution with the “My Work” projects. I had created a project for each user, which we called a Workflow, where all tasks assigned to them were housed, and they managed their work. We wanted to simplify and go to just using My Tasks, but I am currently frustrated by that decision.

This is definitely an area of functionality for Super Admins where there is a gap.

[lpb]

Thanks, @TheAnswerLady, for the call-out.

Just for others reading this thread, I want to mention that some of us generally discourage the default creation of a project for every person’s assigned tasks (like Bob’s Tasks), which is what My Tasks is, unless there’s a specific need.

(Note that my “Default Workflows” are quite different. They’re just a handful of Team-based projects, not individual-based projects.)

Your approach addresses this topic’s need for Super Admin access, but for many organizations, that’s either unnecessary or, some would say, a potential privacy violation.

While it offers some quick-start benefits, it also has some downsides. In particular, it’s not the standard use Asana recommends, which can cause confusion and prevent the use of present or future features.

One confusion might be if you add work to Bob’s project and he’s not the assignee; how is that interpreted? That’s not a concern if you just use My Tasks.

And a feature of My Tasks is that you can share your My Tasks (with management, for example, or even a Super Admin) in a unique way. It shares the structure/view of your My Tasks you’ve set up, but only those tasks for which the shared folks already have access, either as collaborators or because they’re in shared projects. With Bob’s project, that’s not easy to do.

Although it’s effort, there’s a benefit to users setting up their own My Tasks as part of onboarding (I believe in that and make it part of all-user training, because My Tasks is so important), by working through Your Simple (or Advanced) Strategy for Asana’s My Tasks to really learn My Tasks well.

I just wanted to present another viewpoint here for others to see, not try to convince you otherwise. Asana lets us all find the approaches that work for us.

Thanks,

Larry

[Karl_LEASuccess]

@Virginia_Mowery My Task rules have contributed to my hair loss. As a result, I try to discourage the creation of rules in My Tasks.

Earlier this year, I released this video of my new My Tasks structure, which doesn’t use any rules (I’ve made a tiny update to my current usage). Your team may even like it more than their rules.

[Selina_Kirton]

I believe as a super admin you can already see the private tasks via work access mode. I’m not sure about how it works for creating rules related to them or not though.

https://help.asana.com/s/article/work-access-mode?language=en_US

[Virginia_Mowery]

This definitely helps, and I will see if I can run rules in work access mode. Testing and reporting back, thanks

[lpb]

Just to be clear, a Super Admin can’t see a private My Tasks task, it must be in a project (not only My Tasks) to be visible in Work Access Mode:

• Currently, work access mode applies to tasks within projects, projects themselves, as well as portfolios.

[Virginia_Mowery]

Thanks. I was wondering after going through it. So I am back to my original frustration.