Link to other tasks in Custom Fields

Hello Asanas,

Quick question. Is there any way I can add a link to a task in one of the Custom Fields? I tried using “Text” but it does not seem to work.

Just a quick background, so to give you an overview on how I plan to use this… I have a task which is a deal. I need to create a link to the deal to a specific type of clients. Right now I add the link in the task description, but I would rather have it in the custom field… any way to sort this out?

Thanks
Carlo

2 Likes

Great question and feedback, @carlo.
Is there a reason having it in a field is better than having it at the top of the description? I can see how having a “Link” field would be helpful in general, and we’ll capture that feedback for the team, but I’d love to understand the full context on how this is helpful for your team.

Hi Kaitie,

Thanks for the reply!

In my setup, every “deal” has a link to a specific service provider. It is advantageous to me to have the name and the link to the service provider directly in the list of deals.

@Carlo @Kaitie_Saballus While pasting a link in a text field does not create a clickable url, at least in Windows, if you highlight the URL and click your right mouse button, there is an option that says Go To and the name of the URL. I tried it and it works fine. I do wonder why often times when I click a task URL it opens up a second tab of Asana. Does it always do this for everybody?

Hi @James_Carl
Pasting a complete link in the custom field would actually help if the task is open, but not in the list view, where I need the name

Thanks anyway, good point!

+1 on this. @Kaitie I’ll answer your question from my point of view. Custom Fields give tasks more structure. Description is a free-form field where free-form thoughts should be placed but for structured data - custom fields are best. General relationship can be inserted in description field but if every task should have some kind of relationship it’s better to have it as a custom field - same structure, same place in all tasks to see that, etc.

Modularity, clarity and structure.

3 Likes

There are mixed requests in this thread. I’d like to split it into following subrequests:

  1. General URL type of Custom Field. This kind o field would improve usability by eliminating the need to select/rightclick/goto workaround and by making the URL clickable in the list view. List view can represent the URL field just by hyperlinked icon (and empty slot if there is no URL in the field for the task, similarly to Comment bubble on subtasks), and it additionally can be enhanced by using favicon of the site referenced instead of generic URL icon (if available).
  2. Reference type of Custom Field. The field would containing Asana Task reference. Visually it would represent clickable task title, similar to the way Asana Task URL is automagically converted into hyperlinked task title in descriptions and comments. This gains most power when one can limit the set of tasks to be selectable to single Asana project. This in turn allows one to have different kinds of objects trackable in different Asana projects, and interlink objects with Reference Custom Field.

More complex features (Backreferences, 1:1, 1:m, n:1, n:m References, Reference filters, Calculated Fields, Custom Field as Captions) are to be introduced later.

10 Likes

Hi there, I also need some custom field to be a clickable URL. For example it is very necessary to me when I am building a big website and there are a lot of development pages listed like tasks. It would be very useful to have a link to the developing page directly in one of the custom fields.
I think the ideal solution could be a new type of custom field called “URL” (along with the other current types “Text”, “Number”, “Drop-down” and new one “URL”) that will be clickable once compiled.

Thanks!

P.S. Asana is great! :smiley:

1 Like

I suggest this thread get turned into a feature request! Definitely something that should get added in the future. I’ve run into this several times with clients. Doesn’t make sense why something would be clickable in the description but not as a custom field where it can be standardized.

3 Likes

+1 for this feature, it would be very helpful.

We would love an ‘URL’ type Custom Field!

I think we need both requests here +1. The url field would come in handy.

A BIG reason I would like a task custom field (or just allow @mentions) is that we have a project with a list of “tasks” that are actually facilities we deal with on a regular basis and all their contact info as well as rankings, region, etc. It would be nice to link to this “contact task” inside a custom field when linking them to a client instead of just writing the name out and depending on who writes it, the name is different every time not to mention misspelling.

Here is why writing it in the description doesn’t work… because the description isn’t searchable/filterable. If you made text inside the description searchable then maybe it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. I need to be able to filter searches based on the facility in use.

2 Likes

@Matthew_Burt, @jaknudsen, @Brandon_McQueen, @Todd_Cavanaugh, @Simeon_Petrov, @kshengelia, @Carlo please cast your votes to this suggestion (blue Vote button, near this topic title). This helps the suggestion to become more noticeable, and attract more participants from this Community to provide feedback. More feedback, more chances for Asana team to notice the request.

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@Myroslav_Opyr Voted - thanks for the heads up!

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