More Project Organization

I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to add tags or custom fields to organize all our projects. Our project list keeps growing and it would be great if we could add tags like a year or the type of project to the overall project instead of just by task.

For example: custom fields for projects could include client info, project leader(s), year or date, etc. And it would also be great to be able to view all projects in one view with an overall glimpse of these custom fields in an organized way, like a table, which could then be sorted through as well by those custom fields. Asana is great for tasks, but if it can be merged with something like the dynamic spreadsheets of AirTable, it would be PERFECTION.

Feature requests:

  1. Custom fields or tags for PROJECTS.
  2. Overview/table of multiple PROJECTS that can be sorted by custom fields or tags
  3. Ability to assign project leaders to take ownership of individual PROJECTS instead of just to specific tasks.
  4. Ability to assign multiple people to one TASK.
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Dear @Karena_Lin,

Welcome to the community.

I completely agree with your points.

That is why i and others have already raised these issues and ideas in other post. Have you already seen this post maybe:

And most recently here:

And other places. We would love to hear your input in these threads :slight_smile:

We are a group of people in this community who are doing what we can to convince Asana to up their game in project management :slight_smile:

/Peter

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Hi @Peter_Skjoldager,

I wasn’t sure how to find a previous thread on this topic/feature before posting my own, so thank you for pointing this out to me. I’m definitely on board. Truthfully, this is only my second day diving into Asana, so I’m not familiar how this all works. At a quick read-through, you seem to have mentioned what my team needs, and even more!

We are a design team within a larger organization with clients all within our building (departments, as well as individuals). For our purposes, we mainly need task management and project organization. AirTable is AWESOME at the project+client organization, but terrible on the task management. I haven’t used any of the other platforms I read mentioned in your other thread though, so maybe I’m really behind.

What’s great about AirTable is how dynamic the information is. Essentially you can input all the information you need on a project and AirTable allows you to sort, group and view that information in whichever way you want.

At the moment I’m thinking of proposing to my boss that we use both at the same time, as I see no other way of doing both things well within one platform. Do you have recommendations on how to work around the lack of a higher level project overview? What do you use in the meantime?

Karena

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We are trying to use Instagantt. But i cant help feeling that it is a workaround.

I am really hoping that the silence from the Asana team on what improvements they are working on is a sign that something big is comming. But i know that is probably just wishfull thinking :slight_smile:

/Peter

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@Peter_Skjoldager, and others, please also reply to the pubic product roadmap thread, so we can group our need to have insight in what Asana is/isn’t doing.

Thanks. Yeah, I’ve been checking out Instagantt and I guess it’ll have to do for now, though it is not ideal.

Hi @Karena_Lin. I think you’ve raised a good point, and I can see how tags and custom fields for projects would be very useful.

In the meantime, have you thought of creating a master projects list? Each task within it represents a separate project. Every time you create a new project, you go into the master list and create a task which represents that project (same name). You could then add to those tasks all of those custom fields that you mentioned, and organise things that way.

On the point of project owners, you can actually assign others to be owners if you wish. Details here: Setting Up a Project in Asana | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide

Finally, as I understand it, Asana doesn’t allow multiple assignees to a task because it creates uncertainty about who’s directly responsible for its completion. However, you can add people as collaborators to a task, or assign subtasks to multiple individuals.

I hope some of that helps. :slight_smile:

Hi @Mark_Hudson

Thanks you. That’s a great idea! Practically speaking though, if we’re taking that extra step, we might as well continue using AirTable since a Master Project list won’t be dynamically linked to the actual projects. The 2 would still be completely separate entities.

As for project owners, I spoke too soon and realized later that they can be assigned, but now that I’m more familiar with Asana my gripe is the lack of ability to set different permission for project owners, members, and even just individually.

Something I haven’t figured out yet though is what the difference is between Project Members and Collaborators. Are Collaborators only able to view and do nothing else? Do they need an Asana account to view projects?

Hi @Karena_Lin

That’s a fair point. I was just trying figure out another way around your problem, maybe by having each of those ‘project’ tasks sit in both your Master Project and the original project, but I don’t think that’s going to do it (and I I’ve just ended up typing ‘project’ lots of times).

The difference between project members and collaborators depends on levels of involvement in the project. So, a project member is usually a key stakeholder and may want to receive notifications across all tasks. A collaborator may only want to receive notifications on one or two specific tasks, but not the whole project.

This makes even more sense if you add in the privacy settings. So, if my project is set as public to the whole team, anyone in that team can go in and view or edit any part of it. However, if my project is private to members but I want to share just one task with you, I can add you as a collaborator. You can now view/comment on that single task but won’t be able to see the rest of the project.

I think of it like downloading music. I might want to pay £7.99 for the whole album, or I might just want to pay £0.99 for the catchy, radio-friendly single, because the rest of the tracks don’t interest me. :guitar::musical_note:

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Thank you for the thorough explanation! Makes sense.

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I have some basic requests that fit under “More Project Organization”.

  1. Ability to Sort Projects (Alphabetically, by Date Created, by Last Modified)
  2. Project Folders or ability to nest folders

As my project list gets longer and longer (because I’m getting more value from using Asana), it’s becoming more vital that I’m able to organize and prioritize projects.

Hi @Brittany_Vo

Welcome to the community.

You might be interested in reading the following post, where your suggestions where also raised in some form or another.

We would love to hear your thoughs.

/Peter

+1 for project folders.

I’ve created a work around for catagorizing projects by creating a reference project, called 'INDEX" listing the types of projects as tasks then adding that task to all the projects in that catagory. For example ‘Project Archive’ This works great except I’ve now reached the maximum number of projects per task. Has anyone else had this?