Here’s what I’d like to do:
When I create a task, I wish there was some kind of field-- in addition to assigning the task to someone and setting a due date-- where I could estimate how much time the task will take.
My tasks in Asana are the center of my work day! I’m the only one using Asana in my organization, but as the director of the organization, I need it to stay organized and to constantly re-prioritize. The current layout allows me to see the list of tasks for today, tomorrow, etc., but some tasks are 3 minutes, some are 30, some are hours.
Instead of having each task looking equal to another, i would love some feature that would help me visualize my time budget of the day. Maybe something that could add up the estimated time for all the tasks I’ve set for myself for the day and let me know what the grand total is so that I could better prioritize and manage my time over the course of a week or month.
Does this sound good to anyone but me?
Hi @Sally_Lee I believe what you are looking for will be available under the Business platform. For my team, using the Basic platform, we added a Number Custom Field to type in this information. We also use a Drop Down Custom Field for priority, ours being 0-7 day and so on. Since it is customizable you could create pre-set drop downs that are color coded for easy spotting. Hope this helps! Olive
I just went in to look at it and saw that I had made that custom field before! I think the real issue is that my entire day (more or less) revolves around the “My Tasks” view and the custom fields don’t show up in that view. Do you know how I can manage that?
Oh I think I figured it out! I mean, I took your advice about the drop-down (I had made a text/number field before) and color coded it. I still can’t see it in My Tasks/List View, but I can see the color in the Calendar View…
Would be great if I could see it in My Tasks/List View, but I"m going to try this.
Thanks again.
My Tasks is the default area where all your tasks assigned to you or created by you are listed. One option might be to create your own Personal Tasks Project which would allow you the option of adding the custom fields. For instance, I have a private project that contains a list of all my meeting notes and email drafts. You can favorite the Project (star it) and move it to the top of the Favorites List which will only put it a few rows down from My Tasks. Just a thought. I’d love to hear what solution you end up with.
I ended up with trying to view my tasks in Calendar View where there is a little color-coded tab on each task telling me how much time I’ve estimated for the task. Attaching pic!
Hi Sally,
As somewhat recommended above, I would highly recommend making a new project, “select all” your “my tasks” and “add them” to that new project. It will give you more freedom and features like; custom fields, timeline, conversations, etc, If you don’t like it you can just delete the project, or archive it. Doing it this way you can re-purpose the tasks you have already, and view them in new ways.
For me this would be a must have feature.
In timeline view, I would rather have the task start date and a time estimate for it to be really useful.
Right now it’s hard to exclude weekends or holidays. But with time estimates, if a task is supposed to last 5 days and I start it on monday, it will fill up to friday. If I start it on thursday and there’s a holiday next week it will fill up to wednesday the week after. It will just shift automatically (and dependent task would shift too and I’ll be able to easily communicate on the project end date).
FYI this capability is available via the Dynamic Duration workflow feature of my Flowsana integration. It does not yet take holidays into account but it does skip weekends.
Looks neat and all but I’d really like to see those features implemented natively into Asana. Can’t make Gantt charts without holidays and weekends… Currently the timeline view is promising but really under-delivers.
Asana has now launched time tracking.
Asana’s native time tracking feature allows you to estimate the time needed to complete a task, as well as record the actual time spent.
