My task view has changed quite recently to now have a toggle option to expand and show the custom fields of all the cross-listed projects. I was super excited with this update at first, but after using it in my day-to-day workflow, the honeymoon phase is over and I’m starting to see some real flaws.
It seems to be hit or miss whether these project field toggles are expanded when clicking between tasks. When they are all expanded, it makes scrolling through to descriptions and comments feel like a journey deep into space. Sure, we could have a team-wide initiative to trim down our custom fields, but the user experience of this new update feels like a major step backward. On top of that, when a project custom field section is collapsed, expanding the section opens upwards, so you have to scroll up to access what you just un-collapsed.
Along with that, the old task view allowed me to quickly move a task from section to section of each cross-listed project with a simple drop-down menu next to the cross-listed project name. Now it’s a 2-click process + scroll back up (depending on if the section was collapsed).
I would usually provide feedback using the feedback tool, but that seems to be missing now too. Is anyone else frustrated with these new changes, or am I just going crazy??
Seconded. The prior display provided a compact, easy-to-read and use view of the projects a task belonged to, then any custom fields associated with it, regardless of the source project. This new view involves a lot of scrolling and extra clicks to manage tasks.
The old style provided an easily scannable view of hte task details, where with the new layout, I find my eyes having to move back and forth to find details. As a low vision user, it has made it easy to lose track of information.
Interestingly, this change does not appear to be rolled out everywhere. A coworker looking at the same task was not seeing this change.
Perhaps a toggle setting in preferences to show the old vs new style of display could be an option?
Thanks for providing this feedback, @_Alyssa and @Shawn_Golley. Our Product team is currently testing grouping custom fields so I’ll be sure to pass your feedback on.
@Bastien_Siebman, we can keep all feedback here. Feel free to point any other users with feedback in this direction
Appreciate the attention and response, and look forward to the great things you all put out! I’m a huge Asana advocate, especially because of the continual improvements you all make.
I agree the layout is not very nice and takes up a heap of space it the task belongs to move than one project.
It’s also now painful to go to the project. Used to be able to click on the project name, but now I have to use the little symbol beside the same that is not very intuitive (at least not to me)
Briefly describe (1-2 sentences) the Bug you’re experiencing:
The task fields aren’t displaying properly.
Steps to reproduce:
Occurring with all tasks.
Browser version:
Chrome Version 87.0.4280.88
Upload screenshots below:
In order to look into this further for you, could you please clarify what issue you are running into with fields displaying in tasks? I can’t see anything specific in your screenshot.
The projects should be grouped together at the top of the within a Project section, with the fields coming below. The error has the fields randomly displayed (collapsable) within the various projects. Does this second image help?
Your latest image is the legacy view, the one in the first post is a new grouping slowly being rolled out (or A/B tested, not sure). Does that help clarify things for you?
Also you can’t opt-out (answering before you ask )
Hi Bastien - could you link me to a post I may have missed about this rollout/test? I’m a little baffled that we’d see it without notice/communication - or at the very least without the opportunity to provide feedback.
@Rebecca_McGrath and @Emily_Roman might be able to point you in the right direction. Although not every single update/test is being announced. I am not saying this good or bad, just the way it is.
Hi @tabitha, A/B tests are not usually announced to the general public. Of course, you always have the opportunity to share any feedback on Asana, whether new or old features, in the #productfeedback category
Thanks for bringing in the experts, @Bastien_Siebman, and thanks for the context, @Rebecca_McGrath! I understand the desire to conduct an unbiased test in the A/B format, but from an organizational standpoint, blips like these create a bit of a headache.
Can your team explore a notification for select users - perhaps admins and above, or even just super-admins - so that we have a heads up when these UX changes may be occurring? @Carrie_Woodhouse spent over an hour troubleshooting when she saw this interface change yesterday, thinking there was a setting she’d inadvertently toggled.
She then pulled in a couple team members and admins to compare views, and of course we couldn’t replicate, hadn’t seen anything like it, and were unable to advise her. She then spent additional time reviewing the forums, taking screenshots, and making posts of her own to try to get some answers. Much of this time and frustration could have been mitigated by improved, proactive communication regarding potential changes to UX, and clear direction for feedback.
As I’m sure is the case with many users, I’m juggling a wide spectrum of tech savviness and change resistance in my org, and while little changes like these are easily brushed off by some users, for others, it erodes hard-fought trust and confidence in the tools and processes we’ve built to manage day-to-day work.
I second @tabitha. I was another user impacted on the same team as @Carrie_Woodhouse. I didn’t know that this was a feature being tested; I just thought it was something new that was rolled out. Without notification, I didn’t know that we could give feedback.
Since I’ve been working with this view for a few days and can give feedback, I’m not too fond of it. I’m clicking around a lot more, trying to find what I need, and I feel it will cause users to miss critical fields that we need them to fill out as they finish their work. I can see this frequently happening on subtasks where you have to actively click on “Show inherited fields” to display the extra fields. The phrase “Show inherited fields” isn’t intuitive to what’s being hidden, and I shouldn’t have to train my team to find the field I need them to fill out. It should just be there.
I also don’t care what project a field belongs to, so the grouping isn’t helpful for that. As a user, I want to see what fields are included in the ticket since I might need to fill them out or get information from them to do my work. As a manager, if I didn’t want to see the field, I wouldn’t have added it to the project or, vice-versa, added that ticket to the project.
Like others here, I’m also not a fan of the new design–for a few reasons.
It’s great that Asana is innovating here but I’m sad to see this direction of using expand/collapse sections.
Collapsible sections lead to requests, as we’ve seen here (as often as weekly for years, and I noted one or two just in the last 24 hours), for remembering the state, setting different initial defaults, settings to control these (which Asana design is loathe to add), expand all and collapse all buttons, etc. And even if these features were all added, it doesn’t solve the problem of streamlining navigation w/o scrolling, nor the problem of having to click a lot to collapse/expand. Reasons why Asana’s own developer docs avoid and many other user experiences employ that approach.
Most of my career was spent in user interface design and development and usability so the above is from my experience. For this particular change, I can tell you that personally as a user of Asana I won’t appreciate the hiding of custom fields or the increased interaction with expand/collapse buttons required.
I proposed the following during a major Asana redesign beta years ago, and wrote it up (rather poorly, but hope it conveys the idea) two years ago here in the forum, but I’m not sure if the current design team ever considered the idea. It is essentially: A sticky navigation tabs bar at the top of the Task Detail pane so you can click (or use shortcut) to vertically auto-scroll-with-animation instead to desired sections of the Task Detail pane, instead of the direction you’re headed:
Agreed, this would be a great feature! There are so many times during meetings where we’re looking up something in Asana and there’s a “Hold on, let me just scroll through this task to get to the details” pause that disrupts our flow. That’s just one small (and less significant) example of how having better navigation would create lots of efficiencies for our team.
Had a nearly identical experience to this yesterday. I hope this change doesn’t go out to all users because our organization relies heavily on these custom fields in cross-listed tasks and we’ll have to redesign our entire workflow or train dozens of employees to click an extra 4 times to find what they are looking for. Neither option will be particularly pleasant for us. I would prefer the legacy layout with the option to filter the visibility of fields inside a task only to those relevant for some selected projects. Such a change would even be an improvement over the legacy layout, but this A/B tested version is proving to be a major pain for the selected users in my office.
I’m a huge Asana advocate, especially because of the continual improvements you all make. 
