New Task-type for Meetings

I just posted this as a reply to a different thread, but I didn’t see anything about this in the Product Feedback forum so I figured I would post it here as well. This is a big issue for our team, and I know it is something that many others have issues with as well.

I would like to recommend adding a “Meeting” variation of the Task action. It would be an action that appears under the “New” dropdown button.

It would work like a task, with a single main assignee, but would show in a separate “Meetings” list / calendar, which a link to would appear in the left sidebar under My Tasks. It would allow for multiple members, and would show up in their Meetings list w/ date & time, and they’d be able to use the Description, Comments, Subtasks, etc. like a normal task. It could be added to Projects, set to recur, etc. - really all the same basic functionality as a Task, but modified. If it was added to a Project, it would be public - if not, private (great for 1 on 1s, which take so much effort to do in Asana currently).

You could even assign other roles to other members - for example, Note Taker, Time Keeper, etc - the main Assignee would be accountable for running the meeting, but many times there are multiple people who have various responsibilities that a 1 assignee system does not account for. And you could set Meeting length as well - for example, 1:00pm - 2:00pm.

The biggest problem with using Tasks for meetings is that unless you duplicate the task and assign it to each person, it doesn’t appear in their tasks list - and if you do that, any notes added to the description, comments or subtasks of the main task during the meeting aren’t visible to the people who were in it! We have a major problem, for team and 1 on 1 meetings, that even if people are added as Collaborators, the meeting Task doesn’t appear anywhere for them - only for the main assignee - leading to people forgetting about meetings or not being sure what time it is at. And the other methods are feel like super clumsy workarounds. For example, the main problem with using Projects for meetings as is defined in the Asana Guides is clutter - we have so many meetings per day that it’s not realistic to make a Project for each one, and if we reuse projects then we lose previous notes or it gets filled with tons of unrelated items.

I strongly believe that if this was implemented, Asana would quickly be a viable alternative to Google Calendar, because most teams want everything in one place, Asana already has a built-in calendar, and it’s so much stronger than Google Calendar in terms of note taking, customizability and other features - all it needs is true multi-party meeting functionality, which seems like a really easy add since Tasks already have almost all of the needed functionality already.

Just my 2c as an business owner who manages multiple teams, each with multiple projects, and uses Asana for everything. Screenshots attached of how we currently use meetings.

Hey @Matt_Werner, thank you for your incredibly detailed feedback here!

I can absolutely see how implementing this would improve your Asana experience, thank you so much for taking the time to share this idea with us.

No problem! If Asana gets better, my company gets better. Any chance this will actually be implemented?

Hey @Matt_Werner! Unfortunately, I cannot share a specific timeframe for this request with you, but please be ensured that we will keep you posted here as soon as we have an update! You can learn more about how we track feedback here.

I would also like to note that I have slightly edited your thread’s title to allow other Community members to find it more easily, I hope you don’t mind.

2 Likes

Organizing Meetings in Asana can be improved. I have researched other topics about this - most of them are talking about setting up Projects for meetings, or showing meeting task in multiple project calendars. None of these are working for My Tasks view. In our company, meetings are not big enough to be projects. Meetings are just tasks of specific project (around which this meeting is held). So, if I’d like to create meeting tasks and assign it to multiple people I only have “Assign to multiple people” issue which does not work very well for Meetings - time can change, collaboration can happen before meeting and splitting tasks to individuals is not great for that.

Currently there are three object types: 1) Task 2) Conversation 3) Project. Maybe there should be fourth, called “Meetings”?

Like in Outlook:

I understand that trying to do everything for everyone might clutter UX and you’re trying really hard to provide all the possibilities within existing features and workarounds, but I don’t see any viable features for easily managing Meetings yet.

2 Likes

So basically you want task template (does not exist, yet) and multi-assignee (does not exist and probably never will)?

Hi @kshengelia and thank you so much for sharing your feedback with us!

There is an existing thread requesting this feature so I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with it to avoid duplications and consolidate votes. I hope it’s OK :slight_smile:

Have a great Week!

This one is really lacking in Asana! This 8 votes are not nearly as close to represent how many people are actually asking for this, but thinking the problem is related to not being able to add multiple Assignee, when in fact all they want is just a task that appears in everyone’s “My Tasks” and Calendars without having to duplicate information of date and time in multiple tasks/subtasks.

(Honestly, I think it’s kinda absurd that Asana does suggest duplicating tasks for this as if it’s a good idea, it should be at best a primitive temporary work around, to do something that is on the very basis of Asana’s mission. And it’s kinda sad it doesn’t even seem to recognize it’s not covering it very well. The fact that date and time are not in one place for everyone in one meeting is just infuriating :rage:)