New! Track time on your Tasks in Asana ⏱

[Temi_de_Groen]

I see that below, someone added the suggestion it might be because it was disabled by an administrator! I’m following up with our admin to confirm this. Thanks again!

[Brock_Taylor]

I’m not sure if this issue was raised but Asana will not roll-up the subtask estimate time when the subtask count is more than 30 (on the List view and even in the task view it errors out with that message of max subtasks reached) which I desperately need fixed to a higher limit. Screnshots below. I review drug shortages as a use case and these are always recurring tasks reviewed at least weekly and can stretch over 1+ years. Ideally maybe 200 subtasks for a max? I don’t really want to duplicate a task and start over from 0 as I then have to merge parameters such as estimate tasks and copy over all notes which is not feasible when the notes can be very long. Also, any templates that are built using more than 30 subtasks will immediately fail to sum which I imagine is a common use case among users. Not sure why the math “engine” on here can’t handle a higher load

[lpb]

Thanks, @Brock_Taylor, for finding this limitation (@Richard_Sather…another one).

I, too, am prevented now from using time tracking, which I’d like to switch to. I can’t consider it unless the limit is lifted or greatly raise as Brock suggests.

Thanks,

Larry

[Richard_Sather]

@Brock_Taylor , @lpb , this seems to be an issue which applies to any number-type custom field, including time tracking.

I see that this has also been reported here, I just tested it!
Indeed strange behaviour when also adding the sorting into the ‘mix’…

I’ve added this to 4.9 in List of technical and data limitations

[Brock_Taylor]

I think the equally frustrating part is why this isn’t in the documentation for the feature addition for time tracking. It clearly was planned for and coded for by developers including a very overt alert message. These are the types of details/limitations that MUST be in documentation for any feature rollout so that users can truly assess if they can shift entire workflows to using the new feature. Some of these limitations could be showstoppers to a business workflow and we wouldn’t know until we have spent all the effort embedding a feature into processes that is substantial man-hours to perform. Aspiring to be an Enterprise-level worthy platform requires standard steps such as documentation to be fully transparent and comprehensive. Additionally, when getting involved in Enterprise-grade software universe which by definition has a substantially higher volume of data over very long periods, we must have higher technical limits than those imposed on a thread like this that are more suited for say a small business.

I feel like users are left to uncover these hidden limitations so many times from reading thru the forums.

[Phil_Seeman]

@Brock_Taylor

These are the types of details/limitations that MUST be in documentation

I agree 100% (I’ve been trying to push to get limitations officially documented for a long time).

However, I did want to point out that until that happens, there is a centrally-located documentation of product limits:

List of technical and data limitations in Asana

Last updated: Aug 2023 Don’t get me wrong, I Asana but like everything, it has its limits, which is sometimes perfectly fine, especially if you know what/where those limits are Most of the below limitations are extreme use cases required to handle large amounts of data, so likely these won’t be an issue to the majority of users. :exclamation:limitations marked with an exclamation, could not be found in the guide, but are mentioned in the forum, thus the relevant links. …

Granted it’s user-curated; but we have a pretty vigilant user community here keeping it documented and updated.

[lpb]

Related:

Asana, show me your BUTs

We all love Asana, and the tool is growing really fast. They have an exciting roadmap, delivering often, but some features or use cases might be put aside for a while. As an Asana user, champion or consultant, it becomes harder to follow those small “but”. For example, a portfolio can hold 500 projects BUT above 250 the Workload feature is disabled. Let’s all work together and build a collaborative list of BUTs and for each one, let’s try to link to the existing forum p…

which I compelled @Bastien_Siebman to do; thanks, Bastien!

Larry

[Marie]

@Brock_Taylor, thanks for bringing this up, I’ll share this feedback with our team and circle back here when I have an update!

[Brock_Taylor]

Thanks, I actually ‘pinned’ this to the top of the Forum Leader thread last week after seeing it as it is so important!

[Brock_Taylor]

Thank you!

[John_richter2]

@Rebecca_McGrath - I can’t track time in the mobile app, is this a feature that is available?

[Nao_Kumazaki]

Hi @John_richter2, At this time, time tracking fields are read-only. We hope to launch this feature on mobile as well in a future update!
This is the related product feedback. Please upvote it Ability to use the new time tracking feature on mobile

[Guil_Zavattaro]

@Nao_Kumazaki Hi, I just logged a new forum post about updating Actual Time field through Zapier. Is that possible? Update "Actual Time" field through Zapier

[Meagan_Lane]

hi, I’m trying to figure out two things:

1. I use 30+ project templates all with custom fields for estimated time per task; how do I export this custom field data to CSV and then import it to the new Estimated Time field to use with the Asana time tracker?

2. I’d like to report on the estimated time vs actual time for each task in a project, not just the project’s overall estimate vs actual. And I’d like to export this data so I can dig into it in Excel on a per task level. I have not been able to find a way to do this yet, is it possible?

[Joe_Paschka]

Is there a way to export the actual time date as well as the timestamp for when actual time is entered? From a workforce planning perspective being able to see via a data export the date time is being entered for as well as when it is being entered would be extremely helpful but I haven’t been able to find a way to see this information.

Thanks in advance!

[Joe_Paschka]

And is there a view to see actual time logged within a period (say today) by task?

[lee]

@lpb

I just tested and successfully exported times in a project’s tasks to csv as documented here Time tracking in Asana • Asana Product Guide but if not working for you, try Asana supported browsers and troubleshooting steps | Product guide • Asana Product Guide and then report to support@asana.com.

@lpb Ooh! But… that first link says “It is possible to import and export time tracking values via CSV.” and that’s it. It doesn’t say HOW to export time entries, and I can’t find it. How did you get to it?

[lpb]

Hi @lee,

For export from a project, search or My Tasks, see:

Setting Up a Project in Asana | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide

For import, that’s a little more involved but well documented here:

Asana CSV Importer • Asana Product Guide

Thanks,

Larry

[lee]

Thanks, Larry!

I’d found that first link, and exported a project. But rows from that export are tasks, not time entries. Each row has the sum of time tracked for that whole task.

But I need to be able to submit invoices to clients for time tracked that week, so I need individual time entries.

(Also, I’d love some way to export the whole org and drum up my own per-week summary so I can make sure people are tracking healthily.)

And the second link… sorry, I’m not concerned with importing (I was just quoting from above), but thank you!

[lpb]

@lee,

Ah…that’s different.

If I recall, there’s currently no support for getting to the entries that sum up a task’s or subtask’s time other than in the UI.

Potential workarounds would be to use subtasks (or tasks) for each week’s times (subtasks would be easier because those times roll up to the task level, but I can’t recall offhand if there are any “gotcha” scenarios here to be aware of so test this first if you consider it).

Asana2Go (disclaimer: I’m the creator) offers some flexibility with CSV but not sure that’s necessary or helpful here; depends.

Thanks,

Larry