Pre assign a task without notifying the assignee (Project planning)

[Nino_Munafo]

Hi guys:

There’s a way to plan a project (with assignees and due dates) without notifying the “potential assignee” of the task?

As a project manager, I need to plan in advance potential plans and divide the headcount in advance. There is a way to make a project like “under-development”, and deploy it when need it, sending out all the task and notifications to the relative assignees?

Actually. every time I plan a project, I couldn’t set the assignee in advance, because if not she or he will be notified.

Suggestions?

[Joel_Charles]

Hmm, this is a new one I’ve never heard before, but I understand you’re situation.

Actually using the Assignee would (as you say) notify the Assignee.

One idea: when you’re first planning your Project you could create Sections for each Team member (just title the Section “Bob Smith”, “Suzy Smith”, etc.) and then you could put Tasks under each person’s Section. Then when you’re ready to deploy you would need to go through and assign each Task to the person. With how Sections work now you would also then need to remove the Tasks from that Section, and then since you can’t delete Sections you would have all these named Sections sitting in your Project. So IMO that might not be a great solution, but it’s what came to my mind if I were in your situation.

Another solution: create custom Tags (or Custom Fields) and use everyone’s initials. Then when you’re creating Tasks you could tag them with each user’s Tag, and only add the Assignee when deploying. This would also have drawbacks but… might be a work-around.

[Nino_Munafo]

I’m currently using the a Field indicating the department just to facilitate it, or writing the name down in the description, but is not a great solution.

Would be great to have a “preview mode” of the project before deploying it, but I don’t think there’s something like this currently, isn’t it?

[Natalia]

Hi @Nino_Munafo Welcome to the Forum!

As it stands, we don’t currently have a “preview mode” for project planning. There is an existing thread in the #productfeedback category suggesting this feature. In case you haven’t yet, I’m pinging it below, so you can upvote it and comment.

Pre-assigning task to people

One issue I frequently run into during the last four years using Asana is the need to “pre-assign” a task to an individual. Most recently this use case comes up when using the workflow planner in the Portfolios section. I’d like to plan workflow out in future sprints so that it’s easier to capacity plan the upcoming roadmap. However, I’d have to go ahead and assign the task to the user before it may be ready and, more importantly, before I want to clog up the person’s task list. It would be ve…

Adding to what @Joel_Charles has recommended, I would also suggest you to have a look at the following thread, specially this post from Allen: Template assigned tasks show up in My Tasks automatically? . You might find it helpful!

Please, let me know if there is anything else I can help you with!