Prevent Users from Deleting Project

Is it possible to prevent users from deleting a project? I am aware of the private/public project setting where you can restrict users to only be able to comment, instead of being able to edit. However, I need all my teammates to be able to create/edit tasks in a project, but I do not want them to have the ability to delete the project. This is a VERY important feature for my team, because I want to ensure there is no accidental deletion of my important projects from a careless mistake.

Very similar question to this thread about preventing users from deleting a task: Prevent Users from Deleting Tasks

Thanks,
Jon

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I believe that you can’t prevent users from doing this… @Julien_RENAUD any suggestion?

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No you can’t…
But once a project is deleted you receive an email giving you a chance to undelete it.

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Thank you for the response and suggestion. Although the email is helpful to alert me when a project is deleted, it is still an issue because the project should never be deleted because I have an API script exporting data from the project on a nightly basis.

I believe project and task delete prevention feature is extremely important, I am hoping this is something that is on the roadmap.

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I agree. Someone outside my team deleted my project and it was catastrophic. WHy can’t I prevent deletion?? This is a huge miss.

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I want to echo this as a must fix issue. When this happened on my team we were able to recover the deleted project without long-lasting issue but we need to be able to prevent users from doing this again.

Project deletion should be able to be restricted to a small group of individuals or the project owner-- it should not be available to anyone with general team access.

I agree, a bit shocking this basic user control functionality has yet to be implemented. Makes me extremely cautious about giving users project edit roles which then restricts their ability to be a bit more independent on the project.

By experience, it is harder to get people to do stuff (because they are afraid to break things) rather than having people delete things randomly. But all companies are indeed different!

This just happened to me. When they undid their action - the Asana came back but it was gutted. Most of the information was gone, to include all of the completed tasks which we often mine for various reports. Is there anyway to get this information restored?

@Diana_Echols,

First, are you positive it’s gone, and not just that your view is showing Incomplete tasks instead of All tasks? I ask because I’ve never seen a project restored that had the behavior you described.

If not, I recommend you email support@asana.com.

Larry

Hi Larry – yes. I did play with the filters and the “all task” toggle. Not there. We have reached out the VIP support and they are working it. Thank you.

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This is badly needed and very basic operational security for a modern SaaS program.

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I’m on a new team and this just happened again to our intake project.

I’m thinking we’re going to have to create a secondary project that’s really locked down so we don’t run the risk of actual information getting deleted but this would all be solved by simply having a third type of access – “Can Edit”, “Can Comment”, “Admin”.

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Someone deleted the project?

Yes. We were able to restore the project but it shouldn’t have been possible in the first place. A user was attempting to remove it from a portfolio but selected “Delete project” instead.

Asana relies entirely too much on “good intentions” vs good access control policies.

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I agree, that’s part of the philosophy. I am wondering how this philosophy will hold now they focus more on Enterprise…

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Adding to this thread as my team has just run into this exact issue. A project that was completed but full of helpful historical information was erroneously deleted and the deletion was not discovered until over 30 days had passed. Asana support was able to help recover some but not all of the tasks within.
This has been a costly mistake to us and I would highly recommend that the process for deletion of a project become 1) much more gated, 2) more visible to other members who may have been able to catch the mistake, and 3) more easily recoverable.
For 1), it would be great if there could be an admin-controlled toggle or even a default that projects CANNOT be deleted at all.
For 2), I realize that Asana has already implemented an email that automatically goes out to teammates. In my team’s case, this was sent on a Saturday at 8am, and looked like just another of the thousand or so Asana emails that we all receive. It would be greatly appreciated if something were done to help these emails stand out more (PROJECT DELETION in all caps?), or if the emails were to be resent in the time leading up to the 30 day recovery limit during business hours .
For 3), I saw in another thread that someone suggested having an “outlook-style” trash system, where there is a clear list of deleted items that can be restored. In my case, it took over an hour of searching to even figure out that the deletion had even occurred, as any links just went to a “restricted” page.

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