Is it possible to prevent users from deleting tasks other than perhaps those that they create on their own?
We have concerns that this could occur (whether maliciously or not) - so trying to find a way to limit a user’s ability to delete data in the system, especially as I work to move more of the management and executive team into Asana.
Hi @Ben_Brenner! If you’re using the the Premium version of Asana, I would recommend looking into users permissions:
Hope this helps! 
It seems like my only option, even with our Premium account, is for a full user or a comment-only user which it seems like can be company-wide or adjusted at the individual project level.
I want my users to have full access when it comes to creating, editing, assigning tasks - I just don’t want them to delete (accidentally or maliciously) any tasks that they didn’t create themselves.
Is something like this possible?
I completely understand your point @Ben_Brenner; but remember that all deleted tasks are available from the Deleted Items section within your left sidebar; from there you can undelete any task that was deleted by mistake: Task actions: create, move, duplicate, and more | Product guide • Asana Product Guide
Let me know if there is anything else I can help with; have a great Friday!
So can a user only permanently delete tasks that they created?
Hi @Ben_Brenner If you’d like to learn more about users permissions and what “comment only” members can do, I would advise you to have a look at this post I wrote a while ago: Files deleted by a limited access member - #6 by Marie
Marie, I share @Ben_Brenner’s concern. The option you are suggesting only allows us to view the tasks that we have deleted. The point is that even amongst a community of full access user’s one [admin?] would like to have access to any deleted task from anyone in the organization.
Hello everyone. Was there any solution about this?
It would be very use to have different permissions for different users. As far as I understand, now everybody assigned to a Workspace and a Project is able to create new tasks and delete them. It would be good if team members, which are not supposed to be Project Managers, won’t be able to manage the tasks (create them or delete them), but only comment, check them when they’ve finished one of their task, follow, and so on. To put it in a nutshell, add content to the tasks but not creating them by scratch.
Thanks
Max
Regardless of who can delete, the concern arises because no-one gets notified about the deletion. For a company like ours who work on 6 month-long projects with hundreds of tasks in a project, a mistaken/malicious deletion could potentially become disastrous.
It would be great if Asana dev team can look into either the option to give notification about task being deleted (just as how we’re notified about Projects), or have option to limit who can delete tasks.
It is in my opinion a key requirement for organizations like ours who want the project management system to be robust and without a potential loophole regarding information deletion.
Thanks,
Tanmay
Has this not been answered yet? This seems really important…
Please!, if you add that feature Asana would be perfect!, a lot of people is having the same issue, if I have a lazy team member whose tasks I have assigned to him and that he doesn´t want to do , it would be so easy for him just to delete them, and I wouldn´t have a clue!.. He could say he delete the tasks by accident. And I would have to believe him, in the meanwhile his productivity and projects of the company would be seriuosly damaged. I want him to complete tasks, so that I can see his progress, but not letting him delete the tasks I assigned to him.
The "only comment " feature is good, but that doesn´t allow him to complete tasks. So that I can see his progress.
At the end of the day, I want to see his progress, the tasks I have ORDERED him to do, … I dont want him TO ESCAPE from his obligations… Adding the fact that everything is ON PAPER (ASANA PLATFORM ) … I CAN SEE HIS TASKS, HE CAN SEE THEM TOO, THE DUE DATES, ETC … NO EXCUSES REGARDING HE FORGOT OR THAT HE DIDNT KNOW ABOUT THE TASK… That is why ths feature would allow us admins to avoid this kind of future problems. Please, adress this, a lot of people would be so happy.
Fully Agree with the above users, the ability to set employees with the ability to create and edit task, but remove their ability to delete them would be invaluable. Is anything like this in the pipeline?
It is sad that such an important behaviour that is required for most organizations is implemented in this way in Asana. This is one of the only reason we discourage our teams from using Asana. At most, our members use it only as a personal organizer.
I agree this would be very useful!
As an interim fix, at least some sort of notification sent to the project owner that a task was deleted, who deleted it, the task name & description would be better than nothing at all. Unfortunately at the moment I have literally no idea if someone deleted a task permanently.
I would also like this feature implemented.
Asana - Can you at least tell us if you are open to implementing this solution?
If the answer is no, why in the world not?
I’m assuming that most people on this chain work with tech - please avoid weak answers or excuses.
Asana - Can you at least tell us if you are open to implementing this solution?
If the answer is no, why in the world not?
I’m assuming that most people on this chain work with tech - please avoid weak answers or excuses.
Hi @Donnie_Chambers; unfortunately, I’m not able to disclose our Roadmap publicly (you can learn why in this post); but we recently implemented an option allowing Admins to lock custom fields with our Enterprise plan. I’m afraid I donb’t have more info to share today, but I’ll make sure to keep you posted as soon as I have an update regarding an option to prevent users from deleting tasks. All the best!
We had someone delete tasks and then went about permanently deleting them from the deleted tab…maliciously. Upon contact with asana support… the only thing you can do is make sure the people using asana are responsible and if you see any signs of trouble…lock their permissions.
It took us weeks to fix it.
This is surely one of worst aspect of Asana, user permissions are disaster. Any slightly serious project demands more options for user permissions… How difficoult is to apply simple settings like check boxes like:
User can (can’t) delete task
Any software developer should be able to develop this feature within days or less… really disappointing.
We have 20 users and we don’t have any control over them. Permissions we have are so irational and not usable that there is no sense on setting them. Difference between Can comment with task assigned and Can edit are in placing tags…
Admin should be able to do everything. User should be able to do everything except to delete and reassign task. Standard User should be able just to add content and sub tasks as well as to complete tasks.
Ether way this options should be separated and admin should be able to select his best configuration. I remember collage days, mysql + php it is 20 min of work, mostly copy past code from the Internet… how complex it is really?