Hello Richard,
Yes, this is a good way to structure things - There are several way to address the set up you are after:
I would have set up 3 projects - My House, Dad’s House, Grandparents house
Then I would start building my project with sections - Living Room / Dining Room / etc.. and I would carry on.
Interior / Exterior / Utilities - I would either use as TAGS - or I would use as a custom field in a drop down menu…
Having them as 3 projects would allow me to put togther tasks that are identicial in all 3 projects - and the custom fields would allow me to look at my project in different views when needed.
Or
If you want to treat them as 3 completely separate projects - then you can build 3 teams and house each project in a separate team.
I personally would opt for option 1 - I also treat the hirarechy as a ‘filing cabinat’ so to speak - so I think - it is best to take a step back and assess what is the final purpose of the hirarachy you want to achieve - and hopefully that will help you come up with some options…
My org has always implemented a workaround where we use “projects” more like sections that contain multiple projects. However, this makes Business features like “portfolio” practically useless for us, because our “projects” are actually multiple projects in one, and the idea of “completing” an individual “project” (as Asana views them) doesn’t make sense. Having a project hierarchy (like folders) would change our lives!!! And if this hierarchy could be taken into consideration in Business features like portfolios, then maybe we’d upgrade to Business
A fantastic new update on projects is to include the ability to create project folder hierarchies. Other project management software allows for this functionality, such as ToDoist and Wrike (see images for examples):
Hi @Paul_Matsushima and thank you for sharing your feedback with us!
There is a very popular thread in the Forum requesting this functionality so I’m merging your post with it to keep feedback consolidated. I hope it’s OK.
This is not true for us. We manage clients in Asana and need to be able to add clients into projects, which automatically then makes all the tasks in the project public and we can’t have any private conversations in our team without the client being able to see it. Hive solved this by having sub-projects, and you can add clients to the sub project and they see only tasks there, and in the parent project you see all tasks from sub projects but in addition can add tasks that only internal team can see.
@Jeff_Kemp@James_Leo@Attila_Saghy@Michel_Kant@Michael_Trafton You have all mentioned how Wrike enables the folder / project hierarchy, just wondering if you can share what led you to using Asana instead of Wrike (or in addition to?). Not having the ability to view projects in this way is making Asana less that useful for our team, so any insight would be appreciated.
Sabrina - I could not overcome this shortcoming, especially considering it has been requested for years. Thus, I switched my team to ClickUp and haven’t looked back. There are elements of Asana I miss, but project organization is critical to any successful platform.
Thank you for the feedback. It’s rather unfortunate that such a highly requested feature has not been implemented for years! I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a hack that would make Portfolios worth the expense, to no avail. Appreciate your suggestion, will definitely take a look at it.
I have been a casual Asana user for years, but am now a part of a team launching a new enterprise, and we could easily created dozens of projects, that would neatly fit into 5 - 10 ‘departments’ or parent projects. As I have dug in, I was sure I was just missing the sub projects feature, but this thread (that @James_Leo has valiantly managed for over a year) proved that at least I am not alone.
I have been avoiding creating too many tasks, for all the reasons stated in this thread, but tasks and subtasks are just not robust enough to be the primary planning unit.
I assume someone has posed these questions to Asana and they say ‘upgrade’ and get the Portolio feature?
@anon87210418. I would suggest using the Teams feature for your departments or parent projects. (See image above) This is available in the free version of Asana with a corporate e-mail. Then, each project can be listed under each department, along with Tasks within the Project. (you don’t need to dig for sub tasks). These are assignable within your organization to one or more people. I also created a My Tasks Board to pull together those items I want to focus on across the company. I can show you if interested.
Thanks @Brenda. We are a very lean team, so if i use this feature, individuals would likely be assigned to more than one team, but I could still see it being useful as a way to break up projects into categories.
yes, Asana has the ability for people to be on more than one team. I can relate though, to being a lean team and wearing many hats. Within our support staff (outside of doctors and nurses), Me, the IT guy and H/R also take on duties related to purchasing, building maintenance, etc. I like having the same types of projects and tasks under one category, so when the same three people and maybe an additional meet about another topic, it’s segregated from our Accounting and IT duties.
@Natalia Would really like to see an update as well. Trialing Asana right now, former Wrike user, so count me in with the above posters. This is a big Blocker. You guys have really stepped it up on Wrike the last 6 months with differentiators like:
Updates to Portfolios
Goals - huge, great work!
Adding in markdown finally to Tasks
But I just can’t figure out how to structure my work on the one level of Projects. We use some of the PARA method and a lot of related stuff, so have a huge need to categorize work.
It’s a shame, but I think I can’t make the conversion and facing, sadly, another renewal of my Wrike subscription.
Would really love to see an update before I have to do that though! I could happily move to ClickUp for a few months while waiting if there was some hope for this after 3 1/2 (!) years of this feature getting so many votes here…
100% agree with your post and all the rest of these posts. I’ve been an on-again-off-again Asana user for almost a decade. Just came back to the platform after a long break and I am absolutely floored that this feature hasn’t been added. I mean good God, we’re talking years of posts here. And it’s such a mind-bogglingly basic feature!
Obviously it could be implemented in different ways, but the most basic version of this feature is also the easiest: just create a visual dropdown “bucket” using a simple disclosure chevron, and let us put folders in it. The bucket doesn’t have to be smart or support tags or have any permission levels of its own. Just give us a damn visual indicator that certain projects are grouped. Better yet: allow individuals to group projects however the heck they want without affecting other people on the team.
We’re talking the easiest win any company has ever had: a tiny amount of code to serve tons of customers, customers who can and will go elsewhere if they can’t get this feature. Sure, maybe current customers are captive to an extent, but tons of potential customers are going to immediately look at Asana and think, “Nope.“
Todoist can do it. Taskade can do it. Wrike can do it. For Christ’s sake Apple Reminders can do this now. My head is about to explode.
Asana is supposed to be project management/task management on steroids. But this is weak.
I did make a work-around to get what would be on My Tasks into a board view… I created a project called “My Tasks Board View” and added specific tasks I want to work on currently across all projects. You can either assign the task to yourself (to make My Tasks like normal) or add to the new Project board view (or you can do both). The advantage of having a task on the My Tasks Board view project, is that when you check it completed, it disappears from the board as well as the project it belongs to. So, each task would reside under the original Project (i.e. Remodel conference room) and the My Task board view (Measure conference room) when you want to have it more prominently visible (current tasks).
This isn’t an additional step, it would be instead of “assigning” the tasks to yourself.
Also, Since you now have a board view, you can change the column (section) headings to be “Do First”, “Next in Line” and “Sometime”. The task can be easily slid into whichever column you choose. You can also switch to list view with the same section headings displayed.
Keep in mind, I only apply the tasks I want to work on currently to the My Tasks Board View project. I hope this helps someone. I can also show screenshots if needed.
