Hi Jake, what other tool are you looking at?
Hi Stephanie,
I hope someone with some reality from Asana would take a look at this thread, 3.5 years in the making. Itās such a simple ask.
2 Likes
I am following this now, as I face the same issue . We need a task ID and Date Created auto populated to be easy to use
1 Like
Hi @Matthew_Lim and welcome to the forum!
FYI in addition to providing a unique task ID # that I mentioned above (Reference numbers for tasks - #115 by Phil_Seeman), our Flowsana integration also has the ability to populate a taskās creation date.
1 Like
To solve for this specific example, I believe there is also a way to add row numbering to your board. In that case, you could say, āletās look at row 29ā. Iām looking for a feature more true to internal ticketing akin to helpdesk, but found that solution in my discovery.
Hi Jacqueline, that would work if you are in a in person meeting situation like I was for that example. Doesnāt help when working with devs remotely. We need a task id added to the task Asana in order to search for it, almost 4 years in the ask for this!!! (I will keep adding one ! for each yearā¦lol)
Is this really not a feature after all those years?
1 Like
After all this time we were considering on switching from jira to asana but if simple and important things like this canāt be implemented, we canāt rely on you to listen to your community.
1 Like
Really really, so sad
Well said.
Had I known before joining, I would have moved on. Best of luck on your search.
What an incredibly depressing thread this is. I get the core functionality piece and I understand the very tight restriction on date fields, and Asana gives so much to businesses itās worth persevering with that. However, not being able to offer an adjustable task id in the system is holding it back.
The answer really is simple, allow a customized fields with adjustable counters and masks as with all custom fields the user chooses if it is for an individual project or across the domain by adding it to the the library.
[prefix]-[nnnn]-[suffix]
Startnumber [nnnn]
Increment +1 to +1000
This will solve every use case I have read in the 3.5 years the thread has been going.
It will not affect any base logic for the existing reference numbers so no massive upheaval for the platform.
For the alleged 95% who have no interest in the feature, they will see zero change if the above is implemented.
It will allow plenty of new customers currently struggling with the inflexibility and general āold fashioned nessā of other platforms like Jira and Trello.
Hope someone finally listensā¦
2 Likes
Just to one small point: having a unique ID only per project would not really be workable in practical terms given Asanaās ability to multi-home tasks to multiple projects. When I implemented the unique-ID feature in Flowsana I considered providing this choice but rejected the design due to multi-homing, and only offer a unique ID across the whole workspace.
(Yes one could say you could distinguish among multiple tasks with the same ID using a project-specific prefix or suffix, but thatās relying on users to set that up properly, which I concluded was too dangerous of an assumption to make.)
This is not to take away from your overall post!
Hi @Phil_Seeman thanks for the reply, thatās a really useful insight.
I am but a poor end user of the generally wonderful product, which I am always happy to endorse for a variety of uses in business change. As such, I do tend to look at what the requirement should be and let clever people design something that works. I know from the posts itās not for you to build this, but hopefully someone is listening.
Multi Homing is possibly the best MSP in asana and is the main reason I got into it several years ago and was finally plucked away from Microsoft Project (online and server). Bearing in mind the depth of that product and how long I have been at this Project and Programme lark, that is quite an achievement.
So I completely get that going anywhere near the code which uses the task reference system would be a massive change for Asana design, and they would probably think long and hard about doing it before deciding not to.
Extending custom field features to me seems like miles away from the core code and completely optional to users. I have flowsana on my list of things to review already with the posts above, so I am not talking from great knowledge on this as you say you discounted the design.
From a pure user front end though, when you write any task with a custom field and then multi home it - the task inherits the custom field of both (or multiple) projects it sits in. So it could have both references without a problem. and the prefix, suffix layout could be identical and that still work/ be unique.
I think I sit with the majority of Change, Support and IT managers on the thread who look at their, simple, justifiable requirement and cannot understand how this could be in any way a controversial thing to ask for or default thing to deliver.
Hopefully we can get something soon, I am not going to stop using the system or recommending to other businesses because it does a lot of things really well and engages people in business in brilliant ways. I would quite like stopping, recommending an Excel link in the Asana project that a human has to get the next number out of as a work around register.
Thanks for your help
3 Likes
Derrick, thank you for championing the cause!
How do you use Zapier to create a unique project ID? I canāt figure it out.
Hi Phil,
Looking back on older solutions. Would this zap work for tasks that are already created or only for going forward?
Thanks,
Erik
That Zap has a trigger of āNew task in project in Asanaā so it would only apply to new tasks. I suppose you could create an alternate trigger, say, āA task is associated with a tagā, which could theoretically apply to existing tasks - I donāt see why that wouldnāt work. You 'd just have to make sure you never do anything in Asana which would trigger the Zap multiple times and thus end up with multiple IDs on a task. With āNew taskā itās guaranteed to only run once; any other trigger and that needs to be managed at the user end.
Iāve also found that hyperlinking the task in Slack works out pretty well. Typically, if I have enough time to look up the task or reference the task URL for the ID then its just an easy to copy and paste the link. Adding in this reference for use link
Currently Asana does not allow a unique reference to be assigned to each new task. This feature would really help us track and reference each task better especially for ticketing type use cases.
Hi @Adil_Jan and welcome to the forum!
There is already an existing Product Feedback request for this feature; Iām going to merge your request with that one.