Is there a way to generate a report for a project that tells you how long (on average) cards spend in a specific column?
I want to track velocity and understand – if my board has say, 4 phases – how long each phase generally takes.
I am not looking for time-tracking solutions.
This is a very good question. Have similar question from many clients. I know the info is available in the task history but it would help so much to have that calculation done automatically inside Asana.
Interesting…
I do not think that you can create it with Asana natively. But the data is there so maybe some kind of API integration can do that.
I started thinking if I can do this with Zapier, but I need to try somethings, for it will need a lot of workarounds and an external tool, like google sheets to do the final calculation.
Interesting thread I hope someone provides a solution.
So I had a look and when you pull a task with Zapier, you can see in which section it is. However you see only “date last modified” and this changes for any update on the task, not only when you move it between sections. Therefore for now I do not see way how you can estimate time spent in each section for each task, so you can calculate later total time per section. This is at least my observation, it will be nice if someone has a solution.
Yes you can’t do that “after the fact” in the API, you would have to either watch for changes or poll Asana on a regular basis and keep that information in your own database. @Phil_Seeman am I correct here?
Also some external dashboarding solutions have that feature, check out my list of tools The ultimate guide for doing things with Asana
What a fantastic list, I have missed this post. 10 for effort, amazing!
It took a rainy Sunday, that’s all 
I try to keep it up to date though…
@Bastien_Siebman and @IvanStaykov are exactly correct - this information isn’t available via the Asana API; you’d have to track the info yourself by using Events or Webhooks programmatically to catch when it changed columns and record the times in your own data store.
One solution that I know says they report this info is Screenful. @Sami_Linnanvuo
Hi @Phil_Seeman @Justine_D @Paul_Grobler @IvanStaykov
Yes, Screenful can provide such a report out-of-the box. Here’s an example:
You can measure time spent in a board column or a time spent on a certain value in a custom field. You can learn more from the tour page: Timing Screen - Screenful Tour
We have 21 day free trial so you give it a try with your own data.
Best,
This is what I’m looking for. This might be an unrelated topic, but is there a way to send a notification in Asana based on time? Once I have an idea of how long tasks take on average, I’d like to be able to set a duration (say 2 days) and if a card sits in a column for longer than 2 days, the assignee gets a notification of some sort.
Thank you! I will look at it, seems spot on
Hi @Justine_D Screenful can report that information but not send a notification to a user, unfortunately.
