Restrict ability for users to complete a task (some items are not tasks but still assigned to a user for ongoing long term action and should not actually be completed). However, it is not uncommon to have users that get some thrill out of “checking boxes” and this causes multi-tiered tasks/notes to be completed. Obviously, it is easy enough to recover by changing the view filter to completed tasks, but that’s really only a solution when one knows immediately that a mistake was made. Otherwise, the completed task can fall down the completed task list making it harder to locate.
I have two suggestions:
- Create a recurring task. ie. If this is something done weekly the task can regenerate weekly.
- Assign your team members a subtask within the parent task that serves as some sort of checkpoint system (these can also be recurring).
@Justin_Poma, For key projects I ensure there is a “shepherd” who is a project member and charged with paying attention to her Asana Inbox and discovering, reversing, and commenting on such actions to prevent them in the future, if needed. It’s common with Asana’s open permission structure. And often someone clicks on a task but happens to land on the completion check and doesn’t realize it.
Larry
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@lpb I think that’s what we will have to implement. Thanks for the suggestion, hopefully, ASANA developers can figure out a way to restrict editing. There are a number of ways it can work ie: simply putting a “read-only” restriction, allowing an admin to restrict task completion to a specified individual or two etc.
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I agree, @Justin_Poma; would be nice for a more granular solution here.
Just making sure, too, that you know about this feature:
though I’m not sure it would work for you in this instance.
Larry
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@lrb, you know I hadn’t thought about that but will definitely experiment with that option! Thanks for the suggestion.
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@Justin_Poma and thanks for your feedback. While this is not in our near term plans, I think @lpb and @Christine_Bolton gave you some good tricks to try out! I’ll keep you posted here if this is something we decide to implement at some stage!
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Hi @Justin_Poma
I see you have received some great suggestions on how to address the issue.
I have another option that may be helpful.
In my projects I create a custom field with Department Responsibility. The reason I do so is because I can then create tasks or sub tasks that act as info items without assigning them to people. This way, the workflow of the actual action items, dependencies, due dates, timelines are all built into tasks that are action items assigned to people.
These headers will then be the responsbility of the project manager to ensure they are relevent and up to date.
Hope this helps!
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none of these are solutions… the ideal would be to have a setting on main tasks (not subtasks within a task) where you could say “only assignee can check off task” or something…
i have a project that I manage between myself and 26 other team members that are each responsible for executing the main task in their location. I create a master task and then bulk assign subtasks so that each of the other team members can complete the task for their site. It happens frequently that they complete the task and then check off the main task and not their specific subtask. if there was a setting within a project, or within a task itself, to limit the checking off of a task to the assignee only (again, only needed on the main task, not subtasks in my case) this issue would be eliminated. The options above all require active management to find the master task checked off in error and uncheck it.
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I fully agree with this. Or having the ability to assign Deputy PMs and above with an open framework and team members with a different set of permissions.
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If that helps, I’m just mentioning here a great workaround based on “sticky task” (with Custom fields & rules) I saw on another recent article.
=> Need a way of blocking people from marking a task complete
(thanks @Becky_Manson)
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