With the recent changes of end Sep 2019, ASANA has removed the ability to work with sections as previously done. We were using sections to define basket of task such as product versions and sprints.
We used to add description including overview, test cases, business need etc and used to have links from other tasks to this section.
This is no longer available 
Good functionality is now removed. Please return this back .
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Indeed sections are no longer regular tasks. I donât think this is coming back though, given than the data model changed⊠you can still add a description task at the beginning of each section :s
@Bastien_Siebman I donât think @Yoav_Crombie is asking to bring back âtask functionalityâ on sections, just the ability to have descriptions for sections. Everything else has description areas, even projects and teams â why not sections? Sure, you can add a description task at the beginning of each section, but thatâs a really inelegant workaround, which creates clutter in that section.
I agree with Yoav_Crombie, section descriptions can be very useful. Surely thereâs some way the Asana team can implement the ability to create section descriptions (if desired), without completely changing the section featureâs new behavior and basic functionality?
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Yes please I agree on that, thatâs very important on our side. The use case is very simple : we always had our SPRINT as a section, with the description / objectives of the sprint inside, and in the update status, the link were pointed to the SPRINT section. Now we can not do that anymore and thatâs not cool, even if the new interface is nice though ( :
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After a recent upgrade we can see the following note âThis section was converted to a task. A new section with the same name now appears in your project.â
We previously used sections to outline the standard stages in a project in our template, and made subtasks on those section headings to outline standard steps within that stage - effectively giving the user a detailed template without a project looking cluttered from the outset.
After the recent upgrade a task has been created beneath every section heading with all of the subtasks that were on that heading, leaving an additional task of the same name under every heading in all of our projects.
We would appreciate it if you could add subtasks to headings again.
Thanks
Yes please, another vote for having sections like they were before! I want the ability to add descriptions and convert between sections and tasks.
Adding another âdescriptionâ task is just unnecessary clutter.
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Additionally, the ability to copy sections from one project to another has also been removed, meaning that the Asana-recommended method of using a master project to collect active tasks is now much harder to use. You now have to type in a section twice if you want to have tasks under the same heading in both the master and the core project.
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The worst is that to export to excel, it changed everything, and if you have subtasks, its a chaos!
It was much much better before!
I agree with the people voicing their issues to allow description metadata to Sections. Please add back as they are an important part of our workflow.
thanks!!
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I had a project with three sections in it that I wanted to merge with another project with four sections in itâŠhere was the required workflow:
- Create a section in the new project to hold the tasks from the old section
- Add all of the tasks in each section to the new project, correct section
- Remove all of the tasks in each section from the old project
- Delete the old project
UmâŠdrag and drop people? I understand that sections are containers. Fine. Why canât I move the entire container to a new project? This makes no sense. If deleting a section deletes all the sub-tasks, why canât I move a section to a new project and move all the sub-tasks with it?
While we are on the subject of usabilityâŠmy speed in creating projects/sections/tasksâŠis way, way downâŠbecause sections can only be renamed or deleted with mouse clicks.
Sigh. With Asana its always 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. You introduce new features that open up possibilities and immeditately eviscerate them with usability changes that make life impossible.
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Description and ability to copy and reference a link to section
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Totally right!
For us this change has killed the usage of the product.
We heavily used sections as part of our agile process representing versions of modules. The section contained information on the version and i could refernse it from other tasks by sending a link to the section. Once completed the tasks in the section - i would delete the section.
ALL these good things are now gone. Can not understand how your product manager designed this change. All my tasks are full of broken links to section that no longer exist.
I can not add description to section
I can not create a link to a section
I can not delete the section without deleting the tasks (even if complete.
I can not believe how you have messed up a cool product like you had. For us it is a game over change.
I agree with Yoav_Crombie, this change has made Asana LESS functional. Why would they do this? Are you trying to save space in their data centre or something? Being able to provide context and instructions and link within the section was extremely useful. I am rethinking Asana as my tool now, if they are so willing to REMOVE features that people are clearly using, I no longer trust their service.
Overall, sections are much better than they used to be.
Iâm testing Asana out before we decide whether to roll it out in the rest of our organization, and the lack of this functionality is a serious negative. Itâs baffling that there is no place to describe the goals, provide guidelines or add resources for a section. The fact that everything must be entered as a task is messy and the opposite of straight-forward. Iâm rather disheartened that Asana had a clearly much-loved feature and then decided to remove it.
Asana moderators? Whatâs going on with this?
The new design only makes sense from a database perspective, not for users. Sections are by definition collections of tasks, so why would you not allow us to treat them as giant tasks?
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Why donât you treat sections, tasks and subtasks as all the same object? This would take care of a ton of the issues in the product feedback section. Then they would all get custom fields, descriptions, the ability to change status etc, etc. Then in the object you just need a parent-child link and a single flag to indicate how they should be displayed on different screens.
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Please Asana moderators answer on this⊠Are you planning to do it ?
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The fact we can not have links to sections and canât not complete them without delete task history is really painful for a lot of things, including tracking history in status updates.
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Yes, the subtask visualisation is better but TWO things make still pain in the ass to turn ex-section into mother task if you want us to do that!
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You can not select several task and drag&drog them into a mother task : you have to open the mother task and add one by one subtask (itâs really pain in the #$%)
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You can not move subtasks by drag&drop in the general viewing list : you have to move it in the mother task (itâs also really pain in the #$%)
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The roadmap is not public, you wonât have an answer =) you should create a dedicated thread, you are mixing the discussions here.
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