Selection of more than 50 tasks

[SatoshiTakano]

How long are they going to let this problem go on? In Asana’s philosophy of consolidating all tasks, I believe that updating late-breaking rules and late-breaking elements by hand, 50 at a time, is a complete violation of that philosophy.
I think this is a major issue for us as we roll out Asana in our company.

[David_Nelson]

Hi @SatoshiTakano, welcome to the Community Forum! Thank you for your post. Please remember to vote for the enhancement above. I agree that this would be helpful and added my vote as well.

[Thalia_Marot-Achilla]

Currently, we can only multi-select a maximum of 50 tasks at once when bulk editing a field. Can we increase this limit to all tasks included in a project/template, irrespective of their section?

For my team, the current limit multiplies by 5 the time spent working on populating templates with an estimated 3+ hours lost weekly per member.

[Richard_Sather]

HI @Thalia_Marot-Achilla , I’ve merged your post into this existing one where your vote has been consolidated.

Not sure why are are losing so much time populating templates on a weekly basis. Are you actually using project templates or just projects that are acting as templates?

[Thalia_Marot-Achilla]

We have template with more than 250+ tasks and 10 custom fields. If we want to bulk edits those fields, we need to repeat the operation at least 5 times, but usually 6. As we are repeating collectively this action several times a week, the estimates shared below account for the time lost or on the positive - the potential for time saving!

[Richard_Sather]

Thanks @Thalia_Marot-Achilla . I understand your pain, I’m just wondering if there is a better way to save you time. If you are doing this on a weekly basis, I assume you are launching a new project from a template several times a week, right? I’m just trying to understand why you need to bulk edit an entire project after it is launched, instead of having the custom fields already pre-populated in the template before hand.

Have you perhaps explored the option of creating more than one template? So you could have various versions of the same template but with different combinations of your custom fields already pre-populated?

You may be interested in these methods:

Templates can also be "task factories"

Hi , Following on the discussion with @LEGGO on Break long templates into stage-focused templates, it gave me the idea to share that concept of using templates as factories :factory:. Too often, users see a template as a way to create a project, and then they feel like they need to “stay” with the project. However, a template can be used to only “fabricate” tasks, and then you can move tasks elsewhere. A couple of examples: your client process takes a year, you create a template for …

Break long templates into stage-focused templates

Hi Community , Here is my little tip of the day regarding templates, especially the ones taking weeks or months to complete. If your client’s projects are usually spanning across several months and are based on a template, you should consider having several templates instead of one. Try to identify the main stages of the projects (e.g. initial stage, preliminary, design, delivery…) and have one template for each. That way, you’ll always start a new stage with the latest fresh version of …

Why templates are better than duplicating project

If you have been using the Free version of Asana for a while, you probably knew that you can compensate the lack of Template feature with a simple project duplication. So, now that you have access to Templates (congrats on the upgrade), you might be wondering: what are the benefits of using Templates versus duplicating a project? The main benefit is that a duplication would duplicate the existing state of a project, so if you duplicate a project that “lived”, it probably has completed tas…

Perhaps others can also way in…?

[Thalia_Marot-Achilla]

We cannot auto-fill the fields as those are project-dependent so each new project created from the template implies different inputs to the fields. Thank you for sharing those options. We’ve already evaluated possibilities and this one remains the least time consuming. However, if we could remove the limit on the 50 tasks to be edited at once, we would approach an ideal state.

I would like to understand better if this would be feasible from a developer’s point of view? Does this require a high effort as it seems like a ‘simple’ cap to remove.

[Richard_Sather]

Understood. Indeed if the limit was raised, that would definitely save time.

I’m assuming the limitation has to do with securing good performance. But I couldn’t say how complex it would be to raise this - I’m not a developer and in case it wasn’t clear, I don’t work for Asana. I’m volunteer forum leader and also an Asana Solutions Partner, vetted and certified by Asana to consult, train clients as well as build systems for them Asana.

[Thalia_Marot-Achilla]

Got it, thanks for clarifying. Does it help then to post on this forum to attract visibility to develop my feature request? Who/where should I post/turn to?

[Richard_Sather]

Here is great! Your vote has been consolidated but you can forward this post to other members and colleagues so they can also add their vote. Scroll to the top and click the purple vote button on the left

All Product Feedback posts are monitored and read by the Asana product team. Each vote and voice counts!

[Stacy3]

So - I’m working in a project. I grab a bunch of tasks to assign them to another project. And I, which I am sure you can all relate, eyeball the number across separate sections and select more than 50. I knew it as soon as I clicked it… and my eyes slid down to the bottom of the screen to confirm I have the dreaded “you can not edit more than 50 tasks at once” message and lo…

and behold…

I have 62 tasks selected AND I CAN EDIT THEM!

I checked in other projects and am seeing the same behavior. Without turning off the completed tasks filter, I cannot say for sure what the total number is, but I’ve seen as many as 121 tasks ALL EDITABLE IN BULK!!!

I almost didn’t want to say anything, for fear acknowledging it will cause a developer to see and turn off this “bug” but I had to share…

ASANA PEOPLE - IS THIS FOR REAL?!?

EDIT And yes, I was able to assign all 62 to another project, assign them, and change the due dates. IN BULK.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Yes the limit is being raised, public announcement soon!

[Stacy3]

This was a “pebble in the shoe” problem. At first, you barely notice but over time it gets more and more irritating. Yeah, it’s a total first world problem, but almost everyone using this application lives in the first world, so these are our problems lol

Thank everyone involved in making this happen. I know some things are harder to change than the non-developers among us realize, so thank you thank you thank you!

[Kelly_Cavanagh]

@Bastien_Siebman Do you know when this feature is officially launching? A couple people on my team had early access to it during the slow rollout but they don’t anymore, so our team is blocked on a project

[PantrySoftCTO]

This is pretty painful for our team as well. We have changed our project management workflows a couple times over the years and in refactoring how our boards are layed out its a nightmare to move 1000s of cards. I’ve also had this happen on timeline adjustments with dates and when reassigning tasks as people leave. Seems like a no brainer to allow more bulk actions especially as some of your loyal customers have years of historical tasks at this point.

[Stacy3]

I was so excited. I literally jumped up and down. And I went to use it the other day and it was back to 50 tasks only.

%cries in corporate%

[Minh_Tran5]

Hi Bastien, is this officially on the roadmap for this year and what Quarter it is planned for?

Thanks,
Minh

[Bastien_Siebman]

I can’t give details, this is only available to ambassadors sorry.

[Emily_Roman]

Hi everyone! I’m excited to announce you can now select 500 tasks at a time and make bulk actions This update is available to all customers. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via the Tips and Tricks category!