It seems to me that we should go back to using tasks with special characters as Sections like we did before the “:” trick that bolded it.
The recent changes to sections have made them almost entirely negative, specifically.
When you create them with Tab-N it creates underneath the current section, not at the place where you clicked, so you have to go find it, and drag it back
Oops - you can’t even do that now - you cant drag a section header into the middle of a list (for example to add a “Get these done by lunch” header. ) you have to create a new header, and drag all the tasks to it.
Nasty data-losing bugs where for example select a section, click Tab-Delete and the preceeding task in a completely different section gets deleted.
You can’t move a header around separate from the tasks underneath it (before you could always select the header + tasks or just the header, now you can ONLY select the header+tasks.
Cant delete the heading without deleting the tasks (also data losing if you make a mistake). So for example the irrelevant “Get it done by lunch” header, can’t be removed any more.
As others have noted - you cant put descriptions. comments etc on the section header at all. So you can’t for example put a link to the Git issue in the section, or have the discussion “do we have too much in this section” on the section itself.
So I’m wondering, since Asana seem to want to make sections/sub-tasks less and less usable, and in particular dictate how we work, rather than giving us the flexibility we have always loved about Asana, do we need to move back to the old, several year old, way of just using special characters for section headings ?
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This is a discussion we’e had in several threads (I’ve shared some in the bug you filed earlier on). While we’re aware that these changes can be hard to implement for some of our customers, they were technically necessary to continue developing sections and subtasks. We don’t have plans to revert sections back for the moment, but we’re currently working on exciting improvements in relation to Sections and Subtasks, so make sure to keep an eye on the #community-forum-announcements section
I’m betting the UI changes weren’t necessary - (making it so you can’t move or delete headers without their tasks is presumably purely a UI issue - i.e. moving a header up, moves the bottom task under the header above to the top task under the header below.
Unfortunately every time I hear something from Asana in recent years like “currently working on exciting improvements in relation to Sections and Subtasks,” I brace myself for a massive disruption in work-flow to keep some designer happy with pretty much zero improvement in actual functionality
Yep, I second the OP’s comments. Sections were once upon a time useful and could adapt to any number of workflows scenarios. And more importantly, they were quick to use. Now, its much more complicated and harder to create/delete them as the OP has detailed out here. I’m not a happy customer and I’ve been around for several years. What really sucks is that Asana seems to introduce changes and features at the expense of the core product, implements them without any proper communication about these changes beyond a perky “oh this is going to be exciting”, and then pretty much telling you to take it or leave it (in the same perky tone). The simplicity of the product was its selling point and made it so adaptable to different workflows and styles. Perhaps I’m sounding (and probably am being) entitled, but when you’ve had loyal customers supporting your product and company for years (no matter their size), you don’t steamroll them over with what you feel the product needs without properly engaging with them first. Don’t believe that migration is as hard a task if you’ve succeeded in annoying your customers.
