Hi,
we have created some custom fields in our projects, like estimated costs, actual costs, benefit etc.
We have also added these fields to our portfolio overview, but we do not see the totals. It seems like it has to be put in manually.
Is there a way to automatically show totals of custom fields (e.g. total sum of costs) in the portfolio overview?
If I am not mistaken, custom fields at the project level and at portfolio levels are two different things and are not related indeed. I don’t know if Asana has plan to link them on day… @Marie@Emily_Roman any input?
@Bastien_Siebman Custom Fields are actually global components that can be applied to projects and portfolios all the same. I quite often will use the same global Custom Fields (saved to Org) at both the project and portfolio level.
I believe what @Vanessa_Künstler is pointing out is there isn’t a way to see the average/sum of numerical values in custom fields from the portfolio view, like you can in projects across the whole or within sections.
I’m hopeful that in the future the Dashboard tab will be available for Portfolios and this would be a great way to see the breakouts you are looking for @Vanessa_Künstler. In the meantime, I would recommend looking into exporting your Portfolio to a Google Sheet.. This creates a dynamic connection and enables you to create a variety of visuals like pivot tables, charts, dashboard widgets, etc. While I, too, would love to see some level of charting like this in Asana it is a fantastic integration that syncs data every hour!
I do understand they are all “custom fields” you can mix and match. But my belief was that the initial Asana plan was to have portfolio fields (budget, priority…) and project custom fields (stage, minutes…). But that would be cool to have them linked!
Yeah, I haven’t discovered a handle full of cases where I can use the same custom field at both levels but there are a few.
Given that a custom field isn’t dedicated to a project or portfolio (meaning it can be created in one and added to the other), I think it would be great to retain custom field assignments when converting a task to a project. To achieve this you would have to be able to add a project to a Portfolio when converting from a task.
@Vanessa_Künstler I believe your question is similar to this one: Custom Fields in a Portfolio not populating. As it stands, it’s currently not possible to automatically see the total of a number custom field in Portfolio. We don’t have immediate plans to implement this feature but I’ve gone ahead and moved your thread to the product feedback category to allow other customers to support this request
Thank you @Emily_Roman, Bastien and Jerod!
I have found a work around: I get the total number of the custom field from the project’s dashboard, type that number in manually in my status report. Now the custom field in the portfolio gets automtically populated. It is not ideal to type something in manually but I think it is okay since you should update your projects on a regular basis anyway
Anyhow, I would very much appreciate an automated function in the future
Note: Not a solution but marked as such to elevate a key reply
Hi @Thijs_Sturm , welcome to the forum
With the Dashboard tab that was recently added to Portfolios you could create a chart based on your projects in the portfolios and select the count by your numeric custom field. This works best using ‘donut’ or ‘number’ type charts so the total will be visible.
Not as ideal as having a sum at the bottom of your Portfolio’s List view, but definitely more visually pleasing