Hi @Alexis
I actually went ahead and sent a form to Asana Support today, so they’re having a look at it. It was the main date picker in the task details pane where I was seeing the message.
I did figure out that the bug only affects tasks that aren’t part of a project. As soon as I added one of the tasks to a random project, the option to add a start date appeared. Hopefully Support will be able to figure it out.
Thanks, though.
Just a quick follow-up which might be useful to others. I discovered that the reason I wasn’t able to set start dates on tasks that weren’t part of projects is because my main team has a Premium subscription, but my organisation doesn’t. So, when I create a task in My Tasks, I don’t have the option to use start dates, because the task is associated only with my organisation, not a specific team. As soon as I add that task to a project that sits in the Premium team, I have the option to add start dates.
Just something to be aware of if you’re experiencing similar issues.
cc @Alexis
Thanks for your reply. Yes I am talking about the left side favorite projects pane. We are handling with around 40 teams (1 team per client) and each team contains 2-3 projects. That’s why the left side favorite projects pane is the most important “feature” we use. Hope that it will be updated in the future 
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Is start date available in the API anywhere? I do not see start date in the JSON export of tasks either.
Thank you.
Good question! cc @Matt_Bramlage @Jeff_Schneider
Yes, start dates are available in the API with start_on. For example, you could GET the start date of a task with this cURL request:
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer 0/123456789" \ https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/tasks/12345?opt_expand=start_on
If you only need to see start dates using the JSON export, simply add ,start_on to the end of the URL once you’ve done an export to JSON.
For example, after exporting to JSON, the URL should look like this:
https://app.asana.com/api/1.0/projects/123456/tasks?opt_pretty&opt_expand=(this|subtasks%2B)
Just add ,start_on to the end of the URL so it looks like this:
Then hit enter.
We hope to have start dates added to the API documentation soon.
@Jeff_Schneider, Thank you. That works. I see start date now.
Is there a option to choose that the my tasks view will not show tasks with a start date until they start? That would be helpful to get a clearer overview of the my tasks section.
There certainly is, @OSTMOST
Select the task and mark it for Upcoming or Later. I tend to put tasks due within a month in Upcoming and everything else in Later. The task will be promoted based on the start date, so will eventually appear in the Today section when it’s time to get on with it.
Here’s some more guidance on how that works:
Thats really great, thank you so much. But I can not choose start dates in the iOS app or?
I’m not sure, Dennis. I’m strictly an Android person.
Can any other iOS users confirm?
“Start dates are visible on mobile calendar, and soon will be editable.” Should be coming soon
When will Start Date be available in advanced search?
@Brian_Titus - We’re not able to speak to timing, but we’ll note that you’re interested in seeing start dates in advanced search. Thanks!
Love that we have start dates but when can we filter/search by start date?
I remain befuddled that you would roll out a (major) field and not let people search by it. I have to assume there’s some very funky architecture back there in the DB or else please please please please please let us filter/search by start date. (Been asking for this for years).
All I want to do is be able to see everything that I should have already started. Query Start date <= today.
@Alexis is there a way to make start date default to task creation date?
A.
this feature is fantastic!
anyway to automatically add today as start date when creating new task?
Love this new feature, but would like to be able to choose whether tasks with start dates show up first when looking at My Tasks and sorting by due date. (right now, they don’t show up until the due date in the line of tasks)
It’s a great feature, but there should be a way to map the creation date as today when creating a new task automatically. Our team manually adds the creation date at the end of every task we make because there is no way to observe creation date in the project page view. There should be a way to have this displayed automatically when you make a new task in a project, I know it would save our team some time. And it should be a sortable feature in the project page view, as well, so you can see how long tasks have been opened for in a project view. Still waiting for Asana to implement this to make the project page view more digestible for our engineering team here.
Still wondering when we’ll be able to search by start date! Thanks!