I’m not necessarily trying to “do” anything. I suddenly have this odd view where I have tasks of a Milestone showing up under the milestone AND in the section. If you look at the Milestone Phase 1 Messaging Locked, you’ll see 5 tasks with sub-tasks. But then, those exact same tasks show up right below the Milestone.
I’ve either:
A.) Created a rule(s) that’s causing this
B.) My customer sections are causing issues
Hi @Chris_Tomlinson are the subtasks of the milestone created by a rule? It looks like they were added to the project during or after creation, possibly by the “To Do” custom field.
If you open the task detail pane, you can remove them from the project and they will still remain under the milestone.
Best,
Jeremy
@Jeremy_Long no, the subtasks of the milestone were not created by a rule. The stages have rules, but not the actual creation of the tasks. I deleted the duplicate task outside of the milestone and it deleted it as well as the one under the milestone.
I do recall changing the stage of the milestone to In Progress at one point and I can’t say for sure if that’s when this oddity happened or not. Because that rule says
When Stage is changed → Check if Stage is set to In Progress → Do this Move task to section In Progress.
Then I changed the stage back to To Do when I saw this happen.
And FWIW, I tried removing the sub-task from the milestone and put it back. Same result. And then I tried removing what appears to be the duplicate task outside of the milestone as a sub-task of the milestone and exact same result.
Sorry, one last thing. I’m quite confident that all of this Stage changing coupled with the custom rules I have set caused this. Look at this one particular sub-task activity.
@Chris_Tomlinson I would need to see your rules to confirm, but the custom field Stage in the subtask being set to To Do appears to be the trigger causing this.
When a subtask is added to the project, it will always appear in both views. Notice in the example below, the subtask is assigned to the Project 2 Sandbox.
Removing it from the project will allow it to remain under the Milestone without appearing in other sections.
@Jeremy_Long so here are the rules I have:
I’m guessing I’ve overcomplicated my rules or somehow created this on my own with these rules.
Hey Chris, I know this view can be confusing. What you’re seeing usually happens when subtasks are also added to the project. In Asana, a subtask can live under its parent milestone and also be part of the project at the same time, which makes it show up twice: once nested under the milestone and once in the section as its own row. It’s expected behavior, not a bug.
Quick checks
Open one of those “duplicate” items. In the subtask detail, look at the Projects field. If your project is listed there, that subtask was added to the project, which is why it appears in the section.
Check your project rules for anything like “Add subtasks to this project” or “When task is created, add subtasks to project” or rules that add tasks based on a custom field. Those rules can auto add subtasks into the project.
If you don’t want subtasks to appear in the section, remove the project from the subtask’s Projects field. If you do want them in the section, leave it as is and optionally move them to the right section.
This shouldn’t be caused by sections themselves. It’s almost always multi homed subtasks or a rule doing the adding.
Stefan, we definitely don’t have any rules doing that. I know that I was creating the milestone and then adding the sub tasks underneath those.
You are correct, the sub-tasks are attached to the project under the milestone. So you’re saying don’t attach the sub tasks to the PROJECT? Correct?
I’ve beta tested this theory with our current rules we have and I’m only changing the Stage for the milestone and not the sub-task. It appears to be moving the milestone and it’s sub tasks without duplication.
That’s the key here. If you have a rule with a “move to section” action set to apply to a subtask, then in order for Asana to implement that rule action and move the subtask to that section, it has to add the subtask to the project - because only top-level tasks can live in a section.
@Phil_Seeman okay so we should stick to 1 of 2 processes.
Either
A.) Milestones have a “Stage” but not sub-tasks
or
B.) No Milestones with sub tasks and said sub tasks are actually just tasks with the “Stage”
Correct?
You could do one of those, or if I’m following your scenario (which I may not be, since I don’t know all of the context):
C.) Change all of your rules to not run on subtasks; i.e. turn off this option in the rule builder for each of those rules:
I may not know all the conext either but you could…
D) scrap sections and all those rules and just Group by your Stage field, following this, carefully:
@Richard_Sather wow that’s a great blog article. Appreciate it! And I appreciate everyone else’s feedback and thoughts!
