Hey there, I’ve organized several tasks within a ‘template’ project, each with a list of subtasks. The tasks basically serve as an individual marketing campaign (email promotion, webinar, etc.) with the subtasks representing the individual tasks that each member of the team needs to complete. I’m trying to make some of the subtasks dependent on the first subtask listed (getting content from a stakeholder), but it seems like all subtasks are getting marked with that dependency.
Any ideas on why that’s happening or how else I should be approaching this? Thanks!
Hi @Trask_Rogers, you’ll want to click into each subtask via the comment bubble to then set the dependency for that particular subtask (via the … icon up top)
Could you clarify your question? You shouldn’t be seeing a limit to the number of subtasks. However, if you’re doing work with a large quantity of subtasks, you may want to consider transitioning the task to a project and the subtasks to tasks (task/subtask → project/task). While subtasks can be very useful, they can become difficult when in large quantities.
Please let us know what you think of this suggestion and if you have further questions.
I’m using a Board that has 13 tasks. Within each task are 4 subtasks. 3 of the subtasks are dependent on the previous within that task. When trying to select a previous subtask, I can only see 10 of the 13 possibilities.
I have the same problem with dependency search results. We’re dealing with a sizeable project right now with a bunch of parent tasks that have practically identical sets of subtasks. Trying to assign dependencies between the subtasks of any one of the parent tasks is a nightmare, because searching a subtask name brings up exactly the kind of situation seen in Randy’s screenshot.
The limit of 10 search results makes it physically impossible to set some dependencies, because the desired subtask simply doesn’t appear in the results list. I’m not sure what the sort order is for these results, but it’s clearly not by “proximity.” Most times I’m trying to select a sibling subtask within the same parent. You’d think such a sibling would show up first in the results, but it’s always somewhere random down the list, or it doesn’t make the 10-item cut at all.
Additionally, what makes this feature nearly unusable at times is when the subtask/task names are long enough to get cut off at the arbitrary width of the search results box. Sometimes I can’t accurately identify which result to choose, because I can’t see the full parent task title in order to differentiate them.
Do subtasks not appear as options when choosing what my other subtask is dependent? We have a checklist of items and each one is dependent on the previous subtask being completed – but I am only seeing parent-level tasks appear when picking dependencies?
I made a task dependent on subtasks… on the desktop, it now removes the checkbox and says waiting on 4 dependencies, but on the mobile version, the checkbox remains and i can check off the task without the subtasks being completed… this seems wrong.
Did this particular feature get cleared up? I still cannot see the list of subtasks that I need to chose from when I want a subtask dependent linked to the previous subtask. Am I missing something?
I’m still having the same issue as many of the users above! I have very similar parent tasks with identically worded subtasks - and I’ve had no luck narrowing the dependency search results so I can actually make a subtask dependent on another subtask.
I’m also trying to make subtasks dependent on other subtasks. Is this possible? We just signed up with Asana and really need this as a feature. Please let me know ASAP. Thanks!
For more detail: The main Task will be a creative brief (within the marketing channel “Project”) and there will be multiple subtasks that are all dependent on the other. First it needs approved, then I need it to alert Copy, once Copy completes their task I need it to alert Design, once Design completes their task I need it to alert me.
Yes, you can definitely make a subtask dependent on another subtask.
One thing you have to remember is that by default, subtasks do not inherit an association to their parent task’s project (you have to manually make that association if you choose to).
This leads to a catch with creating subtask dependencies - as noted above in this thread, when Asana displays the list of tasks to choose from to identify the dependency task, it displays subtasks in the format of
Subtask name < Parent task name
The problem becomes if you have multiple subtasks and parent tasks with the same name (as in, for example, the same task/subtask structure in multiple different projects). In that case, it’s impossible to know which subtask to choose.
The two ways to resolve this issue are to either make sure all of your parent tasks and subtasks have unique names, or to assign the subtasks to their parent’s project (if you do this, the project name is added to the Subtask name < Parent task name display.
I realize the above may be confusing so don’t hesitate to ask any follow-up questions!
Is there a way for a subtask to be dependent on a previous subtask? So if one subtask date get changed, the others will automatically be pushed back the same number of business days based on the original timing?
Coming back to this thread to note my workaround I’ve been using successfully for a while now. You can paste a task URL into the dependency “search” bar, allowing you to directly set dependencies without having to struggle with search results.
This means you have to navigate to the prerequisite task(/subtask/whatever) first in order to copy its link, but that extra step is still so much faster than searching for tasks that all have the same name, deliberating which one to pick, discovering you’ve picked the wrong one, doing the search again, etc. Actually, this can be fairly quick if you’re setting dependencies between sibling subtasks. Instead of clicking into each one to use its “copy task link” icon, you can just right-click on its speech bubble icon in the subtask list and copy the link from there.
