Subtask Inherit due date from parent task

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21

Hi @Regina_Ho,

Just FYI, this capability is available in our Flowsana integration. It supports this ability in a few ways: If you want to be adding new subtasks as the result of a rule trigger, our Add subtasks rule action allows the subtasks to be set with dates relative to the parent task’s due date during their creation. For existing tasks/subtasks with dates, the “Treat subtasks as dependents” option of the Auto-Adjust Workflow is most relevant. (And these two features can be used in combination with each other, to automate subtask dates both on creation and when the parent is updated.)

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Has there been any progress on this? I just started using Asana and I have the same issue. Quite frustrating as I will need to use subtasks heavily.

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I’m concerned by the inaction on Asana’s part here. It’s shocking that after nearly 5 years the only substantive progress has been achieved by what appears to be a third-party applet for $2.99 per user per month (yikes!). These aren’t niche edge-cases being discussed, these are common sense capabilities that one should expect from a service touting itself with automation as a “key feature”. It’s hard not to be cynical towards Asana’s development when one has to be upsold in order to boast the base functionality of Trello or Microsoft Planner.

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24

+1 for subtasks inheriting dates from Parent tasks. Seems illogical this would be any other way

25

Plus one. This is a giant, unfortunate limitation with Asana, and one of the reasons why I am considering a switch to Monday. Monday has checklists and tables within tasks… Asana has neither checklists nor linked due dates for subtasks. This is a critical weakness of the parent/subtask structure, and it’s disappointing that this has been requested by the user base for years with no change.

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@Rebecca_McGrath Looks like Asana is probably losing people because of the messy, uncoordinated sub-tasking system.

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+1 vote

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28

When is this functionality coming? It sounds like a necessary option.

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Hi @Joanna_Mazurek and welcome to the forum,

FYI Asana (like many of its competitors) doesn’t publish a public roadmap or comment on potential features, so there’s no way to know if/when it might be coming.

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+1 Vote

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I think i have found a workaround which is set a trigger with 0 days based on the due date of the parent task if there are automated subtasks. I did a test and worked. Wondering if there is another workaround.

Screenshot 2024-01-23 at 13.02.18

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+1️⃣

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It’s 2024 for crying out loud. This feature has been requested since 2017. If they can’t implement (what to me seems like a simple feature) in 7 years, then this is NOT the product for me.

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FYI, this can be done by using a 3rd party tool called “Flowsana.” It seems preposterous to me that I need to buy an add-on (that is also a per-user subscription fee) to implement such basic functionality.
You can’t treat your customers this way, why let them?

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The fact that this basic functionality has not been implemented in 7 years, combined with the fact that it is default behavior in Jira, has caused me ditch Asana, and move to Jira.

At this point, Asana (as a company) have demonstrated complete contempt for their customers by using AI and automation to fob off inquires like this.
It also hints at an underlying incompetence (as evidenced by not being able to implement such a simple, and widely requested feature in 7 years). Furthermore, the fact that there is even a company called “Flowsana”, basically a parasite company who implement the features that the core product should, but doesn’t for an additional per-user. monthly fee)

Jira and Asana are both at similar price points; however, Jira has decades more development under its belt, is the most widely used platform (in software development), and doesn’t have a parasitic company (Flowsana) which charges you a monthly fee to implement basic functionality which should be in the base product.

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If you knew Asana well enough, you’d know this is not a “basic functionality” and even if many people ask for it here, a lot more people would have their workflow disrupted by such a change. There are implications everywhere, that’s also the main reason why it hasn’t been done yet.

Enjoy the journey with Jira, we’ll stay here and have fun with Asana :slight_smile:

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Could you please elaborate on what these “far-reaching” implications would be and how they could disrupt the workflows of others? How difficult is it to either add the ability to set dates on subtasks relative to their parent tasks in the automation system, or simply add a checkbox (at some level, even if it is per-project) which changes that functionality on an opt-in basis?

Stop deflecting and pretending that the expectations of everyone in this thread are invalid because of some undisclosed high-minded reason without providing any evidence.

And yes, I’ll enjoy working with a platform that has the features I need, rather than “having fun” making up excuses for why they’re not implemented or charging me an extra $3.00 per month, per user for the privilege.

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I think we both agree Asana can’t decide that suddenly subtasks due date are linked to parent tasks, because in many cases you might want to have different dates on the parent than the subtasks, or at least have the freedom to do whatever you want with subtasks.

Your follow up argument is one that is very often use: “Let’s put a checkbox and let people decide”. I don’t think that’s a good idea. And you probably realised by now that Asana almost never made that choice. If you do, you end up with something like Salesforce or Wrike, where a ton of stuff is customisable, you need a consultant for 6 months to set up something, and on a daily basis you have different behaviours you don’t understand anymore.

Most of our clients praise Asana for its simplicity and yet its ability to be flexible. What I understand is that you are ok with having Asana a bit more complex to setup in order to be more powerful. I am not sure Asana will (or has) made that tradeoff…

Note: I do not work for Asana, I used it for the past 10 years and my team and I helped 500+ clients deploy it, so we tend to have a “broader” view of how clients approach the tool and how Asana usually approaches feature requests

Don’t get me wrong: I sometimes wish Asana designed subtasks differently from the start. A long time I decided to dedicate my energy to find ways to use Asana the way it is.

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Thanks for your explanation.

Of course making deadlines of subtasks dependent on their parent task this isn’t a universal requirement. However, some people (myself included, and can’t think of why anyone would want it to work any diffeently), need a way to achieve this, otherwise Asana isn’t a viable solution.

I understand your concern about adding a checkbox, this was given as a potential solution that is easy for software engineers to implement.

I would have expected the behavior to be availible via automation. I was surprised at just how limited the native automation features of Asana are.

Of course Jira has the ability to do it, but I think it is one of those “so complicated you need a consultant” type of products (but I’m persistant enough to figure it out, and as they say, HWBT).

What I was surprised to find during our evaluation is that even Monday has significantly more powerful automation features built-in, yet it wouldn’t even be considered “Enterprise Grade.”

I know Asana focuses on integrations (it’s even got one to Jira), which is great if you’re a company who want’s to spend $250+ per employee per month on subscription services (Asana + Flowsana + Zapier, Chat GPT / Gemini Pro, Email, Zoom / Teams, Figjam (or equivalent), industry speciffic software (like Adobe, Visual Studio or Office). More to the point, you also need someone to manage that.

I suppose I am still surprised that “Flowsana” as a company even exists, or that Asana havent either bought it, or just licensed their technology. Maybe flowsana does more than I think (and maybe their choice of name wasn’t the best), and it deserves it’s own space in the market, but from where I sit, it looks like a product who’s sole purpose is to address the shortcomings in Asana, and charge extra for it.

For what it’s worth, our org already uses Jira, and given that I’m heading up a new project, I decided to try something that wasn’t Jira (and didn’t have the same drawbacks). I know this sounds inefficient since the rest of our org has experience using it, but given that this team is mostly new hires, and in a differnet country to our HQ, I thought I’d give it a go.

Maybe it’s stockholm symdrome, maybe it’s that I already know how to use Jira. But I was surprised to find that something (which I consider simple, and is essential to my use-case), was straight-up not possible without additional 3rd party subscription services. I would have been find if it was just complicated, hard to set-up, or even a bit clunky, but to find that it’s impossible means that Asana really isn’t the right solution for us.

Thanks for following up.

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43

+1 vote