🧩 Subtask types now follow their parent, across projects

Asana Community Product Announcements Product Updates
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Hi Asana Community,

I’m excited to announce we’re introducing two changes to how new subtasks get their task type.

Subtask identity will be controlled by the parent’s task type. The project view someone uses to add a subtask will no longer determine its type, so a parent’s subtask behavior stays consistent across projects. This applies to basic Tasks, Milestones, Approvals, and custom task types. Basic Tasks, Milestones, and Approvals will create basic Task subtasks.

Custom task types will also get a subtask type inheritance checkbox. When creating or editing a custom task type, you’ll be able to choose between:

  • Having new subtasks inherit the parent’s custom task type.
  • Having new subtasks start as basic Tasks.

For example, a custom “Laptop Request” can contain basic fulfillment Tasks, while the project keeps “Laptop Request” as its default task type. The parent’s subtask behavior and the project’s default serve different needs.

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Please note the “Use this task type for subtasks” checkbox will be unselected by default – but you’ll have the option to reselect it.

Let us know if you have any questions or feedback!

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Hi Emily, thanks for the update. Is the new “Subtask Settings” checkbox still being rolled out as I am not seeing it populate when editing existing task types or creating new task types?

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Hi @Dustin_Vance, the subtask settings checkbox should be rolling out soon. It’s worth knowing that the checkbox will be unselected by default – but you’ll have the option to reselect it.

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Huh? Why would “subtasks” not be the type for subtasks? :thinking:

The inability to differentiate and sort subtasks from regular tasks is my single biggest ongoing challenge with organizing our team’s work Asana. I’m constantly building workarounds for this gap.

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A “subtask” task type would be problematic given Asana’s multi-homing feature: a task can be a subtask in one project and a top-level task in another project.

If in a particular use case you know that subtasks will never get multi-homed or assigned to a project, you could create a “subtask” custom task type. But as I said it wouldn’t really work for Asana to do it automatically for all subtasks.

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