I’ve moved your post to an existing thread about this topic. As you’ll see in this thread, it’s a behavior change.
One thing to note in case you’re not aware: while the subtask shows the project of its parent, the subtask is not actually attached to the project, it’s just a visual display of the project. But when you “select the project again”, you’re doing more than just making the section display, you’re now actually attaching the subtask to the project - i.e. it’s not just a display change, it’s altering the underlying data for the subtask - and that has its own side-effects (notably, the subtask will now show in the project’s list view as if it’s a top-level task).
So will Asana be providing a patch for those companies that do not want this feature. If not please submit as a bug so we can get a patch for our site. Thanks.
I don’t work for Asana so can’t say anything for sure. But historically Asana has not to my knowledge provided code patches for specific customers and IMO is very unlikely to do so. Really the only thing to do is to continue lobbying here for a product behavior change.
As I understand the situation, your assumption is incorrect. Although the UI is definitely misleading here and should really be optimised.
In order to achieve what you want – and we do that too all the time – you need to add the subtask to the project of the parent task again manually, although the UI tells you that it’s part of it already while actually it isn’t really. So you need to click the “+”-button next to “Projects” and add it actually to the project. Then you have two different tasks in the same project view that can be arranged individually.
I was fuming when I noticed this change to subtasks today. The UI strongly suggested to me you can no longer add a subtask to the same project as the parent task, and it was now done automatically - though the subtask doesn’t actually appear in those projects independently.
I didn’t even bother clicking the project name above after clicking the ‘+’, as the wording suggested to me this wouldn’t actually work - like an error message.
But just like you said, it does actually work if you go ahead and add the project… even though it’s already in the project(?).
I think a change in the UI / language could really help here!
It’s unclear whether the parent project(s) being shown are ‘inherited’ projects or ‘real’ projects - and I think this will cause a lot of confusion, especially when the subtask doesn’t actually appear in those projects as a top level task when it’s ‘inherited’
It’s highly suggestive that adding the subtask to the parent project using the ‘+’ button is something you can’t do because ‘The parent task is already part of this project’. The task is not actually even in that project!
Just note that per my post above, doing that does have some side-effects, most notably the subtask will now show in the project view as if it’s a top-level task in addition to showing as a subtask.
Hi everyone, quick follow-up here after digging into the feedback with the team.
A few different things are happening across the cases raised in this thread:
On rules, we haven’t found a change tied to this release. Rules still apply to first-level subtasks, not nested subtasks. With parent project and field info now visible in more places, that limitation has become much more noticeable, and we understand why it feels like a regression.
On drag and drop, we did confirm a bug. The updated experience is intentional overall, but there’s an issue when tasks expand while you’re dragging and scrolling.
On multihomed subtasks, some of the current behavior is expected, and we also see places where the experience needs improvement, especially when inherited project info surfaces empty or irrelevant fields.
Thanks again for continuing to share specific examples. They helped us separate expected behavior from issues we need to improve, and they’re feeding directly into the follow-up work our team is planning. If you run into other edge cases, keep posting them here.
Adding my voice to the many…Our workflows utilize rules that create subtasks and home them in specific projects to enable their own specific workflows AND limit the fields that team members see/use (new request pipeline → workgroup deliverable = subtask in workgroup pipeline → peer review approval subtask, master communications calendar placeholder subtask, etc.) . I agree with others that have stated that the current layout causes more confusion. It also has the potential to skew data and require additional audits/corrections if people start filling out fields on subtasks that don’t require that input. It was already a challenge for me to get basic users to identify if/when a task was in a specific project. Now, the fact that the subtask appears to be in the parent task project (even if it’s not) further limits their troubleshooting and increases the instances when I have to step in and do something as basic as “add to/remove from project” when someone has accidentally clicked the “x” and removed something when they shouldn’t have or added something in error. Speaking of which…it would be nice if permissions for removing tasks from a project could be restricted at the admin level in project settings. We need team members to have editor access to update task fields without getting click happy and removing their task from the project itself.
At some point, Asana changed subtasks so they inherit the same projects as their parent tasks, without allowing them to be removed from those projects. We have many use cases for why this disrupts our workflow. It clogs the project board rather than keeping it in on the parent task
As an asana user - I used to be able to set subtasks within a task and these only displayed within the task itself.
Currently - Subtasks set on parent tasks are now showing as independent tasks on our main boards which is interfering with reporting and work management.
This - Subtasks showing up as project cards in Board view seems like a similar if not the same issue. However subtasks are being added to the same project board as the parent task automatically and i cannot remove the project from the subtask without removing the parent task from the project.
Asana made a change, has iterated on it, and is also still committed to improvements.
I’ve merged this topic into the existing topic where you can learn more and stay up to date. If the prior posts don’t answer your questions, please post again there.
How was this not rolled back before more reiteration?
This alone is enough for me to no longer recommend Asana to others.
Please at least put a divider between actual projects and inherited projects. And also expand the subfields from the real projects on open directly. I have to expand so many projects daily to see the fields it is actually tiring for my wrist from the added clicks.
