Asana team -
I’m hoping this is something that is on the radar to finish building out the feature for task dependencies. The “waiting on” feature, is a neat idea but isn’t really useful in its current form, as it really is just a “note” on a task, which you still have to see the task and look at it, read it, and deal with it…even though it is not available to be worked on. Here’s the most useful and easy way I can visualize it being executed.
Enable a “Hack” control to allow users to hide “waiting on” tasks from “my tasks” list. This is the major piece missing for task dependencies to be useful in our environment. We all have task overload, and we don’t need more things showing up in our task list when we can’t actually work on them anyway. But…if the dependent task was completed, then the new task should appear in the (pre-assigned) assignee’s task list. This would allow us to schedule out so much of our work sequentially. Would be huge across our company.
Does anyone know if I’m the first to bring this up, or is this already on the agenda for a future release?
This is a common complaint, and Asana has acknowledged that the dependency feature is not yet fully mature. We don’t know if and when it appears on their roadmap, but it’s definitely on their radar.
I would like throw in my vote with the OP. The subsequent items ‘reposted’ are very valid as well! At a minimum, IMO, the ‘uncheckablenss’ of a task or subtask with dependent items should be at the top of the list for addressing. It seems silly to allow a dependent task to be marked as complete with out notification (“This is dependent on xyz task, completing this task will mark the dependent task as complete”) or a complete inability to mark it complete without completing the dependent task.
Another function that could be really useful would be to have an option that, when you change one task, all the dependent ones move. This would avoid all the time to manually change the dates of the subsequent tasks.
If I need 3 days in between the task completed and the next, then it could be moved automatically. If not, people could choose to do it manually.
I hope this stays on the radar of Asana!
Thank you,
Ana
I second this request - was just headed over to Asana to post this same request - why is it that task dependencies are merely just flags? They should also work to help you push out subsequent due dates on dependent tasks.
I came here to post the very same request, and am really glad to see that I am not alone in the thought.
My entire company agree that the dependency / ‘Waiting On’ feature would be far more useful if sequential tasks were to automatically schedule following the completion of an earlier task. Let’s say if Task A were completed, Task B would be automatically scheduled and on my radar (whether its for the same day Task A was completed, or 1 week after etc). Very different uses compared to the nearest possible feature - Recurring Tasks.
The only reason I moved to Premium was task dependency. I feel a little cheated as the dependent tasks (time lines) are not auto updated if the parent task gets delayed.
It’s a real pain to manually sit and update hundreds of child tasks when the parent task gets delayed or duration is changed.
Have been looking a zoho projects, interface is not as sleek as Asana but it does the job i.e. auto update dependent tasks.
Common Asana team, I am counting on you to save my mundane activity every morning.
+1 for task dependencies being actually dependent – as in, you move one due date, you move them all. Otherwise, it’s essentially as useful as putting a note in the description that “you gotta finish this other thing first.” No real connection or accountability.
ALSO - dependencies need to export. I have no idea why this is the one piece of information that doesn’t come with the export. Print, .csv, or otherwise. It’s just flat out not there. My business analyst, who isn’t working in asana day - to- day and just wants to pull reports weekly to analyze how due dates change, etc, needs to be able to see dependencies!!
There seems to be an error in the tooltip listed for dependencies. Task B is dependent on task A and so B shows as waiting on A. However, if you try to add A again as a dependency B is waiting on, instead of showing ‘already added’ or something to that nature, the message is instead ‘Tasks can’t be dependent on each other’, which led to some confusion for my team.
Glad I’m not the only one with this problem! I thought maybe I had it set up wrong…
Honestly, the “task dependency” feature seems rather useless if my task list doesn’t update accordingly. Would love to have my task list only show tasks which are ready to be completed!
Definitely agree with everyone else about dependencies. The goal is to trigger the next tasks, not just have a reminder/notification. Ideally, I’d like an option where you can see dependent tasks, but they are “grayed out” until the previous tasks complete, OR you can have the tasks hidden somehow, and once the first task is completed it generates the next task.
As others have mentioned, there should also be a more dynamic way to assign due dates for dependent tasks - instead of a particular date, it might be a certain number of days/weeks after the first task. This way, if the first task moves, the dependent task would also be pushed out if it was set up to begin one week after. (The same way that most apps allow recurring tasks to recur every second Thursday, every 30 days, every “17th” of the month, etc.)
This should occur with templates as well. That way I could create a template where tasks are dependent, and set it so they occur at certain spaced intervals after the first task is complete. When I launch a new project from the template, I can change the due date of the first tasks, and all dependent tasks update accordingly.
Somewhat frustrating that we selected Asana as our project management tool because it had dependencies and custom templates, only to find these features aren’t fully developed yet.
I agree with Sarah_V, and would also like to see this functionality spread to templates. Is there a timeline for this? I think several of us signed up for Asana Premium because of task dependencies - and it isn’t fully functional yet. I feel a little cheated?
Agree with the above. I’m new to an organization that uses Asana and this lack of functionality completely caught me off guard. I feel like it is reasonable, with the amount of requests and views of this discussion, to expect someone from Asana to be able to at least speak if this is something in their strategic roadmap.
As of right now, the dependency feature is little more than a small flag/comment, and doesn’t help myself or team plan and sequence tasks efficiently as several other PPM tools.
Have task dependencies that don’t actually do anything is is rather pointless and as others have said this is one of the reasons subscribed to Premium, and I feel a little cheated.
At the very least, we should be able to filter out tasks that have uncompleted dependencies (that doesn’t sound like a hard fix?), but ultimately what I would expect is a more complete solution including tasks that can auto update dates based on completed predecessors and these can configured to alert the assigned users.
It’s not too much to ask from a ‘premium feature’ imo.