I set up a new project in list view, and in order to use the timeline to schedule the tasks from the list, I first gave everything the same due date. My thinking was this would place all my tasks into the timeline in the right order, so I could just drag them into position. However, what this actually did was drop everything on the timeline in the reverse order of the initial list. And when I did put dates on everything, I ended up with a waterfall that “flows” up.
In other words, the earliest tasks on the left of my timeline are on the bottom of the view, and the last tasks are at the top of the view.
Is there any way to regenerate or redraw the timeline view so that it looks like a proper waterfall?
We are wondering this over at my company as well. We have time set aside for some “trial and error” but so far the timeline is a little more burden than useful.
Hi! Ah shucks that sounds irksome @Brian_Titus and @Laura_Johnson . Of course here’s the Guide article about Timeline
Regarding your situation in particular, I’d recommend multi selecting groups of tasks and reordering them via drag and drop. This way you can grab a group of related tasks and quickly switch them around.
It’s very helpful to know that this is an issue that can come up with Timeline. We appreciate you sharing! And I hope that the workaround I provided helps give you a quick solution. Perhaps other Community members have ideas, as well.
Thanks for the reply. In this case, the issue is the vertical ordering… so it’s not really possible to drag in groups; each task would have to be dragged to the correct vertical position. See screengrab:
I think it’s more that what we are assuming will be the order of timeline tasks (ie: sections and tasks within a section will remain grouped) are not exactly happening the way they would in other project management software (ie: Microsoft Project). We’re hoping with some trial and error we’ll be able to shift a significant amount of business to asana - just need to figure out the quirks.
Another vote for a quick fix to Timeline sequence. Asana should automatically lay tasks out in the same sequence as the task list (down the page), and in the same sections.
I now have a project of 100 tasks which I have to manually move every task to the correct locations and for each move Asana generates a notification about changing dates (which I’m not changing).
Brian, somehow you are in a better position than I am! My tasks are all over the place on the timeline. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason behind it! If there is – it’s lost on me.
+1 for a LTR waterfall view of timeline
+1 for subtasks that have been assigned to the project to also appear “under” the main task.
This!! We want so badly to use Timeline for our particularly complex projects but however it decides to Cascade on the back end and the seeming complete disconnect from sections makes it unusable.
i just need to say how bad we need some kind of timeline sorting/organizing function. my personal recommendation is to be able to have swimlanes that are defined by custom categories… so for example, i could say put all my release milestones on the top; put my comms tasks under that; my collateral tasks under that; and any marketing under that. if you’re the only user of the timeline, it’s nota big deal bc you can just buildit they you want. but for team collaboration, especially across multiple projects, it’s important to be able to have consistency. some (any!) kind of functionality in this regard will tremendously improve things.
One of the issues with us finding a project management system was having a timeline as a part of staff and labour allocation. Asana does this but not perfectly.
We can see how the timeline works for individual projects but this does not stop staff being over allocated to different jobs (on the one day). Our work around is to create a new project (we called it 'Master Timeline’) where we can see all projects grouped together. The problem is that when we open the master timeline there is tasks placed randomly (up and down) over the timeline with no visual correlation between tasks. We have have dependancies stretch from top to bottom of the whole timeline which can be quite annoying moving timeline tasks up and down to stay in some form of grouping.
What would help us . . .
Projects staying tight (or together) in the timeline. Maybe a vertical project bar to the left of the timeline???
Searching the timeline by staff member (to see one staff member at a time to easier see conflicts).
Not all staff have email addresses. It would help us to create a form of allocation without email addresses. I know we could do this with fields but the staff allocation does not show up in the timeline.
Agreed! At the very least pull over the section headers from the list tab to create the swim lanes! I just got through setting up a list project with sections, and without the sections transferring over timeline looks a shade (pun intended) lost.
Please fix the ordering of tasks in Sections of the Timeline view, as it doesn’t match the order of tasks in Sections on List view. When I drag around the tasks to clean up the Timeline view, it then messes up the order of tasks in the List view. You have to use one or the other, which is not ideal.
I just started using Asana today and this is one of the first things I saw. It’s not a feature that’s needed… it’s one that is demanded. Until you have this functionality you just don’t have a proper project management platform.
Without this I can’t afford to manually make up for it as it’s expected (all your competitors do this)!! Sadly I need to find another alternative now.
Just encountered this problem/bug. Tasks within a Section in the List view inexplicably appear in reverse order in the Timeline in its default “none” sort order view. As stated by several users before, this is a simple issue that should be fixed for basic Asana functionality. The Tasks within Sections in the Timeline tab when in the default “non” sorted order should appear in the exact same order as they appear in the default “none” sorted order of the List View tab.
This is something our team is aware of and a known issue in the Forum; hopefully this is something our team can sort out in future updates! I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with the main thread to consolidate feedback on this topic; on my end I’ll post an update on this thread as soon as I have an update!
Again thanks for sharing your feedback with us and sincere apologies for the trouble!
