Hi, Chiming in here that this feature will really help my organization. Our Tasks are cluttered up… Need this.
Thanks!
i would also love this feature, and know of several other organizations that would like this ability!
1 Like
Seems to me that this forum topic is more about hiding custom fields that don’t belong to the project the task is being viewed, not actually preventing that custom field values from being seen or edited. Indeed, users have suggested here that any fields not included in the project the task is being viewed from should still be viewable with a “Show all fields” link or similar. I think this misses a more fundamental problem.
What is actually desperately needed is much better access permission controls on custom fields. At the moment there’s no way to easily define who can view or edit custom field values (not definitions), when you create or manage custom field.
I believe Asana recently added support to define which individual users can edit custom field definitions (not values), but this falls very short of the mark for many custom field access control use cases.
We need to be able to define access permissions like this:
- View custom field value
- Edit custom field value
- Edit custom field definition
And this should be optionally definable by one or more of the following:
- Individually designated users
- Users that are members of the project the field is attached to
- Users that have access to the task the field is attached to (e.g. a multi-homed task that lives in another project with different users, and is assigned to, or has collaborators on that task that aren’t in the project where the custom field has been added)
That last one is actually not the preferable behaviour for most of our use cases, but I could see it being useful if there was an option to enable it.
3 Likes
it would be great to be able to customize what custom fields are shown in the task pane, even if they are from that same projects. On certain projects some custom fields only serve the purpose of allowing to create rules based on those, but do not contain any relevant info for the task itself.
2 Likes
Is the general consensus on all the many posts about hiding custom fields that do not belong in a project is possible yet?
Thought I would create a new team today quickly for an outsourcing company to use with us, and they can see all the cost and private related fields that should only be visible to the task on the other team project. The new team project has 0 custom fields added so I am not sure why these others show.
Also, weirdly, its only showing some of the custom fields I added to the other project. They are to do with cost and profit calculations. Even if I remove the task from the original project so its this new project with 0 custom fields I can still see the private data fields?
The fields should be private to the tasks only when in the other team project as they have sensitive data for management purposes the team members should not see. So we either need to stop using those custom fields which is a detriment affect to the other project management, or create duplicate tasks?
What I thought would be a straightforward task for a Sunday afternoon is now going to ruin my plans for this week 
(if its not possible still).
UPDATE 1: I think my issue could be a bug… I have even now removed the Profit formula field from all projects and it STILL shows. I even change the formula to just 0 and it still shows along with the other fields that were part of the formula. This field is now in 0 projects yet it is showing along with other private fields that were part of the formula but not in this project. I cannot Delete the field, even though it is not in any project, clicking Delete quickly flashes the screen but does nothing. So I just cannot assign tasks to this new team project at all as I have no way of removing the sensitive data.
I also tried removing the task from the new team project, and now the profit formula field is removed, re-add the task back into the new team project, but The formula field is STILL showing, and there are 2 other unwanted custom fields added in there now too.
It looks like I can create a new task in there and no custom fields show. I really dont want to duplicate the same task with different people accessing different same task, that would be quite a nightmare.
If I duplicate the original task, and add it into both projects, the Profit field which is unused is now missing, but other fields not in this project but in the other project are showing in there still. If I then remove it from the project with custom fields, nearly all the fields remove except those private ones with costs. So they are still kept in there even though I remove it from the project that has those fields.
I cant find any setting that says these fields are “global” to make them show in all projects.
If as an Admin I add the task to the first project with all the custom fields, I get two sections in the task for fields. One is “My tasks fields” the other is just “Fields”. When I then remove it, it is the “My tasks fields” that are still kept in the task for other members that are in the new project. So something is different with these fields as they are called “My tasks fields” for the admin, and then kept across all projects and members even when removed from the original project. Fore he other member who should not see these fields its just called “Fields”
UPDATE 2: The fields that are showing in the project that do not have any custom fields, and when a regular guest member is viewing the task, are my own (admin) users fields added to My Tasks! So if I remove a custom field from My Tasks, the regular guest member in the project that has no custom fields, has that field removed. So its showing a different users own custom fields added into their My Tasks. Surely that is not correct??
It means until this is fixed I have to remove all these fields from my own My Tasks just so some guests dont see them in a different project. Doesn’t make sense. I will lose my own personal setup of my own tasks over that shows costs, status, timings and things that I personally use to prioritise tasks.
Unfortunately there is still one field showing, the most private one, which is our costs to the customer I dont want project members to see. This field is now now added into any projects, and is not in my tasks, so I have no idea why its there. Could it be another organisation member has added it into their My Tasks and so also shows for guest members? I will have to ask. Interestingly I cannot edit the field, only a cross to delete it from the task which I do not want to do, as it will result in data loss.
Also, a massive worry about this issue now is the unintentional sharing of sensitive data. I am very scared to add any more custom fields to tasks or My Tasks in case they are seen in projects with Guest members who should not them. This is a very serious issue.
I can see if I add a field back into My Tasks I can choose to not Add it to my organisation library, so I can re-add the fields back into My Tasks just fior me, but I am assuming other organisation members who need this info wont be able to see it now? Unless I add it into the library, but then they show for projects not supposed to have them.
I have sent my bug to Asana via chat. Attached is an example of the issue. I am logged in as a guest user who is only added to this project and the field Amity Quote field is not added into this project, I should not see it. The message that its disabled is a bit silly, it should not actually show, not say that its disabled and show it. If we want to show uneditable fields there should be another setting to prevent it changing, but removing it from the project should remove it from here, not disable it.
Its even crazier that as the guest user can choose to delete this field and its value too, so its not fully disabled even. Guest users could not only see private data, they can delete it!
I also wanted to remove it from the Library to see if that works, but I cant remove it because it says its in another project or portfolio, but as you can see below it its in 0 projects and portfolios.
I would use this feature to track QA efficacy and efficiency stats on tickets, and I would greatly prefer not to clutter the developer’s or client’s view of the ticket with those stats.
Hi @Laurence_Cope , I agree that being able to delete the field value is bizarre - I’ve raised this on a few occasions here in the forum and I still hope Asana can lock that.
Removing the field from the library would actually hide the field entirely from any user (members or guests) that do not have access to the project that the local field belongs to.
The reason you cannot remove the field from the library, even though you are seeing 0 projects and portfolios, is likely because the field was likely in a project that was recently deleted. If you wait up to 30 days you should logically see this ability available to remove from the library. The reason for this is that, technically, the field is in the deleted project which could be restored within 30 days.
To avoid this, next time, before you delete a project, remove the fields (that are in the library) from the project.
Doesn’t sound like a very good process of intentional. I’d still refer to this as a bug. I don’t want the field to be local to one project, I use it on a few and in My Tasks. I would expect it just not show in a project that the field is not added to. Seems very bad to show fields that are not in the project. Like I said, they contain private data.
The only way can move forward with my new team is not use Asana to store the private data and I have it all in a MS365 spreadsheet and have shared the spreadsheet with those who need access. Its makes project management longer and more cumbersome. A step backwards. It makes no sense to have the ability to remove fields from projects but still show its data to everyone.
I would really love to see this change as well. Some of our teams use different methods to track the priority level of a project’s tasks, which results in having two priority levels on my tasks—one of which is irrelevant to my work. I’d like a way to hide those teams’ custom fields to keep tasks cleaner and eliminate unnecessary distractions.
1 Like