To Subtask or not to Subtask

@Craig_Fifer do you use some sort of time tracking on subtasks? Like harvest or toggl. If so: how do you make sure time entries are associated with the correct project?

2 Likes

Repeating my comment here (from the thread regarding a tree view of tasks/subtasks):

Definitely need this! My teams needs 3 levels of organization, forcing us to use subtask. I hate that subtasks don’t associate with the parent task or project. And when you do “assign” the subtask to a project (so it stays organized in your task list), it repeats the subtask by creating a new task in the project that you then have to reposition under the correct parent. I do love the Instagantt interface…just need that to be mimicked in my Asana task list!

3 Likes

Exactly - those 2 simple changes will definitely increase the usefulness of subtasks - they will became priceless feature imho

This is exactly what I’ve been hoping was possible. Is there a feature request anywhere for the second point?

Don’t allow a task with incomplete subtasks to be completed, while providing a meaningful error message.

I’d like to go lay down some votes if there is…

10 Likes

100% agree with this as well!

6 Likes

Someone already created a Product Feedback topic that included this. It received several votes and was closed being over 6 months old.

You can already add subtasks to the project which shows up alongside regular tasks. Also, any subtask assigned to a person will show up in their my task view. This allows you to only show pertinent subtasks and not all in project views.

You could take this a step further and create a section titled the overall task and add all the subtasks to the project, then moved to that section. This would allow you to use the functionality of the main task list while keeping them subtasks, including custom fields, multi task assigning, etc

At some point though, you have to question your overall structure and see if your utilizing teams/projects/sections/tasks/subtasks appropriately. I’ve found that when I run into a wall with Asana… there is usually a better more elegant way of doing it that doesn’t involve a million subtasks…

If your main problem is that employees don’t know they have subtasks assigned to them… because they only looked at the top level task… that’s an employee training issue. To make it easier on them, you could have a pseudo “tag” for each task that has subtasks like [ST] at the start of a task name containing subtasks?

1 Like

In order for subtasks to be useful they need to “complete” when the main task is completed!!

5 Likes

Yeah, I keep finding orphan subtasks that were never completed by the team and then clicking to see it was a subtask and the parent was completed. You shouldn’t be able to complete a parent task w/o subtasks completed or it should auto-mark all those sub-tasks completed. Super messy we are finding now.

Really wish more care was put into sub-tasks.

5 Likes

Here’s a use-case in support of leaving subtasks unchecked even if the main task is marked complete: We are waiting for someone to reply to an email. Everything else related to the task is complete, and only one person needs to keep track of the remaining task. We mark the main tasks complete, and make sure that the person in charge of follow up is assigned to the “outlier” - this way our boards stay clean with the most current events and the smaller, less important (but still need to be checked on) subtask can still be monitored.

I can see why others would want everything to be checked off - and, to be fair, there are probably going to be some projects where i DO want everything checked off in order for a task to be marked complete. This seems like another feature that should be allowed to be toggled on/off on a per project basis.

The utter lack of support for subtasks is a dealbreaker for our 200-person organization, which had hoped to move off of Basecamp and on to Asana.

Many basic features have been requested in this thread, which would bring them from nearly useless to being very valuable. At a minimum we need:

  1. ability to see that a task contains subtasks from the project overview
  2. connect subtasks to their parent task for My Tasks view
  3. prevent task from being completed with incomplete subtasks
  4. show subtasks on timeline (optional)
  5. give basic subtask information via API (number of subtasks existing for a task, at least)

Please help! We would gladly send you $10,000+ per month for these features. We really need functional subtasks but right now they are too hidden and easy to miss.

8 Likes

@Hot_Choco My company is developing an outline-based Asana desktop client, Desksana, which provides almost all of what you’re looking for and we think makes subtask usage much more practical. (It works offline, too.)

You can see more about it here, or PM me if you’d like to discuss further.

2 Likes

I second these requested features. I’m on the market for a project and team management solution and this is something I would consider basic. Many of the competitors have these features.

I am starting to use Asana just now and I am already identifying a few key issues which may in the end let us to choose a different solution for our teams.

Is there a way to know which new features are being seriously considered by Asana? I have been using Asana with my team for a few months now. We like it (especially paired with Instagantt) but the BIGGEST annoyance is the lack of subtask nesting in the Asana view. We want to expand Asana/Instagantt company-wide, but I’m afraid this issue will stop people from wanting to use it. If we know the feature is coming, that would help a ton.

3 Likes

Yes, it would make a huge difference if users had a choice to view sub-tasks from the main screen. Like an outline where each sub-task was visible but indented.

1 Like

Hi Spencer,

If you (or anyone else reading this thread) are on Windows and would like to try a beta of Desksana which gives you exactly that - a true multi-level outline of your Asana tasks/subtasks - send me a direct Message and I can get you a beta version. (A Mac version is planned but Windows is first out of the gate.)

I vote yes for sub-sections! and subsections that collapse!

2 Likes

@Todd_Cavanaugh , I’m just getting started with Asana, and this post saved me a TON of time and wasted work. Thank you so much!

You seem to have a lot of experience with the platform, so maybe I can ask you this: Do you have any tips to make sure that Asana is helping an organization accomplish the most important work, not just the most urgent? It just seems that this platform makes it easy to prioritize what’s easy, because it’s difficult to break down stickier work items into actionable tasks.

2 Likes

Hi @lynsaymillsfabio, glad it was helpful!

Asana is a great platform. I’ve found Asana allows more than adequate ways to break down work between projects, sections, tasks, and subtasks. It’s a great question, and I do cover some important related concepts in some of the lessons in the Asana Training Masterclass (like the one regarding My Tasks). That might helps!

Todd Cavanaugh
Consultant on Asana

2 Likes

I’m in complete agreement here. I think the 1st thing you listed is really the biggest factor. Subtasks are great for listing step by step requirements of a task or something like that but beyond that they aren’t very useful for me. Trying to convince our organization to move towards using Asana as intended.

We do Agile development so we have a new project every two weeks that’s a new sprint and has all the tasks on it. The only problem is that sometimes we end up with a project that is a multi-tiered endeavor that will actually last months and it’s on there as a task when it’s anything but.

I recently learned though that any task can be assigned to multiple projects so I’m going to make the recommendation that larger endeavors be their own projects and tasks on those projects can be added to the sprint when needed. This will make it much easier to manage the larger projects, track their progress and schedule development time on them into the sprint.