Tracking multiple issues on tasks

Hi,

I wanted to know how others are recoding issue/s on an Asana task so that it can be reported and measured?

Currently, I have a project that is handling cataloguing requests and when I find issue/s they are either communicated to the team via comments or a sub task which is assigned to the project lead.

This isn’t allowing me the opportunity to Pareto or measure the frequency of issues. :grimacing:

@Jeffrey_Warren It sounds like you need to standardized the creation of an issue that can be extracted with an Advanced Search. Not sure you can data mine comments so it sees it would require a task or sub-task combined with a unique item such as a custom field or tag. You then could use the Advanced Search to search on the unique item with date created to determine the frequency. Their may be other solutions such as forms submissions (count and log the number of issue forms submitted) of Zapier but if you want to stick within Asana I think this would be pretty easy,

Hi @James_Carl, you’re exactly right, i do need to standardise this which is why I was reaching out to get a flavour of what others were doing in this space.

My main aim is to set this up so that it is easy to measure the frequency and type of error that is occurring.

Tags
Setting a tag is simple, unfortunately the tags are all nested together in the same cell on an export which calls for data manipulation.

Subtasks
a few more clicks required, data is separated and logical for pivot tabling. There are some added extras of assigning people to rectify. A bit more screwing around required.

Custom fields
It could be easy to insert maybe 3 custom fields with drop downs of issues however this would require data manipulation also.

Combination
I could create a subtask, assign to a team member and then apply a tag to categorise the subtask which would provide me an easy reporting mechanism. It may turn into a headache with the amount of extra work.

I’m leaning towards the combination, is there a simpler way that I’m missing…

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@Jeffrey_Warren How granular do you want the type of issue to be. Are Sections on the possible as well as multi-homing a task to each Project that contains a section for “all issues” but is multi-home to show up in a Master Issues Project. If you have a Project for just issues and sections for the type this may be another alternative.

I think you may be going in the right direction here. By moving these issues out to another project it would allow an uninhibited view of the data set which could be grouped and reported on far more granularly. This will also allow the work to be segregated to another team.

I’ll have a think about it. Im starting to think I may end up over reporting doing this. All I need to know is frequency of the issue over time and how fast it was rectified.

Do you have a Premium Account? We track request type and statuses using Custom Fields. For example (keep in mind I’m in Marketing, so my examples are going to be specific to that) we have a drop-down custom field that tracks whether it is a proposal, graphic, or communications request. In a separate project where we track pain points, we have a custom field that tracks whether solutions are unsolved or solved.

If you were to set up a combination of custom fields, you could track what items had issues, and what type of issues.

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That be may where Advanced Search comes in to identify date created and date completed selection parameters. And the multi-homing of a task allows you to keep in your issues project and choose to have it show up in another project without entering twice.

Okay, so I think I’ve got a solution.

I’ll create subtasks for each issue on the main task and then apply two tags.

  • 1 X category tag highlighted in blue so I always pick the blue tag first.
  • 1 X issue tag non highlighted

When I export my CSV I will be able to use the Parent Task column to filter the subtasks.

I’ve created a 1 X count column to count to the comma separating the tags which has been nested in a left function that will concatenate the category. In the next column I have done the same but nested a right concatenation to capture the issue.

I can now Pareto the category to understand how many I received each month (custom field with month allows this) and dive into the high category’s to understand repeat issues over the month. If I wanted to get granularly I could even track the time to resolve using created and completed dates.

This relys heavily on excel, I did explore Bridge 24 and Velocity to automate this reporting unfortunately it would have required investment or they weren’t able to reproduce an out come due to Asana nesting tags plus customer fields being vacant on sub tasks.

What’s your thoughts?

My immediate reaction to “this relies heavily on Excel” invokes the thought you could hire the same programmer that I used to create CSV To Asana Simple List Generator- My Gift To Community - #42 by James_Carl and probably have everything you need converted from a CSV export to your own custom CSV to PDF File report including calculating fields. I got him from Upworks and had about $200 into the whole project. You could use the engine of my program and have him customize to your needs. Make sure if you use a lot of sub-tasks to make a conscious effort to assign the parent project to a subtask as they will be project-orphaned if you don’t. If you use a Windows platform let me know if you want me to make an introduction. I think it is one of those things that you will need to test to see if it works and you get the data you are looking for. If it becomes burdensome, I think you still have the option of an Issues Project and multi-homing tasks to actual project and a specified section for issues that by multi-homing show up in both the Issues Project using sections by type of issue and under the actual project in a section called issues. More than one way, but there are solutions as @Laura_Johnson indicates. There have been a number of posts on plus and minuses of using subtasks To Subtask or not to Subtask

Yes, sure do have a premium account. I have multiple issues/developments etc. for each task which means I have to have a way of separating each of these issues against 1 task. Remember that custom fields are not displayed on subtasks.

I’ll provide a capture at the bottom of this thread.

cheers for the response.

I’ve read most of these posts and still opted to use the subtask as I create it in the parent task and can break away any conversation I need specific to the issue we’re trying to solve.

I have one avenue to check out before I go down this road. It would be really nice to get this information at a click. Although I have the spreadsheet set out now that all I need is a raw CSV output of data, past it in, refresh the graphs and everything is done. Still, I’d rather what your man has done. I’ll be in touch if I go that way - thanks a bundle.

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I have to say - we’ve largely abandoned Sub-tasks for this reason. We are using section dividers in combination with tasks for most of our organization, and use subtasks for something more akin to a checklist. For example (I’m in marketing, so this is relative to launching a campaign):

PRODUCTION (DIVIDER):
Task: Send Collateral to Printer (with custom fields)
Subtasks:

  • Brochure
  • Postcards
  • Welcome Swag

We tend to just assign the task with an assignee and date. Not ideal, but it makes a lot of what you’re talking about easier to handle.

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After doing this for a couple of days I realise that the multi-homing idea is sooooooooooo much better. I can not only create a subtask, assign an owner and place it in its own Issues project BUT if there is any follow-on work like development I can multi-home it in the development project and have that team commence work straight away.

The issues project is distributed in main sections/categories and then a tag on each subtask delineates the type of issue. My monthly Perato is going to be exactly what I want to see.

The biggest reason for this move was the tags, for some reason when I was assigning them they would not stay in the order I entered them.?.? There is some kind of Asana-ism that disrupted the sorting.

In terms of visualising the outstanding tasks, I’m now able to view the tasks as 1 holistic picture and I’m glad that the tags pushed me that way.

Thanks for the input @James_Carl and @Laura_Johnson, much appreciated.

Jeff

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