Update Project/Portfolio Fields Directly from Task View

Currently, portfolio rollups aggregate numeric data from project-level custom fields, but these values can only be updated from the project view. For teams tracking measurable outcomes (e.g. area restored, trees planted, units completed), it would be far more efficient to update these fields directly from the relevant task — particularly when that task represents a reporting milestone or claim.

Proposed improvement: Allow project-level (and by extension, portfolio-level) custom field values to be populated or updated from within a task, either manually or triggered automatically when a task is marked complete.

Use case example: A conservation project team completes a “Reporting Claim” task. At that point, they enter the hectares restored directly on the task, which updates the project field and rolls up to the portfolio dashboard — giving programme managers a real-time view of total area restored across all projects.

This would make metric tracking significantly more accessible for field-based and delivery teams, reducing the risk of data being missed or entered incorrectly.

Welcome, @Robert_Steer,

I think your “Use case example” is supported in Asana now, at least for numeric fields.

If a couple of projects have project-level numeric custom field “Deliv” then a user can update that field for any tasks in those projects.

If a portfolio has a portfolio-level rollup custom field “Delivs” then it will automatically provide project-level sums of “Deliv” for each project in the portfolio.

The footer of the portfolio list, or the footer of each group if you set the Group, shows the sum of those projects’ Delivs, as shown here:

Are you asking for something beyond that? Can you specify in more detail if so?

Thanks,

Larry