Website Development Tasks in Asana Sometimes Remain Stuck in “In Progress” Even After the Work Is Completed

[joeroot.pk80]

Hello Asana Community,

I am currently facing one persistent issue with the way I manage development tasks for my website in Asana, and I am hoping someone can help me understand what might be causing it. The specific problem is that some website development tasks remain stuck in the In Progress status even after the actual work has been completed and the task has clearly reached its expected end point. The task itself contains the correct description, assignee, due date, and other information, and the developer can complete the work normally, but the task does not consistently transition to the final status that I use to indicate that the work is finished. This is becoming difficult to manage because the project view then gives an inaccurate picture of what is actually completed. The issue is intermittent, so some tasks move through the workflow correctly while others remain in their previous status even though the underlying work has already been completed.

The tasks are related to ongoing development and maintenance work on my website, and I use a fairly straightforward workflow where a task begins in an initial state, moves into In Progress when development starts, and should eventually be moved to the completed state when the work has been finished. The problem occurs after the task has already been worked on and the expected completion condition has been met. In some cases, the person working on the task marks it as complete and everything updates normally, but with other tasks the status appears to remain unchanged when I later review the project. The task may contain comments indicating that the work has been completed and the relevant website change may already be visible, yet the task still appears as an active item in the project. I have checked the task manually rather than relying only on the project overview, and the inconsistent status behaviour seems to be associated with particular task updates rather than a general inability to use task completion.

I have been trying to determine whether the problem is related to how the tasks are being updated rather than to the website work itself. The affected tasks are created using the same general project structure and contain similar fields, but they do not always behave identically when the work is finished. I have checked whether the assignee has sufficient permissions to update the task and whether the task is located in the correct project. I have also compared tasks that transition correctly with tasks that remain active and have not yet found an obvious difference that explains the behaviour. The task history and comments show that activity is taking place, but the final state does not always reflect the latest action. Because the website development itself is not blocked, I am mainly trying to understand why the task status can become out of sync with the actual state of the work.

The issue becomes more noticeable when tasks are being updated as part of the normal development workflow rather than manually reviewed one by one. I rely on the project status to understand which website tasks still require attention, so an item remaining in In Progress after completion makes it appear that development work is still outstanding. This means I have to periodically open individual tasks and manually verify whether the work has actually been completed. I have also noticed that the problem can occur when task updates are made relatively close together, although I cannot yet confirm that timing is directly responsible. I have deliberately avoided changing the entire project structure while investigating this because I want to identify whether there is a specific Asana behaviour or workflow configuration that could explain why some task status changes are not being reflected consistently.

I have reviewed the project settings and the workflow configuration to make sure that there is not an obvious rule preventing completed tasks from being represented correctly. I am also trying to understand whether any automation, custom field, task dependency, or integration could be affecting the final task state, but I do not want to assume that one of these is responsible without evidence. The important part is that I am dealing with one specific synchronization/state problem: the actual website development work can be finished while the corresponding Asana task remains incorrectly shown as active. I have compared timestamps and task activity where possible, and I am collecting examples of affected tasks so that I can determine whether there is a consistent sequence immediately before the status becomes stuck. At this point, I would prefer to troubleshoot the behaviour systematically rather than repeatedly correcting the status manually.

I would appreciate guidance from the Asana community on how to diagnose why individual tasks can remain in In Progress after the work associated with them has been completed. In particular, I would like to know what task history, workflow settings, rules, permissions, or other information I should inspect to determine why a status update is sometimes not reflected correctly. If there is a recommended way to trace the exact sequence of changes made to an affected task and compare it with a task that transitions normally, that would be very helpful. My goal is to make the website development project accurately reflect the real state of the work so that completed tasks consistently leave the active workflow without requiring me to manually check and correct their status afterward. Sorry for long post!

[Phil_Seeman]

Hi @joeroot.pk80,

Here’s what you haven’t told us yet that we would need to know:

1. When you talk about a task’s “status”, how specifically is that manifested in Asana? I’m assuming it’s a custom field - probably a single-select dropdown custom field with options representing a task’s possible statuses - but I’m just guessing; please let us know. (A screenshot might help to clarify this.)

2. You’ve told us about one possible value for a task’s status: “In Progress”. What is the status value called that should get set when a task is marked complete?

3. How do you expect that a task’s status gets moved from “In Progress” to the completed value you identify in (2) above? There are two main possibilities I can think of: either someone manually updates it, or it gets updated by a rule, something like “If a task is marked complete, then set its Status custom field to [whatever that completed value is]”. I’m guessing it’s not via a person manually updating it or you wouldn’t have made this post, so I’m assuming it must be via a rule. But again I’m guessing here; please let us know for sure.

[joeroot.pk80]

@joeroot.pk80

I am currently facing one persistent issue with the way I manage development tasks for my website in Asana, and I am hoping someone can help me understand what might be causing it. The specific problem is that some website development tasks remain stuck in the In Progress status even after the actual work has been completed and the task has clearly reached its expected end point. The task itself contains the correct description, assignee, due date, and other information, and the developer can complete the work normally, but the task does not consistently transition to the final status that I use to indicate that the work is finished. This is becoming difficult to manage because the project view then gives an inaccurate picture of what is actually completed. The issue is intermittent, so some tasks move through the workflow correctly while others remain in their previous status even though the underlying work has already been completed.

The tasks are related to ongoing development and maintenance work on my website, and I use a fairly straightforward workflow where a task begins in an initial state, moves into In Progress when development starts, and should eventually be moved to the completed state when the work has been finished. The problem occurs after the task has already been worked on and the expected completion condition has been met. In some cases, the person working on the task marks it as complete and everything updates normally, but with other tasks the status appears to remain unchanged when I later review the project. The task may contain comments indicating that the work has been completed and the relevant website change may already be visible, yet the task still appears as an active item in the project. I have checked the task manually rather than relying only on the project overview, and the inconsistent status behaviour seems to be associated with particular task updates rather than a general inability to use task completion.

I have been trying to determine whether the problem is related to how the tasks are being updated rather than to the website work itself. The affected tasks are created using the same general project structure and contain similar fields, but they do not always behave identically when the work is finished. I have checked whether the assignee has sufficient permissions to update the task and whether the task is located in the correct project. I have also compared tasks that transition correctly with tasks that remain active and have not yet found an obvious difference that explains the behaviour. The task history and comments show that activity is taking place, but the final state does not always reflect the latest action. Because the website development itself is not blocked, I am mainly trying to understand why the task status can become out of sync with the actual state of the work.

The issue becomes more noticeable when tasks are being updated as part of the normal development workflow rather than manually reviewed one by one. I rely on the project status to understand which website tasks still require attention, so an item remaining in In Progress after completion makes it appear that development work is still outstanding. This means I have to periodically open individual tasks and manually verify whether the work has actually been completed. I have also noticed that the problem can occur when task updates are made relatively close together, although I cannot yet confirm that timing is directly responsible. I have deliberately avoided changing the entire project structure while investigating this because I want to identify whether there is a specific Asana behaviour or workflow configuration that could explain why some task status changes are not being reflected consistently.

I have reviewed the project settings and the workflow configuration to make sure that there is not an obvious rule preventing completed tasks from being represented correctly. I am also trying to understand whether any automation, custom field, task dependency, or integration could be affecting the final task state, but I do not want to assume that one of these is responsible without evidence. The important part is that I am dealing with one specific synchronization/state problem: the actual website development work can be finished while the corresponding Asana task remains incorrectly shown as active. I have compared timestamps and task activity where possible, and I am collecting examples of affected tasks so that I can determine whether there is a consistent sequence immediately before the status becomes stuck. At this point, I would prefer to troubleshoot the behaviour systematically rather than repeatedly correcting the status manually.

I would appreciate guidance from the Asana community on how to diagnose why individual tasks can remain in In Progress after the work associated with them has been completed. In particular, I would like to know what task history, workflow settings, rules, permissions, or other information I should inspect to determine why a status update is sometimes not reflected correctly. If there is a recommended way to trace the exact sequence of changes made to an affected task and compare it with a task that transitions normally, that would be very helpful. My goal is to make the website development project accurately reflect the real state of the work so that completed tasks consistently leave the active workflow without requiring me to manually check and correct their status afterward. Sorry for long post!

Thanks for pointing that out. In my setup, “status” is a single-select custom field on the task, with options such as “In Progress” and a separate “Completed” value. The expected behaviour is for that custom field to change from “In Progress” to “Completed” when the task itself is marked complete. I’m relying on an Asana rule to make that change automatically rather than expecting the developer to update both the task completion and the custom field manually. The rule is intended to trigger when the task is marked complete and then set the Status custom field to “Completed”. I’ll also provide a screenshot of the field and rule configuration if that helps, since the issue seems to be that the task is being completed successfully but the custom field does not always follow the expected transition.

[Phil_Seeman]

Thanks for those clarifications.

@joeroot.pk80

the issue seems to be that the task is being completed successfully but the custom field does not always follow the expected transition.

That would mean that either the rule isn’t firing in those cases where the custom field doesn’t change, or it does fire but there is another rule also updating that status field.

The first thing to do is, on a task where the custom field didn’t change, study what’s listed under the “All activity” tab at the bottom of the task’s detail pane. That will show you all of the rules that ran and changes on the custom field (well not necessarily ALL of them but that’s for another discussion and shouldn’t matter here). See if that activity list gives you any clues as to what’s going on. Feel free to post a screenshot of it if you don’t see an obvious answer to your issue.