Would like ability to easily filter for stale tasks (not modified with last N days)

Today you can filter on Date Modified but it’s oriented for finding recent tasks (modified within the last…). I’d like the inverse of being able to say show me tasks that haven’t been modified since a # of days ago.

You could sort of achieve this using ‘between’ and setting a VERY old date for the start of the range and your target date for the end but it means updating it every time you open the filter vs it just showing me what I want in the saved filter.

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I would love to see this use case for projects too.
e.g. if X percent of the tasks are stale, than a project would also be stale

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Also @Alex3, there is another post for this that has gotten a bit more attention
https://forum.asana.com/t/how-can-i-search-for-tasks-not-modified-within-n-days/3012/4

I’m trying to set up a saved search that will show me tasks that have not been modified in a while.

I want to avoid my client’s questions not being responded to or acknowledged. I don’t see how to use the search to look for things that are getting stale, but rather only things that have been modified recently.

Not sure you can do this with an advanced search per se, but you can sort any search by Last Modified.

Thanks @James_Carl

That sounded good…

Since it sorts by the most recently modified at the top I needed to scroll (endlessly) to get to stuff that had been neglected longest. The system lets me sort by last modified but I can’t switch between ascending/descending.

Any other suggestions for how I might use the tool to identify things that are “hanging out there”… In space… Alone… Lonely…

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Yeah, I’m with @James_Carl on this one. If sorting the list is important to you, @dan_sullivan, you could even export as a csv and sort the list by ascending/descending, then revisit the tasks you identify in the csv. Tedious, but it’s an idea.

I don’t think I can afford to spend that much time on it. I’m looking for something like this because of a lack of good protocol/protocol adherence from other team members and clients – backstops of tasks don’t get lost.

I appreciate the feedback; I think if the prospect was only to do it manually via export I will have to abandon the idea.

Actual if the Advance Search for Modified would add “Before” it would work.

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I have a good analog for @dan_sullivan’s request: 1password’s watchtower

It works behind the scenes and prompts you when it detects weak passwords, accounts without 2FA, security breaches, and other. What would be great for stale tasks would be something that actually helps manage the oversight, rather than a tool for scraping the data yourself.

It would be great if a feature like that worked on projects as well as tasks, e.g. stale project if X percent of the tasks are stale.

Lastly, there’s other posts on the community about this feature like:

@Marie It would be good if a community manager could aggregate these different posts.

All done @Fonti :slight_smile:

Any update on this?

Yup - looking for the same - for Projects AND Tasks levels - to make sure things don’t go stale (i.e. When was the last time you checked in on this Project?).

i.e. For Projects that didn’t get a Status (Progress) update in a while…

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It would be useful to have an automated, internal field that would show the last updated date for a task. This would be useful to be able to sort the task list to focus on the tasks that have not been updated.

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Welcome to the Forum @Rashid_Aga and thank you for sharing your feedback!

There is a similar thread in the Forum regarding this topic. If it’s OK with you I’m merging your post with it to consolidate feedback. Please don’t forget to upvote it!

Thank you Rashid! Have a great day!

Hi all.
I was asked by a colleague to find a list of tasks in one of our projects that were last commented on more than 5 days ago. (commented is a broad term, it could be custom field updated, or date changed … )

Concretely, the project is a list of leads we are working with, they all have a due date. The filter I’d like to create is:

Any tasks in Project A not modified in the last 5 days

I thought It would be easy to do but modified only offers between, On and Within the last.

looking for out of the box suggestions on how to achieve this thank you.

Jonathan

Hi @Jonathan_Stern, thanks for reaching out!

Good question! It’s currently not possible to search/filter by tasks not modified within a specific period of time. We have a product feedback request about this topic, I’ve gone ahead and merged your request with Would like ability to easily filter for stale tasks (not modified with last N days) to centralize feedback.

As a workaround, you can export your project as csv and sort the list by ascending/descending, then revisit the tasks you identify in the csv. I know is not ideal and I’ve sent your feedback to our team internally so it can be considered in future updates!

Let me know if you have any questions!

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We realy need to handle export to csv file to see which tickets are updated? - We are working in a professional project management software? :slight_smile:

Its still not solved for default sort order options/drop down?

Why its not possible to share option to sort tasks by last edit date? All other software can do that. Asana not.

So many customer, so many options and so many years of development… but this basics of everybody daily process is still missing? Wow!
So lets say we have all the positive benefits of your software… but is it, if you are not able to handle it because if you have 10 or more you will lose every overview of your tickets. And if you have not only one board, for example you have 5 boards, you will waste your time to manage projects with asana. Because how you will manage the tickets? Project manager will start his day to check “what is new” and right now there is no option to see this with some clicks. So they need to open every board and every ticket one by one. Its feeling like working with no project management. Sorry i have to say this. This is dramatic. We will migrate this week all our projects/boards to another software back, because there is no project manager in the space they will handle his boards in this flow. Every person in my company told me: its nice, but sorry, we have no time to check every ticket one by one to know what tickets are updated…

And i cant belive it will be okay for any other asana project manager to wast his time in excel export or opening all tickets one by one to check which tasks are updated or not. Or they need to handle extended search result… This are just workflows, but not good solution for daily work with projects.

Would also like to see modified as a trigger. e.g. If task is not modified in the last 2 weeks, then trigger an email reminder to assignee.

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