Mark a task as "Cancelled" instead of "Complete"

Sometimes we identify a task in a project early on and later the task is cancelled as we decide not to complete it. We don’t want to mark the task as “complete” because it was not actually done, but we don’t want to delete it from the project and lose the history either.

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Anyone come up with a clever workaround for this one?

Yes, see here:

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thanks @Christoph - my own workaround is pretty simple - I just have a tag ‘cancelled’ so that I can just search for all cancelled tasks.

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Wow, so simple, Ruth. Feeling kind of silly here. :blush:

Except then it still shows as an incomplete and active “to do” in my task list.

Sarah Browning
Executive Vice President

Global Operations

www.mossinc.com

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@Sarah_Browning - sorry should have said I mark it completed - because of the tag it still shows up in my cancelled task search

Oh! That makes sense now, thanks!

Sarah Browning
Executive Vice President

Global Operations

www.mossinc.com

But…this doesn’t make the task to disappear

Hi @pablo.argomedo, it does if you mark it complete - the point with this method is you get rid of the task by ticking ‘Complete’ after you have added the tag ‘cancelled not completed’. This means you can use the search function to find any tasks with that particular tag if you want to find them again in the future but the task is removed from your task list or any view of incomplete tasks.

Is this still the suggested way to achieve this functionality? Or might/has Asana provided explicit functionality to achieve this? While it may be pedantic, it’s still kind of weird that a task is “done” (checked off) while actually being cancelled. I suppose they’d have to add multiple states for the check button, e.g. incomplete/complete/customState1/customState2/… Or, maybe I just need to think of incomplete/complete as “active/inactive”. OK, mental irritant solved.

Yep, same thing happens to us. It becomes challenging to find what is complete and was just marked off.

How’s this task moving so far? In Trello we can archive task, but also create butler button to click a “discontinue button”. It then automatically archives the task and put a tag to it.

How about here in Asana?

We create a cancelled section on the project, all cancelled tasks go there and are completed. Then when I run dashboard reports, I exclude that section so it doesn’t count in my metrics.

It would be helpfull for my company as well.

The problem of that is when you add the project to a portfolio and you have the progress status. It will count the tasks in this “Cancelled tasks” and will not give you a real view of the amount of completion tasks.

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Actually I think there are filters where you can filter it out, no?

I did a test here and I don’t think so. If you find a way, please share with me. I will thank you a lot :wink:
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I manage an IT team, our tasks are not linear to one person or time frame or even completion as they may be extended for reasons or modified or cancelled.

  1. Add Cancelled task option and in filter

  2. Add extending task option for semi-complete task option and in view filter, a semi complete status enforce to modify of sub-task not marked complete or cancelled (complete, pending, cancelled may be mentioned in muli line results in main view instead of one line each task).

  • For any reason justification to extend, cancel, modify, add sub tasks, such reason may alter initial plan steps and hence even its primary task.
  1. Add solution option upon complete of main or complete tasks.

  2. Filter by date of ceation for chronological order.

Thanks for sharing your feedback with us, @Mohammad_Saleh! and welcome to the Asana Community Forum. Have you tried using Custom Fields to add this information to your tasks? You can find more details here: https://asana.com/guide/help/premium/custom-fields

or would you like to have an option like “Mark Complete” but for “Cancelled task”? :slight_smile: