Comments are generally much more valuable than action history, but they can get separated and lost in the history if many actions have occurred. Why not separate the two?
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@Jeff_Lane Are you referring to the comments and history in the list here? Could you elaborate on what you mean by “they can get separated and lost in the history” and when you generally notice this?
Exactly. I often make many adjustments to a task, changing due dates, reassigning users, moving tasks between projects, etcetera. That adds up to a lot of notes in the history and there will often be 6 or 7 lines between comments, which greatly disrupts the flow of reading the comments.
I would also be great to have the option to order the comments with most recent at the top.
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Ah, I see what you’re saying. I do agree that when I edit a task a lot the lines of history get distracting. I actually “x” out the lines when they’re irrelevant. Not a good thing when you want to keep track of everything happening in a task, but definitely a good thing when I’ve changed the task title a few times because of typos and things like that. So, I recommend that you “X” out the lines of history if you absolutely need to. I hear what you’re saying with the request, as well.
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Alexis - thanks for your feedback. Though effective, “x-ing” out the lines in a task when you are managing a large number of projects is impractical and very manual. Jeff has a great suggestion about separating the two, or perhaps collapsing the task history.
Additionally, I’ve noticed that when there are a large number of subtasks (> 10 or so), they will be collapsed. I’m sure the argument is that we should convert the task into a project, but I beg to differ as some tasks simply have a lot of steps. I would suggest preventing such a collapsing of subtasks from ever happening, as there is a risk that a team member not familiar with the task might miss the remaining subtasks.
Thanks for this terrific forum.
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Hi James. Thanks for your thoughts and for your positive feedback about the forum! That’s great to hear. I see what you’re saying about the manual work required in x-ing out the history of a task - in practice for me it doesn’t feel like too much work so maybe there’s hope for you, too. I have had that dilemma myself with subtasks. I just hosted an event and had a parent task for event planning and over 20 subtasks! It got a bit hectic, but it actually made referencing next steps much easier because I could refer to one task and see every single related piece of work. On the other hand, I think sections and/or custom fields would be super useful for you. Rather than using tasks and subtasks, you could create a section in a project and/or add custom fields and search for your work within those parameters.
I’d love if the history were collapsed by default. In my experience, history is useful on an occasional basis only, whereas comments should always be visible and obvious. If I don’t check the history each time I at a task, then it could be collapsed by default and then made visible by clicking to expand it.
That would be my ideal.
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@Andy, I agree! Having the ability to collapse the history would be great. @Alexis, the history is absolutely necessary but is not something that has to be ever-present like the comments. Just my 2 cents. 
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Yes. Definitely. This would be perfect… 'cause, most of the time, I just don’t care to see how many times I’ve pushed back a due date. 
But, more importantly, and to echo what @Alex_K said, this can be important information but “not something that has to be ever-present.”
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Allowing for a collapsible history would effectively separate the comments, assuming that the comments don’t get collapsed as well. So I would be in favor of that.
Also, what about ordering DESC, so most recent on top?
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Agree on collapsing the history. I also think collapsing sections, both in tasks and in projects, would be incredibly useful.
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+1 for task history being collapsed by default. I keep deleting history items all the time, and what’s worse is I can’t delete other peoples actions so no matter what, there’s always clutter in there.
And I might not want to delete the history in the first place. I just don’t want to loose the most valuable comment space to the history. Having it collapsed would very simply solve it.
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I would love to see a tab per project to see the history of the activity on all tasks within a project, including comments, file attachments, completions, additions. Why would one want this? It would be helpful to see who touched it last, what the last comment was on any of the tasks, which task was completed last, etc… I find that in my organization users dont update due dates frequently, which causes misleading information if relied upon as to the order of the completion of tasks. Additionally, we have multiple users in our team that are newbies, and I worry that the newbs may accidentally delete something, or mark an incomplete task completed without realizing they have done so.
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Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like the “stories” area of the task description makes my task view really busy. I find that I delete almost all my stories out of habit now, just to “declutter” the space. My boss hates it, because I’ll delete items like changing a due date that now she cannot see. So, my question is this: Can Asana look into either creating a tabbed approach for all history of “stories”?
Otherwise, is there a way in which you can lock “stories” so employees like me cannot delete them?
Here’s one example of how Workzone stores a history of comments and activities:
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Love these comments, everyone! Super helpful context for our team. Also, friendly reminder to vote if this is something you’d like to see.
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That looks like just what I was looking for.
Is there a way to pull that information out? Even with the API?
cc @Alexis
Ok,
I managed to do something similar by running this search (basically everything), and then sorting by last modified.
Its not great because you can’t see what is modified, but its something.
Would value input on how to make this better.
Hi Guy! I think you have the right instinct here. If you’re curious to explore the API for additional options, I recommend visiting our documentation here: Asana Developers - API, Documentation & Community Support • Asana
In another program I use (Zendesk), they have the ability to choose between comments and action history, so you can look at the information that is the most important for you. The example is in Dutch:
Gesprekken = comments
Gebeurtenissen = action history
But I would prefer, what others suggested, that the action history is hidden by default.
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