Start date and estimated hours

Now task shows up when It should has been done, so a have nothing to do with it.
For me best way is to make it shows up before the start day, so I’ll be sure that I have time to do it on time.

Estimated hours should be possible right now using Custom Fields :+1:

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Just adding my strong support for this feature. We’ve considered leaving Asana due to the lack of this feature (though we’ve stayed because Asana is so strong elsewhere), and we’re thrilled to hear it’s coming soon.

Any rough ETA on the release?

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@Mickey_Mellen thanks for your feedback. We’re unable to speak to specific timing, but please know we’ve taken your feedback into account.

Hi @alexis,

Instead of you having to say " we are not able to commit…" to every good ideas, may i suggest that you make a list of suggested improvements, and indicate its status. Status could fx be “Considering” or “decided not to implement at this moment” (ideally with Asanas reasons not to), “hot topic - more input needed” or something.

You got some great Asana users in this forum who just really want to help improve Asana. I think that such a list would make it easier for the users to contribute in a structured fashion, instead os this loose talk in post.

I know others have made similar suggestions.

What do you think?

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Hi Peter,

I think that the setup you suggest is very logical. However, as I explain in “About the Product Feedback category,” all suggestions in the Community are incorporated into the overall product feedback process at Asana.

We at Asana are delighted by all the great feedback you all are submitting here in the forum, please keep it coming! That said, we will have to keep to the process outlined in the post linked above.

Thanks!

Would also add a vote for start date - this would be so useful and is great for productivity too!

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Also adding my support for this feature! In fact I have not yet integrated Asana tasks with Instagantt knowing how much of a manual effort it would be to enter start dates and/or estimated hours. I’ve been checking this thread every few weeks for updates, lol.

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please start dates are much needed ASAP, even rough indication (3 mnths, 12mnths?) of when this might be available.

Found some good suggestions on quora for work arounds to get something akin to start date

Todd Cavanaugh, Founder/Consultant at projectmanagementpros.com
Answered Feb 23
Asana does not have a “Start date” field, which has been a highly requested feature by project managers.

However, that’s not to say that Asana doesn’t have a solution for notifications to start tasks. Asana offers several ways to know when to start a task.

First, when properly using My Tasks, a task will automatically move from the “Later” section to the “Upcoming” section when it’s one week away. So it should get on the assignee’s radar that way.

Second, you can choose to receive emails when a task becomes due one week away. For both reasons listed so far, it is essential to add due dates to as many tasks as possible. To enable this, check the box “Task Reminders” from the “To Email” tab in “My Profile Settings.”

Third, you can enable two hacks in “My Profile Settings” to enable “Create Follow-up Task” options from the Inbox and the task details pane. This allows you to quickly and easily create a linked task saying to start or check in on another task. Just schedule the due date of the follow-up task to whenever you want to begin the main task.

Finally, you can use “Mark as Waiting on…” to get a notification when a dependent task(s) is available after the precedent task(s) is completed. This option is found in the task details pane options.

With all of these options at your disposal, I understand Asana’s decision not to add a Start Field for fear of making inputting tasks slower and more complicated. If this is essential for your organization, I suggest you check out Instagantt which allows the addition of a start date for creating Gantt charts from Asana projects.

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^^ attn @Todd_Cavanaugh :slight_smile:

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we are a small engineering project based business. We have recently upgraded to premium. definitely need start date. Basics of project management are start date, end date and duration. If a task is going to take 100 hours, I need to know when to start to achieve desired end date.
Otherwise ASANA great but others are knocking on the door, please dont make me leave.

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Can it not simply be made as an optional field? Entering and updating all data in Asana and then entering Start Dates into InstaGantt is cause for user error or delay.

Also being in the Engineering field, I agree with Martin above that lack of Start Date could be a deal-breaker despite Asana excelling at everything else.

@Martin_Morgan Asana is rolling out so called “muti-day tasks” for Asana Premium Teams and Organizations. You are able to specify start date for tasks and it’ll push task to Upcoming and Today not relatively to Due Date but to Start Date. Not sure when Start Date will appear in Asana API, but when it does, I’m expecting instagannt will support it quite soon. And I do hope that @danielguajardok will find a way to maintain backward compatibility for Free Asana users.

Estimates used to be specified in Asana Task titles in square brackets like

Task title [4]

This works with instagannt and number specified is treated as hours. Asana used to summarize these numbers when multi-selecting tasks but at the moment this summary is possible only when grouping tasks in instagantt (under sections or subtasks). At the moment this feature still works for Free Asana Teams and Organizations.

For Premium Organizations Asana recommends adding dedicated Time Estimate Custom Field for the estimates. If you care about Instagannt, it does not support custom field approach yet, but it should be coming. @danielguajardok can provide more info about exact timelines.

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Thanks @Myroslav_Opyr for the mention!

As you said, Instagantt will start syncing with the premium Start Dates as soon as it publicly launched. I believe that for the public launch it will be ready on the API, so we’re preparing everything in our side to match the times.

We have already designed our backward compatibility (as you said), so if you don’t have Start Dates our you had it for a while, you’ll still be able to use Instagantt with the non-premium start dates.

In the next couple of days we will be launching our first integration with custom fields. This means that our own Estimated Hours will be sync’d to a custom field with a name similar to “Estimated Hours”. It’s backward compatible, so if you don’t have custom fields or you don’t have an Estimated Hours custom fields, it will keep being added to the task title in brackets.

Hope this will help teams have better usage of both products :slight_smile:

Let me know if I can help with anything else!

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I strongly wish Asana had a Start Date field so that tasks that can’t be started until a certain date could be filtered out in advanced searches of tasks we should work on. I haven’t been able to find an easy way to get around this. I’ve tried a custom number field where you input the date so that comparative number (i.e. >20170807) could be used, but that’s prone to user error.

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Making sure this features works in the calendar would literally eliminate forecasting from my operations investment pool. Have a view like an outlook multi-day event, I think that would be a powerful feature. Your calendar already presents very well, and if you added this support, it would be my go to tool for long term forecasting, real-time resourced allocation view, and more!! We use forecastapp.com for this today and would love to eliminate a tool and invest more into Asana.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,
Dan Dagnall
COO - Fischer Identity

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@Myroslav_Opyr Do you have some more information on this feature? I would love to use it !

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Great to hear, @Dan_Dagnall!
Multi-day tasks on calendar view is definitely in the nearterm plans :slight_smile:

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@Shannon_McNeil @Alexis I see that a date range with a Start Date is rolling out to some customers right now.

Is there any documentation on this? Could you explain at least what the implications are right now for how a task promotes from Later to Upcoming if the task has a Start Date?

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