Start Dates Are Here!

View the official announcement on our blog!

Start Dates Are Here!

Add start dates to tasks so everyone knows when to get started and when work is happening…Start dates are visible on all tasks, including our new Calendar View on mobile.

How it works:

  • You can add a start and due date to any task.
  • The date range will appear anywhere you see the due date: in the task details pane, the main pane, and calendar view.
  • Tasks will auto-populate to “Today” when it’s ready to begin.
  • You will receive an inbox notification when tasks are ready to begin, if they were triaged to upcoming or later.
  • On recurring tasks, only the due date will appear after completion.

Mobile calendar:

  • Mobile calendar is now available on both iOS and Android.
  • Start dates are visible on mobile calendar, and soon will be editable.

Hooray! Take a look at the blog for more info and comment here to let us know what you think!

19 Likes

Another good example how Asana listened to their users and their community and integrated feedback into the product - Thanks!
Good work Asana dev team!

6 Likes

Aren’t the start dates already in Asana product?
I have been using it for like a month. Was it in beta?
Did I miss something?

When moving multi-day tasks on the Calendar view (drag+drop), is there a way to ignore weekends? For example if I have a 5 day task that starts on Monday and I want to drag it to begin on Wednesday, I expect the end date to be moved to the following Tuesday (+2 working days), however the end date is set to Sunday. I have ‘Weekends Hidden’ set in the calendar view, but this doesn’t prevent the End Date from becoming a weekend.

We’d like set start and end dates to represent the required duration of a task, and then use the Calendar view to spot particularly busy periods and drag+drop task in our planning meetings help avoid more than 5 simultaneous tasks.

2 Likes

Exciting day for the Shipt Marketing Team!

1 Like

Yes!!! I’ve been waiting for this for so long. My team is very excited. Thanks, Asana folk! :balloon::tada::confetti_ball:

4 Likes

I’ve been using start dates for a while in beta, and they are working very well. was definitely needed. The only thing I’d like to see now is that start date becomes a searchable piece of data in the advanced search. We have some options around due date – would just want to see the same kind of options to find tasks starting on dates, within ranges, etc. Is this coming soon I hope?

3 Likes

Hi - This does not appear to be rolled out in my workspace - is there a setting I need an admin to toggle?

Thanks,

CWS

Hi Charles,
I suggest give it one more week.
The feature is rolled out gradually. I am member of many different organizations/workspaces and some have it and some not, but over the last days most workspaces got the feature.
So just wait a bit more :slight_smile:

1 Like

We can not see “Start dates” in “My Favourites” tasks list but we can in Projects view such as below :

image

Hi @Alexis

I’ve noticed that some of my tasks allow me to set start dates, but some of them are showing this:

image

Is this a known bug?

Thanks

1 Like

You may have been a member of a slow roll out or A/B test. Glad to see you’ve been using and enjoying this feature!

Hi all - Thanks for your questions! I’ve reached out to the PM on start dates and we’ll have answers for you shortly. :slight_smile:

1 Like

I’m a 2 week old newbie to Asana.

Start dates are great, they were there when I upgraded. The only disappointment is that while I can set a start date for projects; I have to also enter an end date. There doesn’t seem to be a way to schedule a start date without also adding an end date. … or am I missing something?

This probably doesn’t bother people. I may just be a horrible project manager. However, with the freelancers I have engaged, It is very useful to be able to schedule when I want them to start on a task. Having to put in 'end date’s is kind of like giving them permission to sponge time. (fish bowl theory).

I also use the hubstaff integration. While it is probably asking for too much, having start dates that occur in the future ‘preventing’ freelancers to log time to a task would be very useful. - Particularly when language and communication issues can sometimes be an issue communicating task ordinance to a freelancer (this concept ties in very closely with task dependencies and the behaviours of downstream externally integrated billing apps)

I do, however have a calendar project which tasks are also added to. That gives me a page at a glance view of when I am scheduling tasks to start.

So I’m currently not using the new ‘start dates’ feature. I’m not a good enough project manager to accurately size jobs either in elapsed time or even man-hours most of the time due to nature of my workforce and my own inexperience. I’d love to use them, even without the aforementioned tweaks, but being forced to also provide an end date kinda rules out use of the new feature.

2 Likes

Thank you Asana for adding start dates. This is a great feature!!

2 Likes

I just want yall to know that you have made me a very happy camper with this update, I meant to run into this thread screaming with joy when I saw the update but have been really bogged down with work.

I was maybe the only one excited on my team, but I’m excited enough for the rest of them! This will really help me and others with workload planning. I did this with instagantt before, which is great, but having it natively in asana view is massive. Instagantt, don’t worry I’m still using you like crazy.

3 Likes

Agree we need a Start Day Filter for this to work
Per GTD, we use filters (not “My Tasks”), and we work on predetermined (vs. ad hoc) tasks, so until now we add the due date, and in the filter will have all tasks due today, now if we add a start date it won’t come up in the list, and the only reminder will be from the Inbox which is inherently (per GTD) made only to clarify and not to work from there (except for less than 2 min ones).

2 Likes

This is great for being able to add multi-day events to the team calendar. So happy about it. Thanks Asana!

1 Like

I’m not seeing it in the trial version I have. Should I?

Thanks,

A couple directed follow up questions. @Mickael1 - what are you referring to when you say “my favorites?” Are you talking about the left side favorite projects pane? If so, then start dates would not show up there. For @Mark_Hudson , which date pickers are those upgrade triggers showing up on (i.e. task details or list view or subtask?) Do they still exist after you refresh your browser? Thanks!