I’m trying to see if there is someway to report on how tasks within a project are being completed in relation to their due date. Has anyone attempted this, and had success? In the Google Sheets reporting it looks like it’s only on a project level, and not a task level. Am I missing something?
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I think maybe something like an API trigger would work perhaps? Triggers on a story that you completed a task on X date, subtracts it from the given due date? This would be REALLY interesting to me so I hope others chime in =) I’m an API noob.
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I agree, this function can allow a project manager to identify patterns of Lateness on tasks level. Not only project level.
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I am also looking for the same type of report to easily get the tasks that were simply marked as completed past their initially set due dates.
Anyone has a solution through Asana?
Hi @Jana_Abi_Akar,
I suggest that you run an advanced search for completed tasks (with whichever assignee and/or due time frame you’re looking for). When you see the tasks come up, you’ll know what was completed overdue because the due dates will appear in red. (Unless, of course, someone changed the due date to complete the task at a later time.)
Is it possible to restrict which users can change the due date on a task. If I give a colleague a task based on a programme plan agreed with customers I don’t want just anyone to be able to advance the Due Date. In one of our use cases we want the project officer to create use and change tasks but within the constraints on approved programme milestones.
Is this possible in Asana?
Yup! @Keith_Davidson it is possible to give users view only permissions. Learn more here New in Asana: Comment and View Only Permissions
Hi Alexis - thanks for response and sorry for the delay. Not quite what I’m looking for.
Our team is responsible for delivering Capital building projects.
The use case is that we have created a ‘template project’ which we copy and create for each project within the programme. It contains the mandatory and common tasks any build project must complete to meet our business processes, agreed methodology and compliance regulations. All some of the tasks are parents and sub tasks emerge to deliver the overall task objective. For some tasks e.g. submit planning application, Start on Site, Practical completion, building handover we have agreed dates with the client. What we want is to lock the due date on key milestone tasks so the Project Owner/manager cannot change the due date on these tasks and slip the delivery without approval and/or management visibility.
Does this help explain?
Keith
#following
Hi @Keith_Davidson! Good to have you back here in the Community. I do see what you’re asking, thanks for clarifying. Asana doesn’t have the granularity of editing you’re suggesting here -
What you can do is update editing abilities at the user level for any given project in the member settings at the top right, but I’m not quite sure that meets what you’re looking for.
I recommend creating conventions/best practices on your team so that individuals know now to change the due date without approval. When in doubt, the task history is there to view which edits were made and when, though I wouldn’t recommend that level of policing if you can avoid it.
Thanks Alexis – I didn’t think so but needed to clarify.
We are about to explore the Premium features. Does Premium allow reporting against ‘Tags’? and if it does could it be possible to create an exception report that identified changes to the due date on task with a given Tag(s)?
Hi Keith - I’d actually recommend that you use Custom Fields rather than Tags. Asana offers lots of options for reporting on Custom Fields that I think you’d find useful. Take a look:
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@Keith_Davidson I think there are at least two ways that might help you:
- Custom Field as @Alexis suggested that I will describe below and;
- Advanced Search that is saved.
Custom Field
If you change to premium, create a custom field such as Due Date Change with drop down choices Yes or Approved. Have a company policy on those milestone tasks that cannot have a due date change without permission and require that any due date change be accompanied by changing the custom field to Yes. Then create an advance report on the custom field for all that say Yes and keep as a Saved Report to be used again. If the person in authority agrees with the Due Date Change they can change the field to Approved. Your key monitor would be a Yes response that has not been Approved. By having due dates that have been changed set to Approved you can also monitor what required a due date change after the original was set. But as I said this would only be as good as adherence. Having said that if they don’t adhere, the system change will show up in comments so their is an audit trail. Albeit all comments system or not can be deleted so there would have to be an intent to hide 
Advanced Search
Advance search does not search system comments even though they are noted in the comment stream such as XXX changed the due date. But there is sort of a back door way of getting your information but it will include more than due date changes.
Create the following Advanced Search:
- Select Tasks Only
- Select Tasks that are Incomplete
- Select Date Created and have the range end in Yesterday. Now I don’t know if Yesterday will stay Yesterday or just substitute the date and you will have to put it in when you do the Saved Search.
- Modified Date. This tracks any task that was modified which of course can be more than the due date, but due date is a popular modification and if you limit to incomplete tasks you will not get a lot of modifications for completion.
In the end the Search should pull out modifications that happened after the creation date when the first Due Date was assigned.
I think the Custom Field approach is much cleaner but you have not upgraded to Premium as I understand. It is well worth it to upgrade :).
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Alexis / Carl
Many thanks for that it is helpful I’ll not head off on the wrong track.
We upgraded to premium (trial) yesterday so I’ll get my teeth into this to explore.
Regards
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