One question that I see pretty often is why subtasks don’t appear in your Project calendar. This is a completely understandable question (and, trust me, it’s an idea that we’ve thought about) so I thought I’d take a few minutes to give more background.
If you think about how a Project is set up, you’re either going to be looking at it as a List (or Board!) or as a Calendar. These two (three!) options are your viewing options, but they’re going to show you the exact same tasks. If you do want to see your subtasks in your Project view, you can definitely add them to the Project (How to Complete Task Fields in Asana | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide), but they’ll appear in both the List/Board and Calendar views.
With that said, all tasks and subtasks will appear in your Team Calendar if you’re working in an Organization (or your Workspace Calendar, if you’re working in a Workspace). This is because tasks don’t have to be homed in a Project (although I’d strongly recommend that they are), but the do have to be homed in a Team (or Workspace).
Thanks for this, @KaylaT ! We definitely hear that question on the CS side as well I’d love to recommend another strategy to have subtasks appear on a calendar – create a Search view.
Create an Advanced Search for all Tasks in the Project in question.
From the “Add Filter” Menu, select “More.” From that menu, select “Subtask…”
Then, you can select “Any”.
That will create a list of all the Tasks and subtasks in the Project in a single view, similar to the result @KaylaT is referring to above. but without manually adding each subtask to the Project.
You can then view on a Calendar and save for later, if you’ll be referring to the Calendar view often. Another way of achieving the same view!
I believe they have mentioned in the past that this is something they’ve discussed and/or are working on - that the default project assigned to it is that of the parent project.
Yet another example of a case where it would be nice to have a general list of what’s “on the radar” for the asana dev team. We don’t need timelines… just an acknowledgement that it’s under consideration. Like Spotify does.
If you add sub - tasks to the project then they show up multiple times. Super confusing. Why would you want to create subtasks that don’t show up in a calendar? This doesn’t make sense to me at all.
Kind of interesting you have to create a report to use the tool. I would suggest the product analytics team look into how many reports are created with no changes. I would assume this would show how many people want to use subtasks in their calendar.
I stumbled accross this topic some days ago and accepted this is not yet supported.
However, for people like me, who did not know “Sections” exist: you can add Sections to your project in which you can subdivide your tasks. This works fine if you only have 1 level of subtasks.
Advantages for me:
Clear overview in project task list
Instagantt supports sections
The “Project” grouping in “My tasks” works as expected (while it does not for subtasks, subtasks are shown as having no project)
You can add Sections by hovering over the “Add task” button, waiting for the “Add Section” button to appear and then (obviously :)) click that button. Not sure why this button is somewhat hidden.
It seems like the best option would be to just give your users the option to turn subtasks in the calendar off if they want to. Google Calendar’s multi-calendar interface is a perfect example. Just a tickbox.
For those of you who want this functionality, instagantt will do it.
A shame I still have to keep that license active with Timeline active, but timeline gives me a very small view of total tasks since I like subdividing.
Just to recap all the implications of this design, none of which make sense:
my tasks don’t show group subtasks under their project
subtasks don’t appear on a project calendar
search results don’t show project name for subtask results, making subtask names devoid of context
There are two workarounds:
Manually add each subtasks to the parent project
use tags with project names (does not address the second issue above)
The only workaround to any of these is for the third issue, and that involves creating a new tag for each project and applying it to every subtask.
BTW, according to this thread, as of Jan 10 the Asana team are working on addressing this, presumably by making subtasks inherit projects automatically.
As of right now, subtasks do NOT show up on the calendar for the board they are on. They show up on the entire group calendar without color coding, but they are not included on the board calendar and aren’t exported with the outlook/gmail etc. calendars. Please fix immediately!!!
Hi @Jax_Gitzes; in order for subtasks to show on your Calendar, you must manually associate them to their parent task project. You can easily do so by accessing the subtask, using the “Tab+P” shortcut to open the project field, and enter the project name into this field.
As soon as your subtasks will be associated to their parent task project, you will see them in your calendar!
We already have a thread on this topic in the Forum, so iv’e gone ahead and merged your post with the main thread to avoid having too many duplicates in the Forum; hope thats ok!
Is there any way an Asana member can do an announcement post about how to show Subtasks in your Calendar/List Views? I’m seeing soo many posts, comments and questions and not all of them have been provided with this solution.
1 for this. For someone who uses calendars to organise most things this is beyond painful. Please think about implementing this at least as an option and allowing subtasks to be exported to Google Calender as well.
I’ve done this, however upon associating it with the parent task project, it shows in the project’s list view outside of the primary task it’s associated with. This feels redundant is it already exists as a subtask in the primary task it’s housed in. Am I doing something wrong/can displaying twice be avoided?
As others have stated, this is a very strange workaround that puts the subtask in two places at once while making it a subtask that is now a parent tasks.
A checkbox to show subtask would be a good solution. An even better addition would allow having the main task reflect the next subtasks due date. Then I could see upcoming subtask due dates in the list view as well.
I don’t understand the logic of why subtasks show up in a team or workspace calendar by default but not in the project calendar. So frustrating. The workaround (adding subtasks to the main project) also doesn’t make sense. If I wanted the subtask to show up in the main list, I would’ve made it a regular task.
Asana I want to love you but you make it hard sometimes!
I’d love to recommend another strategy to have subtasks appear on a calendar – create a Search view.