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Understanding tasks

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Tasks represent actionable steps or to-do’s to make it clear who’s responsible for what by when—but they can also represent ideas and reference items. If you're used to sending emails every time you need something from a teammate, try a task instead.

Tasks store all the instructions, comments, and attachments related to it so information stays in one place. Tasks are usually part of a project so they’re easy to find and visible to your teammates.

How to create tasks

There are three main ways to create tasks:

  1. From the orange Quick add button in the top bar
  2. From Add task button in a project
  3. Clicking + next to the section
Note iconNote

You can also create tasks from emails, Slack messages, and other external apps.

Task assignee

Every task can only have one assignee, but it can have many collaborators.

Both a task's assignee and collaborators can view the task, and may edit the task based on the task's permission settings. The task creator and task assignee are automatically added as task collaborators.Task collaborators receive notifications when the task is updated.

Note iconNote

Tasks assigned to will appear in your My tasks.

To assign a task:

  1. Click the Assignee field in the task details pane
  2. Begin typing the person's name or email address
  3. Select the person from the autocomplete results

To unassign a task, navigate to the Assignee field and click the X.

Note iconNote

Press Tab+M to assign a task to yourself.

Assign duplicate tasks

You can create the same task for multiple people.

Assign to multiple people.png

To assign multiple copies of a task:

  1. Open the task details pane and click the Assignee field
  2. Click Assign duplicate tasks
  3. Choose who you are going to assign a duplicate to
  4. Click Assign
Note iconNote

Assigning copies does not assign the original task to multiple people; it creates multiple copies of the task and assigns them to each person.

Task collaborators

Become a collaborator on a task to stay informed on the following changes:

  • An attachment is added
  • A new comment is posted
  • Someone likes the task
  • The task is marked complete

Collaborators will receive inbox notifications and can receive notifications via email depending on their settings.

To add a collaborator to a task click the + button beside Collaborators to add or remove collaborators.

If you are getting notifications for a task that you are no longer interested in, you can remove yourself from the task collaborators by clicking the Leave task button.

Note iconNote

If you @mention another person in a task's description or comments, they will automatically be added as a collaborator on the task.

Adding collaborators in bulk

You can copy all task collaborators at once by clicking on the copy link. This allows you to easily paste the collaborator list to another task instead of manually adding collaborators.

Copy task collaborators

To copy a list of collaborators:

  1. Open a task and click on the + Add or remove collaborators button beside the Collaborators field.
  2. Click on the copy icon in the bottom right-hand corner.
  3. The list will be copied to your clipboard.
  4. Open the collaborator field of another task and paste the collaborator list.
  5. You can paste using the shortcut Command + V on Mac or Ctrl + V on Windows.

To create a project, task, or subtask?

Check out our framework below to help you choose the right way to go:

Create a project...Create a task...Create a subtask...Examples
Effort levelIt's a large effort with a group of stakeholders working towards a goal over time, or you want a central place to track work.You're trying to capture a singular to-do for one person that can be achieved within a few minutes or work days.Multiple people are contributing to a task’s completion to help you divide and conquer.Project: Editorial calendar
Task: Publish blog
Subtask: Gather customer quotes for blog
ComplexityWhat you're doing has a lot of steps, stages, stakeholders, or layers.You want to communicate with a subset of stakeholders about a specific piece of work (versus the whole project).You're trying to break down a task into more bite-sized pieces.Project: New Year's campaign
Task: Finalize campaign messaging
Subtask: Review campaign messaging

More resources to master tasks

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Understanding tasks in Asana: guide | Asana Help Center