Inside the Build: How Asana made subtasks easier to create

Subtasks are one of the most useful parts of Asana. They let you break a big task into smaller steps, assign pieces of work to different people, and track progress without losing sight of the bigger picture. But working with subtasks used to take a few extra steps. You'd leave your project view, open a task pane, and work from there. If you wanted to turn an existing task into a subtask, you had to open a menu, search for the parent task by name, and click through a few more steps to confirm.

Asana customers wanted a more direct path, and that feedback kicked off a new feature.

"Customers felt like they should be able to do this,” says Faizan Bhagat, a software engineer at Asana. “So we built it."

Easy ways to add a subtask without losing your place

The update adds eight new ways to create subtasks in Asana's list, board, and Gantt views. The goal was to match what users already expected so the feature would feel obvious, not new. A few of the most common entry points:

• Right-click any task to see an "Add subtask" option appear in the menu

• Click the button at the bottom of any subtask list to add one with a single click

• Press Tab + S to create a subtask without lifting your hands from the keyboard

• Convert an existing task into a subtask directly from the project view—no separate pane required

All three views—list, board, and Gantt—were updated. In each one, you can add a subtask directly from the project view, without opening a separate pane.

Drag tasks and subtasks to change how they're organized

The biggest change was drag-and-drop. Before this update, you could drag tasks to reorder them in a list. But you couldn't drag a task into a subtask position, or pull a subtask out to make it a standalone task.

Now you can do both.

Drag any task into another task's subtask list, and it becomes a subtask. Drag a subtask out of a parent task, and it becomes its own task. Move a subtask from one parent to another. The structure updates automatically.

Having to go into a menu, hit convert, and search for a task by name takes time out of your day. We wanted to give people a way to just drag it where they want it and move on.”

Adding new options to a product always comes with a risk: too many buttons, too much to figure out. The team kept that in mind throughout the design process. Each addition was small and specific—a button at the bottom of a list, a right-click option, a drag handle. Everything that makes the most common actions easier to find without taking over the interface.

Start creating subtasks directly from your project view

During the rollout, the team phased the release and tracked whether more subtasks were getting created and which new entry points people were actually using. The numbers gave them confidence. And inside Asana, new employees who joined after the launch gravitated to the project view naturally. They didn't default to the task pane. They didn't know there had been another way.

Right-click a task, drag it where you want it, or press Tab + S. Try it and let us know what you think.