In today’s post, we’re diving into a challenge that often trips up project managers and teams everywhere—adjusting timelines in Asana. You’ve carefully planned out your project with precise start and end dates, but as always, the unexpected happens. Suddenly, deadlines need to shift. The big question is, how do you move these dates efficiently without throwing your entire project into chaos?

Asana offers three methods to shift dates forward in bulk, each maintaining the gap between tasks. However, not all methods are created equal. In this post, I’ll walk you through these three techniques, highlighting what works and what doesn’t.

Method 1: Using Dependencies 

Some teams heavily rely on task dependencies, where tasks are interlinked so that adjusting one affects all subsequent tasks. Let’s say you’ve scheduled a event, with tasks broken into phases like planning, preparation, and the event day. If you need to move the event day, theoretically, all dependent tasks should shift accordingly.

While this method works quickly and smoothly, following are a couple of downsides:

• Not Universally Practical: For the dependency method to work, every single task AND subtask that you wish to move must be dependent on one another. This works great for projects that are dependency driven, but it doesn’t for any others.
• Subtask Dependencies: Subtasks must be dependent on one another and/or the primary task, as well.
• Manual Adjustments: Even if your tasks are linked, adding a new, unrelated task (e.g., approving a budget) might not automatically align with the shifted schedule unless you manually adjust it.

In Asana, you can shift dates in the Timeline or Gantt Chart view, and if all tasks are properly linked, moving one date will cascade through the project.

Method 2: Drag & Drop in Timeline

Another approach involves using Asana’s Timeline or Gantt Chart view to manually drag and drop tasks to new dates.

This is an excellent way to quickly move small groups of tasks while maintaining the date buffers. Here are a few downsides:

• Zooming Issues: To select and move a large amount of tasks at once, you would need to zoom out, in the browser or select tasks individually with the ctrl/cmd key, making it hard to properly select tasks.
• Subtask Problems: If subtasks are minimized, they won’t move with the parent task, leading to misalignment. To include subtasks, expand and highlight them first!

While this method might work for small adjustments, it’s unreliable for larger projects with many tasks.

Method 3: Duplicate Sections with New Dates

This method involves duplicating sections of your project and setting new dates for the duplicated tasks. It’s particularly useful when you need to adjust an entire phase of a project, such as preparation or closing tasks. For projects with a lot of sections, it may be more efficient to move all tasks into one temporary section, duplicate it, and then move the new tasks back into their representative sections.

Although this is a solid method for updating tasks in bulk, it has one minor disadvantage.

• Lost Comment & Task History: The new duplicated tasks do not include any comments or history from the previous tasks.

This method is effective because it ensures all tasks in a section are adjusted simultaneously, maintaining the correct order and dependencies.

Conclusion

Shifting dates in Asana can be a daunting task, but with the right method, you can keep your project on track without too much hassle. Whether you prefer the precision of dependencies or the flexibility of duplicating sections, understanding these techniques will help you manage timeline changes with confidence.