Whan an Asana user refers to another Asana user with '@' reference + user name in a comment under a task, Asana replaces it with user name as hyperlink referring to the user's tasks page in Asana. This is fine as long as it is viewed from within Asana, as only the user name is visible in the comment. But when an external system queries the task and stories through Asana API, the content returned as JSON has only the hyperlink instead and not the user name. The external system has no way of knowing the referred (with @) user name in the comment. The hyperlink has some ID in the URL, but the ID is none of user, task, workspace or project from which we will be able to get the user name indirectly or directly. Hence the comment becomes obscure making the post/task history confusing.
Question: Is Asana already aware of the issue and addressing the same? Are there any recommendations to overcome the same?
Suggestions: If Asana can send username or userid along with it and some way to indicate it is an @reference to a user, it will make more sense.
Refer to Hyperlink Mentions of Users in Stories for a detailed explanation of the representation of user links in Asana along with a (possibly still unsupported) manner to get an actual name via the hypertext version of a comment.
Another solution is to map the that person's "Assigned to Me" project URL ID to the Asana user ID that is used in the API. This requires maintenance as additional users are added to Asana.