Better inbox filtering

Dear Devs,
from a technical standpoint, do you think it would be possible to create an app, or a browser extension, that can implement additional filters to the inbox? Such filter by project or a free text search?

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@Phil_Seeman, @lpb, @Bastien_Siebman, any idea if this is possible via the API?

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@Francesco_Canovi,

I don’t believe there’s any support for Inbox in the Asana API so that would rule out an app.

An extension is problematic for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it would only have access to content appearing on the page, and Asana’s infinite scrolling of the Inbox left column means the user would have to scroll for you to filter for any Inbox content not already in view.

But you can solve both your filtering examples without any code. When in the Inbox, type Cmd +F (Chrome and other browsers) and enter free text or a project name to search for. All results will be highlighted and you can step through the results. You’ll need to first manually scroll if you want to look in areas not loaded by infinite scrolling yet.

Hope that helps,

Larry

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What @lpb said. Great reply; I have nothing to add.

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Thank you for your reply!
Unfortunately, this is far from the needed solution. Using the in-browser search it wouldn’t be a filter, but a highlight system. I need the items grouped. And the infinite scroll is an issue.
After years of asana contribution with my feedbacks (many years ago, when Asana was still a beta I used to interact directly with the team and they were pretty responsive in receiving suggestions and implement them), the inbox “context” is still a major flaw in Asana and the development team doesn’t have any awareness of how this would be such a fundamental feature for project managers. I would be interested in investing in a third-party solution, but it seems impossible as well.

Wait a second - I totally forgot - there IS support for the Inbox in the API. Namely, a task’s assignee_status field will have a value of “inbox” if that task is part of its assigned user’s Inbox.

So a third-party app would be possible.

Hmmm, I’ll have to think about this in terms of Desksana that I’m currently working on. I had not planned to include any type of Inbox feature, but maybe…

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I think that “inbox” value just means it’s in “Recently Assigned” in My Tasks.

(I edited this post.)

Thanks,

Larry

Ah you could be right; I’ve never checked into that.

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If some developer thinks he would be capable to reach my desired result, please contact me, I’m interested in investing in it. Thank you!

Hi @Francesco_Canovi,
I think it’s still far from ideal, but I’d like to share an idea.
When I want to search something in Inbox, I use advanced search with collaborator: me, and add any other options.

My extension adds a shortcut to save one step.
Screen Shot 2020-07-24 at 9.20.30

Thank you for your contribution, ShunS. I appreciate all of your efforts, guys. Unfortunately, none of these options is good enough for the purpose which in fact would be simple.
As a project manager, I don’t have many tasks to do. What I need is to follow the notifications of all team members, see task discussions, likes, tasks completed, and so on. Everything in a project context and not with all notification mixed.
Another approach to the problem I submitted a long time ago, without having any feedback, would be to create a new “inbox” tab in every project. It would be very similar to having per-project filtering in the general inbox. I don’t understand how this feature is not considered important. :frowning:
Thank you.

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An Inbox within each project would be amazing. I have suggested this idea in the past too. It would make it so much easier for project managers to follow activities per project. I wish Asana would listen to our feedback more.

You can upvote this feature request here: Add an Inbox Tab to Projects
:slight_smile:

All set! Thank you.