Introducing browser notifications!

Hi everyone :wave:

My name is Alex, and I’m an engineer at Asana. You’ve asked for browser notifications, and today I’m very excited to invite you to test out this new feature!

Here’s how you can turn on browser notifications:

  1. Go to your Profile Settings.
  2. Click the Hacks tab.
  3. Toggle on browser notifications, then refresh the page.
  4. Click Allow in the pop-up to grant Asana permission to show notifications.

Browser notifications will appear when your teammates assign you a task, comment on a task you’re following, or add you as a collaborator. As we continue to develop this feature, keep an eye out for more types of notifications and control over the ones you receive!

If you need some uninterrupted time to focus on your work, just use the Snooze hack (Profile Settings > Hacks) to quiet your Inbox and browser notifications for an hour.

Note: Browser Notifications will only appear if you have Asana open, so we recommend leaving a tab minimized throughout the day.

Please share your feedback! Browser notifications are a work in progress, and we’re releasing them as a “hack” to get them into your hands early and incorporate your feedback into future versions. Please comment with any suggestions, big or small!

From all of us here at Asana, we hope you enjoy them—and can’t wait to hear what you think!

Cheers,
Alex Ryan

41 Likes

The best news in ages, thanks! Will be perfect when we will not need to have our tab or browser open to receive these notifications.

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This is huge! Thanks Alex for your work on this. You mentioned other types of notifications are on the roadmap – is it fair to say task due date reminders are top of that list? Thanks again.

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Thanks for the update on this. While we have you Alex, can you tell us if the desperately desired Desktop App is coming, in the works, or not even on the radar?

Thanks!

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Hi @Patrick_Tam! I’m Louis, a Product Manager at Asana alongside Alex. That notification type is on our radar :slight_smile: I’m curious to learn more about how you would use them. When would you want to receive due date or due time notifications? Where do you want to receive these notifications (browser, email, Asana Inbox, phone, etc.)? What types of tasks would you want to receive these notifications for? Thanks for sharing your input!

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Hi Louis,

Thanks for asking. I’d like to receive the notifications at the time they’re due (if a due time is set), as I typically set the due time for when I need to work on it, as opposed to when the item is actually due.

For tasks that don’t have a due time, it would be great to have the notifications bundled and sent in the morning (does Asana allow you to set working hours?) at the start of the workday. Even better would be the ability to snooze individual tasks to later in the day or another date.

As for where they should surface, I don’t mind having them surfaced across all interfaces as long as I have the option to disable them per device.

As for what types of tasks, let me know if you had different tasks in mind, but I really mainly care about the tasks that are assigned to me (or that I’m following). Hope that helps, and thanks for the work to get this hugely important feature in!

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Greatest news since we began with Asana in the Summer.

But of course, we all want more - here’s my ask, and this would greatly help us quit the Slack-as-workflow-tool habit. The work we do is extremely collaborative - most on our team can’t do their work until another or others have finished theirs.

So a DESPERATELY needed browser notification is that when a task is marked complete, assignees on tasks that are dependent upon the preceding task(s) automatically receive a browser notification. You have no idea how that would allow us to truly centralize our work, workflow, and communications in Asana, vs. a fairly gnarly Asana - Slack combo.

Please please please add this feature - I’d hope many are in the same boat as us!

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From my user perspective, of someone managing a team and all of its projects, notifications of any type are not useful unless I can filter to @ mentions that are specifically for me. I do not need notifications every time someone creates a task, assigns a task, comments on a task, likes a task, etc. My Asana inbox is useless. Email notifications are useless. I won’t use browser notifications. They would be a major distraction. (I know there are other comments/recommendations/requests for @ mention notifications, including one from me.)

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This is terrific news! Are there plans to make the notifications available even if Asana is closed (through Chrome’s inherent functionality)?

Thanks for finally implementing this much-needed functionality. When is it going to be announced to the user base?

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Woot Woot :fire:

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I second this. It would make dependent tasks much more useful.

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Tips to reduce/filter notifications in Asana

Hmm - I’m using the quiet time during the holidays to test this out but not having any luck yet.

I have quadruple-checked all of the settings in both Asana and in Chrome that I can think of, but I am getting no browser notifications. Chrome version is current, and I can confirm I’ve turned the Browser Notification Hack to on, and then refreshed the page.

I have also checked my Chrome settings, and I have allowed notifications in Chrome and from Asana as follows:

  1. Notifications: “Ask Before Sending” turned on (I assume that’s what stops sites I visit from sending notifications without permission).
  2. Allow: https://app.asana.com:443

I asked a colleague to assign me a task, and he did so, but it’s been more than 15 minutes now, and I’ve yet to receive a notification (I have had a browser tab with Asana open in it from the start). Any advice would be appreciated.

Hey Dean! Have you checked that you don’t have Do Not Disturb (or your operating system’s equivalent) turned on? More than once during development I thought I had broken something…only to realize that I had left DND on from a meeting I was just in :stuck_out_tongue:

Also double check that you don’t have the Snooze hack turned on/active, and that your Asana tab is open to the right workspace/organization.

If that doesn’t work, could you also try having your colleague add you as a collaborator of a task, or comment on a task you’re following? If it’s just task-assigned notifications that aren’t working, that will be very interesting.

(FYI while you’re testing, there’s no need to wait 15 minutes to see if a notification will come in. They’re built with our lightning-fast new framework so as long as your internet connection is stable, you’ll see the notification within a second or two of your colleague assigning you a task – assuming it’s working :slightly_smiling_face:)

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Hello, notifications is great, but I still need counter and highlighting of the unseen changes/comments. I think that browser can count and highlight it all by himself depending on the notifications he received.

And, of course, you need to implement normal inbox, where I dont want to see all comments of other users. I want to see only updated tasks (with counters of changes that was produced) or notification list sorted by time descending.

The notifications are NOT working despite turning on the app, I see nothing unless I am literally in the app/browser which defeats the purpose

Thanks for the feedback @Victoria_Harrell! You are correct: in order to receive browser notifications, you must have at least one open tab of Asana. We recommend leaving a tab minimized throughout the day. That way, you’ll receive notifications when you’re not directly looking at Asana. (We know this workaround isn’t ideal—part of the reason we launched browser notifications as a “hack” for now.)

Let us know if you have any more feedback about browser notifications or notifications more generally. Thanks again for the input!

1 Like