I think if you were to think of reminders and timeframes of tasks in a similar fashion to how events are scheduled in a calendar, then that would solve a ton of challenges. And if you did that, then I could very literally replace my calendar app and reminders app with just Asana.
Calendar-esque functionality:
Start day/time
End day/time
Reminders/Alerts
Start/End day/time would really help clarify things MUCH better than “Due times.” Every single user would know exactly what start/end would be referring to with a task. But due times are not as universally understood or used. I think we all know that a “due date/time” is when it’s supposed to be done. But many of us (see comments in this thread) use “due time” as when we start working on a task, not for when we need to finish it.
Then I’d recommend thinking about “notifications” in two ways when it comes to tasks w/ start/end days/times. One way is at the project/team/profile level in terms of notifications when tasks are completed, assigned, etc. And the other way would be “in-task” date/time-related alerts/reminders. Then just look at any calendar app for ideas on how you can allow users the ability to choose and customize when they want to be alerted (ideally in an offline, desktop notification style) about that task.
One big difference from a calendar app alert that would very helpful in Asana since it is a task/project management tool, would be to not limit alerts/reminders to when the task is going to begin, but allow users to choose when to be reminded in relation to both the start and end date/times. (e.g. - 5 minutes before start time, 1 day before end/due time, etc.).
Not only would this structure make Asana abundantly more valuable and useful in terms of being able to structure work in ways people actually work and also being able to be notified when they need to be reminded/notified (and allow us to be able to ditch several other apps and just live inside Asana!!), but I believe it would be creating an architecture that would allow for tasks to much more effectively sync with calendar apps. Like right now, they all just get lumped into the all-day tasks. But if you add start/end dates/times (with reminders!) then you should have all the data necessary to populate a calendar very appropriately/accurately.
I installed the app in Chrome, but I’m not getting any notifications after enabling it under the “hack” tab. I don’t have snooze selected. I haven’t seen any notification, does it only pop up when a timed event happens?
Hi @Adam8 and thanks for reaching out! A couple of questions to help us understand what is going wrong here:
Do you have at least one Asana tab open in your browser?
Can you check that you don’t have a Do Not Disturb feature turned on your computer?
Could you try triggering different type of Activity notifications (ex: ask a colleague to assign you a task or to @mention you) and let us know if you receive any notification?
I LOVE this hack as a desktop pop-up in Chrome. If it had been missing (or goes missing again), that would be a deal-breaker for us, and we’d have to switch to another program. Using the conversation feature with the desktop notifications basically creates a chat feature, which was a must-have for us.
But I suggest that you add information to your blog telling people how to turn off email notifications while still getting desktop notifications. People’s inboxes get flooded during “chats.” Nobody wants an email for every single-sentence conversation comment. To stop this, I had to have both people participating in a test conversation turn off “Get activity notifications” in the Profile Settings email notifications tab.
Also, although this workaround allows people to avoid getting emails for every exchange in a conversation, it makes it impossible get task assignment or other non-conversation activity notifications by email. It would be great if users could customize 1) which notifications go to email, 2) which only appear in browser notifications, or 3) which go to both. At minimum, it would be helpful to have settings for choosing one of these three options for all Conversations. It would be even better if you could also do so for comments on specific tasks.
Thanks again for this great hack, and I hope these improvements might be possible in the future.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this detailed feedback with us Kim, it will be extremely useful to help our team iterate on this hack in the future!
I would also like to have notifications on my iOS phone. I would like due time notifications with sound please.
I like to set task’s throughout the day such as phone call reminders. When I am busy working these things don’t come to mind which is one of the main reasons I have got Asana.
Is this feature in the works?
I can see online that many people have requested it. For me it is essential for the type of task management software I will continue to use.
We recently started using Asana and I was not receiving browser/desktop notifications in Chrome 74. I had to manually add https://app.asana.com:443 to chrome://settings/content/notifications.
I believe that this is because I have “Ask before sending (recommended)” disabled, which blocks notifications by default. I have this set because far too many sites offer browser notifications nowadays.
Asana is great but one of the reasons we decided to move forward is to get people out of emails and working more towards a project. I would really like more options for email notifications. You either receive everything or nothing. I follow a lot of projects but if two people are having a conversations I don’t want an email every time. However, if i’m tagged in the comment, i’d like an email. It would be great if I could limit my emails to only when someone tags me on the conversation.
Thanks for your feedback @Paul_Stanger! We’re aware this is a popular request, and I hope this is something we can implement in the near-future. If you haven’t yet, I would highly recommend you adding your vote to this thread which already collected quite a few votes! I can’t promise when or to which extent this will be implemented just yet, but I’ll make sure to keep you posted in the Forum as soon as I have some update on this topic!
Hi Alex; thanks for this great feature. I have it enabled for a few months now, but never get a notification about anything. Permissions are ok according to Chrome Settings. Can you help me out? Thank you in advance. - Jeroen
Yes @Duarte_Martins1! If it’s not currently working, I’d recommend disabling/re-enabling the hack. Let me know if that helps or if you need additional help!
Thanks for your reply. I’ve done that and made sure Firefox is set to accept new notification requests and it works now, thanks. FF gives you the option to forbid new notification requests.
I was training a new employee to use Asana and I noticed Desktop Notifications (and a personal favorite, tab + b) are gone from the Hacks section of My Profile Settings.
I saw that they were moved to Notifications, where I’m able to select different settings for desktop notifications, but two of my colleagues cannot see anything regarding desktop notifications. On the Notifications page they only see Email notification options.
Is this because I was previously receiving desktop notifications when it was still a “hack”? How can I enable desktop notifications for these folks?
When I click a desktop notification, it always opens a new tab to show me the task. I’d prefer it to open in the Asana tab that already exists. I don’t think this has always been the case… I’m fairly certain that in the past, clicking a notification would use the existing tab. Has this changed? I’ve been experiencing this in both Chrome and Firefox (latest versions) on Mac OSX Catalina.