Introducing new features that connect people to the big picture

Hi Asana Community!

I’m Maggie Blackburn, and I’m a Product Marketing Manager at Asana here to share some exciting new product updates with you all.

Over these past few years, we’ve seen the way people think about and relate to their work has fundamentally changed. They want to see the impact of their work, but they are spending 58% of their time on work about work, and 40% think burnout is inevitable, according to insights from our 2022 Anatomy of Work Report.

That’s why we’re rolling out a set of features, partnerships and insights to help leaders drive impact in their organizations by aligning work to goals and supporting focus and prioritization for their teams. Whether you’re a people manager ready to empower your team or an individual wondering how your work ties to the big picture, these new improvements help you and your team do just that.

Let’s dive in!

Stay aligned to the organization’s mission with improvements to Goals

  • My Goals: Understand how work connects to the bigger picture with a new My goals tab that helps your team easily navigate between the mission, organizational goals, team goals, and goals they own.

  • Celebrate team goals: Once a goal is completed, a delightful celebration creature will appear across the screen to help bring a bit of joy to work and recognize a job well done.

  • Automatic progress updates: Now, leaders can get real-time visibility into the progress of goals with no manual work required from their teams. Simply set the update method to “Automatic ‘’ and goals from sub-goals or projects automatically update the parent goal.

  • Set goals to comment-only: Coming soon, comment-only goals will give users more confidence that only the right people can edit goals.

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Goals are available for teams on the Business or Enterprise plan

Focus on what’s most important with new ways to prioritize work and minimize distractions

  • Set a focus for the week on Asana’s mobile app: Kick off the work week and focus on the work that matters most by setting a focus for the week on Asana’s mobile app. This focus stays visible in your My Tasks across platforms to help plan work and keep priorities top of mind.
  • Protect time with Asana’s desktop app: The desktop app will soon give individuals the ability to protect time and pause notifications. Select a task to work on and start a timer, with the option to turn on do not disturb mode to pause notifications.
  • Get context, without the back and forth: When someone @ mentions a task, status update, message, or goal in Asana, these links will appear in the activity feed of the object that was mentioned, giving contextual information to get started faster.
  • Take productivity to the next level with integrations in My Tasks: Soon, individuals will be able to make time to get work done by adding tasks as time blocks to Google Calendar with the Clockwise integration. With the Slack integration, it’s easy to turn Slack conversations into actionable tasks that appear in a user’s My Tasks so nothing falls through the cracks.
  • Partnerships with Google, Figma, Zapier, and more: With this launch, we’re improving existing integrations and adding new integrations to help you and your team minimize distractions. From enhancements to our existing Google Drive integration to a new integration with Figma, learn more by checking out this post.

Improve engagement by building rapport during 1:1s and capturing feedback across the company

  • Improvements to 1:1 project template: Foster alignment and rapport between managers and individuals through more effective 1:1s. Managers and individuals can keep goals top of mind, as they discuss progress and co-create next steps together—all in one central place.
  • Embed forms into internal wikis: Capture employee feedback and requests from individuals across teams by embedding forms into internal wikis. Then, track the feedback in Asana and create a plan for follow up so nothing gets missed.

We look forward to hearing your feedback! Let us know what you think in the comments below and participate in the conversation in our forum posts.

14 Likes

Hi Maggie,
thanks for your update, great news.
One question came up for us. We briefly had the 1:1-Project-Template that you’re showing in the last mockup (Set up a 1:1 project), but since a while it is gone. Was this feature discontinued, moved or are we missing something?

Thank you!
Alex

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Good question :+1:

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Hi @Alexander_Sonner and @Jan_Rajdl, this was an A/B test! I’m not sure if we have yet decided whether or not we will implement it permanently, but I’ll check with our team and keep you posted here. What did you think about it anyway? Did you like it?

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It depends on what is behind the 1:1 function :slight_smile: If it just helps you to set up the 1:1 more easily - mean with who you will have 1:1 and who is who - it’s great anyway. But if there are some more functionalities behind it, which leps you to better organize your team, 1:1 meetings and relevant agenda it could be awesome.

I have a pack of direct reports and have regular 1:1 with each of them. For a new guys, I use my own 1:1 template which is actually good enough (I don’t have new teammates every month :)) but I miss some of the features that can help me (below).

Anyway, I think that the 1:1 template could be one of the most useful templates ever because not all of us develop products or make marketing campaigns, but most of us have some teams, reports and peers in a company. It means that most of us somehow need to handle 1:1 meetings and it would be great to help with it.

Sometimes I just need to multihome task from another project and discuss it on 1:1 but need to share a context of topic which cannot be directly a comment of the task :slight_smile:

Sometimes I need to track particularly agreements or next steps came up from the 1:1 meeting - especially the date when we agreed on it.

Almost every 1:1 we had some recurring tasks like reports of sales, the progress of projects etc. This can solve a quite nice dashboard - especially if you can customize it like (still better) Home page.

So it was just a few of my thoughts.

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Thanks for sharing these insights with us @Jan_Rajdl :pray:t3:

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The updates to Goals sound great! Are there any dashboard capabilities for Goals and sub goals with the new updates?

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Can’t wait to try this, how do we set those up?

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Thank you. Any update to be able to add customized fields to Goals?

I am wondering the same. We can really use this on our internal confluence pages.

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They replied in another thread :slight_smile:

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This is a great feature that will enhance productive and introduce great workflow. I too can’t wait to use it.

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For this - just checking on who can see these links? Can everyone see them and also what happens if someone does not have access to the task where it is linking? Does it show as Private Link?

Correct @Cally_McIntyre, everyone can see them, but folks will only be able to see tasks they have access to (either because they’re a collaborator or the task is public).

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Thanks for clearing that up Marie!

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Very excited for the improved Google Chat Asana Bot… however it’s quite unusable! It doesn’t allow you to search for projects within a Workspace when setting it up. This makes features like creating a new task actually a huge pain (Just use the Chrome extension instead), imagine needing to click a ‘Next arrow’ to cycle through hundreds of projects before finding yours. I really hope Asana and Google can work together to make this integrations useful, and more aligned with the experiences Slack and Team users have.

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Clockwise & My Tasks

Are there any resources that elaborate on the Clockwise integration with My Tasks? I couldn’t find anything that showcased how this will work or when we can expect it? This is one I’m definitely looking forward to.

Improved Google Drive Integration

Will this integration finally enable us to attach files from Drive to Asana without having to sign in to Google every single time?

1 Like