Hi Asana Team & Community,
I would like to suggest extending Asana’s approval and form functionality by supporting electronic signatures as part of formal workflows.
There are already related requests around signatures in Asana, but I think there is a broader use case that combines Forms, Tasks, Approvals, electronic signatures, and auditability.
This would be particularly relevant for areas such as research management, administration, finance, procurement, HR, and other processes where approvals and submitted requests need to be formally documented and traceable.
Example use cases
1. Signing a request submitted through an Asana Form
A user may submit a request through an Asana Form, for example:
-
a funding request,
-
an internal research application,
-
a project-related declaration,
-
a resource request,
-
a confirmation,
-
or another administrative request.
For some processes, it would be very useful if the person submitting the form could also electronically sign the submission.
The signature could then remain linked to the generated Asana task together with information such as:
-
name of the person signing,
-
verified user identity where applicable,
-
date and time,
-
the submitted form information,
-
and the exact version or content that was signed.
This would make it much easier to demonstrate who submitted and confirmed a particular request.
2. Signing an Approval within a task
The same functionality could also be useful later in the workflow.
For example, a submitted Form could automatically create a task that then goes through one or more Asana Approvals.
Instead of only recording that someone clicked “Approve”, Asana could optionally allow the approver to provide an electronic signature as part of the approval.
A possible workflow could therefore be:
Form submission → Signature → Task → Review → Approval → Signature → Audit record
The resulting record could document:
-
who submitted the request,
-
who reviewed or approved it,
-
what information or document was approved,
-
when each action occurred,
-
the corresponding electronic signatures,
-
and the full history of the approval process.
Auditability and compliance
One of the main benefits would be having a clear and auditable record directly within Asana.
For processes with formal documentation requirements, the signature and approval information should ideally be securely linked to the relevant submission, task, document, or approval state so that it is possible to trace:
Who signed what, when, and in which context?
Depending on applicable legal and regulatory requirements, Asana could potentially support different levels of electronic signatures or integrations with appropriate identity verification and e-signature services.
The goal would not necessarily be to replace every specialized signature platform, but to make Asana workflows much more suitable for processes where traceability, accountability, compliance, and formal confirmation are required.
Why this is particularly relevant for research management
In research management, many processes involve a combination of:
-
applications and requests,
-
declarations,
-
funding-related documents,
-
internal approvals,
-
project approvals,
-
confirmations by researchers or responsible persons,
-
and documentation that may need to remain traceable for audits or later review.
Being able to combine Forms, Approvals, and electronic signatures in one Asana workflow could significantly reduce manual work and avoid having to switch to separate systems only for the signature step.
It would also make it easier to maintain a complete and transparent history of the process directly alongside the corresponding task or project.
I believe this could be a valuable extension of both Asana Forms and Asana Approvals, especially for organizations using Asana for structured and compliance-relevant workflows.