More filtering options to filter Inbox notifications

That is a very neat idea!

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Great idea!

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Thanks for sharing this great idea @Matt_Werner; really appreciate it!

We already have a thread on this topic, with some very similar ideas More filtering options to filter Inbox notifications - #57 by MichaelHarvey so if you donā€™t mind, can I merge your post with this main thread to consolidate our case on this topic?

Thanks again for taking the time to share your precious feedback with us!

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Sure. And btw, I appreciate that you guys are active with the community - but it seems like after years of posts, none of the suggestions actually get implemented, no matter how obvious or simple they are. Why should I keep sharing feedback?

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This is a huge issue, and I donā€™t even have that big of a team. I end up avoiding even starting to look at the inbox as I canā€™t possibly be sure I see all the important things. So inevitably my team and I learn we have to chase each other outside of asanaā€¦ defeating the purpose. Paying for the business tier or even using asana is becoming a real question. If I canā€™t stay in sync with my team on the status of things, and giving them the feedback they require when they need it easily, all the other functionality in the world is useless. Creating a simple filtered view query for this should not be hard nor require some crazy technical overhaul. Heck make it easy for me to export my inbox to excel, I 'll create my own filters. This data is clearly stored in a structured format it is pulled from already.

As @Matt_Werner says aboveā€¦ not sure the point of engaging here. This is mostly cathartic release for me right now. Good community engagement doesnā€™t solve the functional failings unfortunately.

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  • 1 - I would love to only see when someone @ mentions me in a comment or comments on a task that is assigned to me. As someone who set up almost all of the projects in my organization, and who uses Zapier (so tons of automated tasks are created by ā€œmeā€) I am by default notified on pretty much every activity in Asana. Untenable. I use a gmail filter and look at my actual email inbox to find comments but even then itā€™s not perfect and I get a lot of ā€œso and so completed this taskā€ emails.
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YES! This is exactly what we need.

+1, the inbox is pretty ridiculous if you have a large team or use a lot of subtasks

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I just made my own post about this not realizing that people have been requesting this feature in many threads for years. So my only question now is how many votes does it take for a suggestion to actually be considered worth researching by the Asana team?

Hello, Asana Team
I love your product and have used it for years. But there is but one big glaring limitation I have found with it that I would like to express. Perhaps others here in the community can see where I am coming from and may also appreciate it if this was a feature.

For me and the way I and my company use Asana, my inbox is far too cluttered and difficult to sort through. I often do not see important things because they are buried under more mundane notifications that I cannot sort, filter, or turn off beyond manually archiving all of them but the ones I need to see. For the scale at which we use Asana, that is a major time sink and is rarely sustainable.

Recently the sorting and filtering functions for the usual Project List view and the Advanced Search have seen great improvements that I really appreciate, but those sort of improvements have not yet moved to the Inbox.

I am aware that currently you can opt in or out of receiving email notifications for Daily Summaries, Weekly Reports, and Activity Updates. You can uncheck all of those boxes to not receive emails (which I prefer since I would rather do everything in the Asana Inbox anyway) but no matter what all Activity Updates for tasks you are following will go to your inbox.

This in itself is not a bad thing, but the major issue my team is facing is that ā€œActivity Updatesā€ is too broad of a category and you cannot sort your status updates by any more specific subcategories.

Currently, things that fall under ā€œActivity Updatesā€ include:

  • A task is assigned to you
  • A task is unassigned from you
  • A task assigned to you is approaching its due date
  • A task assigned to you has past its due date
  • A task assigned to you has its due date changed
  • A task you are following has new attachments uploaded to it
  • A task you are following has new comments posted to it
  • A task you are following is marked complete
  • A subtask within a task you are following is marked complete
  • A task you are following receives a Like
  • A task you are following is merged with another task
  • You have been added as a Collaborator to a task
  • Your comment receives a Like
  • Your attachment receives a Like
  • Your task completion receives a Like
  • Youā€™re @ mentioned in a task comment
  • Youā€™re @ mentioned in the task description
  • A Conversation is started in a Team youā€™re a Member of
  • A comment is posted in a Team or project Conversation youā€™re following
  • A project you are a member of has new tasks added to it (though this can be turned off in project member notification settings)
  • A Conversation is started in a project youā€™re a Member of
  • The status of a project youā€™re a member of has been updated
  • The status of a task youā€™ve been waiting on has been changed

I am not saying that any of those things should be removed from in the inbox, but I am saying that seeing Comments and @ Mentions of my name are a TOP priority for me. I need to be aware of those first and foremost as soon as possible to when they happen. Often because no one in my orginization comments on a task unless they have a problem, a question, new information, or are giving feedback. So as one of the managers, I need to see those right away. But often I donā€™t notice them until much later because there is a pile of ā€œthis subtask is completeā€ notifications (among others) burying the comments. For a long time I have been scrolling through the inbox manually to find comments and address those first, but with the amount of notifications we have it is beyond inconvenient. It is difficult and leaves a wider margin for oversight/human error.

I know different people use Asana in different ways, and other companies may prioritize different kinds of notifications than I would. So my proposal: why not develop a function to SORT your inbox in the same way that you can for the Project List View and Advanced Search? Or why not allow Advanced Search to have an option to search only ā€œwithin my inboxā€? Whichever of those is easiest to develop.

I have seen several community posts over the years asking for a way to view ā€œonly @ mentionsā€ or to have more control over what sort of things you get notifications for. Most of these are posts from people who use Asana on a large scale and MUST follow a lot of tasks at all times for one reason or another. So clearly there is some demand there, even if smaller scale users donā€™t mind archiving notifications manually.

Many of the responses to those posts mearly explain how to change your email notification settings, your project member notification settings, and recommend ā€œfollowing less tasksā€ and archiving more often. (Side note, being able to select multiple inbox notifications at once and archive all of the seleced notifs in one click but not archive the entire inbox would be AMAZING)

While I too would love to have more options on what I do and do not get notifications for as well, it may be more practical for Asanaā€™s team to simply use the functions they already have (Filtering, Sorting, and/or Advanced Searching) and apply that to the inbox. That also could help a wider variety of users and their situations as well I think.

So yes, try to find a way to sort or filter the inbox by all or most of those categories listed above individually. If that is possible. I know it isnā€™t as easy to code as it sounds but I would love it if the idea was at least considered. Asana has seen great improvements to sorting the past few years and to me this seems like a logical next step to give users more control and more power to find what they need efficiently.

Other Asana community members: if a function like this existed, would you use it? What would you use it for?

Thank you all for your time!

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Thank you so much for taking time to share this great feedback with us @Regan_Carriere!

This is a popular request in the Forum and there is an existing thread about it, so Iā€™ve gone ahead and merged your post with this main thread to gather all feedback and votes.

Have a great day!

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Hi Asana, Iā€™d like to stop the email notification and to use only the ASANAā€™s INBOX page.
Today INBOX contains all tags with some ā€œnewsā€ (change assigner, new comments, ā€¦).
But I think it really needs some tool to filter the INBOX messagges:

  • by team
  • by project
  • by tag

I think it needs also some task status value, for example:

  • you donā€™t reply to this task
  • you reply to this task
  • ā€¦

Please Asana, listen to your customers.
Thanks.

Hi @Riccardo_Mares and thanks for sharing this feedback with us!

We already have a thread on this topic, so Iā€™ve merged your post with the existing conversation to gather all feedback in one place. Iā€™m hoping to have some updates to share soon regarding Inbox, so keep an eye out for an update on this thread :slight_smile:

We are talking about a task of June 2017 and weā€™re still talking about it?
The suggestions we wrote may solved in a few programmers hours?
Do you want to emprove this product (we paid to use it) or what?

Thanks

ASANA have you got some feedbacks?
In my dreams I see me that I unset the email notification, using only Asana Inbox!

Filtering Inbox notifications is documented and looks like this:

Asana Inbox | Product Guide ā€¢ Asana Product Guide

I donā€™t have it yet; I just stumbled across this while looking up something else and figured Iā€™d share,

Larry

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We canā€™t hide anything from you @lpb :slight_smile:

Iā€™ll be sharing more info on this topic hopefully later on today, keep an eye on #community-forum-announcements category :hugs:

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hyperventilating

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Hi everyone,

As promised earlier this week, Iā€™m delighted to announce that weā€™re starting rolling out filters in your Inbox! More info in this thread :point_right: Introducing filters for Inbox ā­ļø

Iā€™m closing this thread as a lot of its content is either outdated or addressed with this launch, but it will still be visible and we will continue use it to inform future Inbox updates. Please create a new #productfeedback for each new feedback you may have; we look forward to hear your feedback!

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