More options for Email Notifications

Being able to JUST have email notifications for when I’m @ed OR when a new task is assigned to me

Would like to request the separation of notifications for comments and tasks. I had to set up an email rule to hide task notifications because I am getting TONS of them whenever a new job is created. The problem is that comments on that task share the same subject line when the email notification goes out, so there is no way to separate them in an email filter. I would really like it if we could choose to stop task notifications, but still allow comments and message notifications to come through email.

9 Likes

Hi,

My profile settings to email.

For us it would be great if you can decide per team if you like notifications via email. Today you can set it for everything in Asana. But it would be great to be able to pick this per team. Some teams it might be important to get the notifications in other not.

So under settings to email you could have multiple lines with the different teams.

Regards

Sandra

3 Likes

@Marie Just flagging this in case you want to merge with:

and/or

4 Likes

The biggest pain point I have received from my team is the number of notifications they receive via email. Currently the only options for notifications are to receive an email for 1-Task Reminders, 2-All Activity and/or 3-Weekly Dashboard. The “task reminders” and “weekly dashboard” function perfectly (although it would be nice to get a reminder an hour before something is due when it is has a set due time).

For the “all activity” notifications, users are receiving a notification for every little change on a task that they are set to follow which is bogging down their inbox and not giving them the pertinent information they need. Because they are receiving too many emails they end up ignoring most of them and missing the most important items, such as when something is assigned to them or they are mentioned in a comment.

It would be great to add on a feature in the notification settings to allow users to set what exact notifications they want to receive, i.e. just be notified when they are mentioned in a comment or assigned to a task. A lot of my team does not need to see when a description is updated or name changed so it would be great if they were able to set their notifications to only send to them if they are assigned or mentioned.

Is there any additional notification setting levels in the works?

Did you have a look at the Asana Inbox? That might reduce the notifications because they are “grouped” together.
You can also disable notifications on a per-project basis. Maybe @Julien_RENAUD can give you some more advices!

1 Like

As @Bastien_Siebman said previously, the ASANA Inbox groups the notifications so that you don’t end up with a big mix of notifications. Are you (and your colleague) using the Inbox ?

I know this is a personal choice, but in my company, most of users choose to cancel the email notifications, as the Inbox already provides the same level of information. Thus you need to keep the Asana web page opened so that you know you have received a notification, and you deal with only one Inbox.

Here you can find the details of the notifications you get:

ASANA will notify you with modificaitons on what you choose to follow, so to summarize, to get less notifications:

  • you can turn off the notifications by email
  • you can unfollow tasks, conversations or projects
  • you can adjust the notifications for each project in “Member Notifications Settings”

I hope this will help you.

2 Likes

Thank you Julien and Bastien. The inbox is a good start but I am not sure that fully solves the request we have. Sadly a lot of my team doesn’t use the inbox as they depend on email to notify them for everything. For email settings, it would be great to be able to select what exactly from the “all activity” list you get notified for. Right now users receive an email for all of the activities, see list below. It would be great to customize which of those activities you receive a notification on as not all are super important for all users and when my colleagues receive too many, they tend to just delete or ignore the notification emails.

Is this an extra setting level that could be added or is in the works?

Activity
You will receive an email notification for the following activities:

  • A task is assigned to you
  • A task is unassigned from you
  • A task assigned to you has its due date changed
  • You have been @mentioned in a task and added as a collaborator
  • A task you are following has new attachments
  • A task you are following has new comments
  • A task you are following is marked complete
  • A task you are following is given a Like
  • Your comment is liked
  • Your attachment is liked
  • Your task completion is liked
  • A Conversation is started in a team or a project you’re a member of
  • A comment is posted in a Conversation you’re following
  • A project you are a member of has new tasks
  • There is a new status for a project you’re a member of
  • The status of a task you’ve been waiting on has been changed
10 Likes

It is not possible (yet) to choose so precisely indeed.

1 Like

Thank you for confirming. It would be great to get features like that added to the pipeline if they aren’t already. :wink:

Thank you again for the help!

4 Likes

We are in the same situation. The way email notifications currently work in Asana makes them almost useless – it’s really an all-or-nothing approach. The Asana inbox is not really a solution because there is no indicator outside of Asana that you have something there.

Even though I believe that in general email should be phased out as a tool for notification, the reason that it works is because most people’s email is set up to give them some kind of indicator that they have a new message. And that indicator shows up in a taskbar or notification area of the computer.

This is why we can turn off notifications for Slack events – because the Slack desktop app can notify and place a badge on the desktop. Until Asana either makes the notifications more granular, or brings notifications into the desktop itself, this is going to be a sticking point for many people, in my opinion.

4 Likes

You should consider not using notifications to stop being distracted all the time. Let the Asana Inbox, work in Pomodoro style (time slots of 25 minutes) and check messages between slots :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

I would like to request that Asana give users the option to receive a daily or weekly digest of notifications. This way, they won’t get spammed with one hundred emails in one go. They can just see a single email at the end of the day that summarizes all the tasks that were created that day.

3 Likes

I second the need for granular filtering of certain notification types - especially ones that aren’t actionable (likes/hearts). They just clutter up inboxes/email and take away from real focus of tasks.

10 Likes

Just casting my vote for this feature. Please fast-track this.

If the idea is to move “old-school” companies that use email to track projects into a modern project management solution like Asana, then there ABSOLUTELY needs to be customizable such that people can “ease-in” to the habit of using a project management tool.

Too many email notifications are hurting my ability to convert my team to Asana.

11 Likes

Agreed!! This feature is a necessity… We are getting way to many useless emails, and the Inbox feature is not as useful as your team thinks. We love Asana, but it’s ability to notify users is ineffective. It’s either too many emails about ever little change to a task (so you end up ignoring the Asana emails), or you turn the email notifications off altogether, but the orange circle on the Inbox is not enough of a trigger to let you clearly see you have a message. Asana is great, but this needs fixing fast!!! Fast-track this feature 100%

5 Likes

Agreed! @Bastien_Siebman @Julien_RENAUD any update on this?

2 Likes

Hi @Jesse_Plautz,

@Julien_RENAUD and I don’t work for Asana, we are just Asana Champions helping on the Community. We cannot give any deadline, neither does Asana actually :slight_smile: But you can be sure they are watching the threads to prioritize features.

1 Like

Hi!
I agree with the comments about the notifications coming too thick and fast. The only larger quibble I’ve got with the notification system is sending an email with attachments as a comment creates a notification to other subscribers for each attachment in the email!
That would be bearable if there were 2 important pictures for a bug or feature request, but it’s picking up all the images in their signature as well.
I get notified of each reply to a task, then once for their company logo, twitter logo, facebook logo, email icon etc - all of which are just images in their signature.
Maybe we could we batch all updates together per hour etc?

2 Likes

Just noticed there’s a much better explanation of what i mean here: Cleaner activity notifications on email replies with attachments

1 Like