Offline mode in Asana: what you can and cannot do

English Forum Tips and Tricks Forum Leaders tips
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:flight_departure: Have you ever embarked on a long flight, and you wished you had offline access to Asana and could create and check off tasks while traveling?

:cry: Unfortunately, there’s only a few actions you can take while being offline.

Here’s what you can do, provided you sync it before using it:

:white_check_mark: Access to any organization
:white_check_mark: Create a project
:white_check_mark: See project members
:white_check_mark: Create a task
:white_check_mark: Assign task if they are in the project
:white_check_mark: Complete tasks
:white_check_mark: See previous inbox messages
:white_check_mark: Archive inbox messages
:white_check_mark: Load tasks assigned to me

And here’s what you cannot do:

:x: Add people to a project
:x: Assign task if they are not in the project
:x: Search tasks history
:x: See new inbox messages
:x: Load tasks in a project

As you can see, offline use is very limited now. And we haven’t heard about any upcoming updates to this feature being improved.

Maybe, by having a dedicated team for offline tasks that can be synced when online access is available, that can be a workaround to get work done while not having connection.

Hopefully, in the future, we will see progress for offline use, so regular travelers can take advantage of this opportunity to get work done.

What else would you like to be able to do offline? What feature is missing that could be useful to you?

:fr: Version Française

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Is this referring to the Android app or to the desktop one?

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What do you mean “sync before using it?”
There’s no offline mode, so how do you sync?

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I believe the list works for both the desktop app and mobile app… This is to be taken lightly as things might evolve.

For example you would need to have opened the tasks to be able to open them again. If you start your computer in the plane there is a good chance nothing is available in the app…

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It is annoying that I have to open all of my “My Task” sections before a flight to ensure I have something to work on while I’m offline.

Just being able to load existing tasks to all projects when offline would be very helpful. Often I want to use the downtime to reorganize tasks between projects.

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Thanks for the clarity. This is really awful functionality and I’m not sure this tool will work for me.

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I’m often in a place/on a flight and am frustrated that I can’t use the App on my ipad to carry on working. It would be great to see this change.

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It would be great to see the offline mode developped. Being offline or with limited network, the search feature is important when important information are classified in Asana.

Cannot we have an automatic synchronisation / download of all the content within Asana?

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Do you imagine how big this would be? :thinking:

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I think it would probably need to be done selectively - i.e. choose which teams or projects you want to sync offline (as, for example, Evernote does on a per-notebook selection basis).

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It would be great to see desktop version load when offline! Understanding syncing would not be possible but creating, updating and organizing project should be possible offline…

Right now the desktop app does open/load when offline. :confused:

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Same here. I’m doing the free trial to see if it will work for my off-grid house construction project. I had thought that having desktop apps meant that Asana would allow for offline task management.

Dang.

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I am also on the same page here. Offline functionality is IMHO a must. Besides a collapsing function to just view the task list would be nice…

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Hi,

Thanks for this, personally the flight and nomad context speaks to me a lot … but one aspect is particularly irritating for me and it is about confidentiality !
Where on earth, knowing that cyber people, banks, entrepreneurs, teachers, etc … and all of us commoners use Asana to balance their life cannot benefit any privacy … this is wrong guys.

Remember people are ready to pay when the service is worth the price !

Confidentiality guys :slight_smile: … Confidentiality !

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Hiii! Thank you so much for summarize.

Something I’m trying to figure out and it’s super important for my team is the ability of feeling out an Asana Form on their phones while offline. You see, my team work in the field with nearly no cellphone signal or wifi. They do research and interviews with vulnerable communities, right? So we created the forms as an easy way for them to input that data into the project (as if each interview is a task) without having to manually create a new task. Although we can use the app offline and let it sync once connected to the internet, we haven’t been able to open a form through the app, as it loads on the browser, which of course can’t be open without an internet connection.

Can anyone confirm if in fact it’s not possible?

Thanks

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An Asana form is a regular webpage, so you can’t even load it offline.

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@Bastien_Siebman thanks for the helpful post!! Seems like iOS has more seamless UI/UX than macOS currently, yes?

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Hi Asana,

Just giving a +1 for this feature. I was thinking about switching to Asana, but lack of 100% offline functionality is preventing me from doing so. For me to switch, it would need to work at least in this way:

  • If I’m using it on my PC (on a desktop app), everything needs to sync to offline with every change (or at least every few minutes or so).
  • Android app would need to be able to run in the background, and continue to sync to offline without actually opening the app.

Does that make sense? Said differently, I would need to be able to use everything offline without extra manual input on my part (kind of like this Notion workaround recommends to use its software offline - this is also why I haven’t switched to Notion).

Thanks for reading. Asana seems fantastic, but lack of offline capabilities is a dealbreaker for me. Hope this can be put in place. Take care.

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+1

I consider having the ability to work on task offline as requirement for a platform like this. If it is not made available then I will look at another platform.