Since the accounts separation that happened a little way back, I now have multiple Asana accounts to manage, as I work with different orgs/workspaces. I also have my primary Asana account that was my first and foremost account (and used to be the only account I had to log in to, to access everywhere I worked, as all my emails were linked).
Since then, using Asana itself is a little tedious when I open a bookmark or return to a browser tab and need to switch back to a particular Asana account to view what is there. It means I cannot be active in two at the same time (and there are use cases for this) in different tabs - however, at least the big blue button to switch account makes it a little less painful.
I having been noticing that if I go to the Asana Academy, or here to the Forum, and click Log In, it is logging me into whatever Asana account I was last using. This has resulted in me starting new Forum accounts and getting new [Asana Forum] [PM] Welcome to the Asana Forum! :asana: emails. It has resulted in me signing up twice to an Asana Academy course, with different email addresses. And it means when I don’t remember I might possibly have last used Asana with another account, I end up:
Going to the Academy and logging in
Realising I don’t know which account it was, so checking the user drop down to see if I am on my primary account (which is what I would use for both the Forum and Academy - I am the SAME person after all)
Having to log out and open an Asana project that my primary account has access to
Switching to that Asana account
Going back to the Academy and logging in again
And the same for here in the forum.
I know, if I desperately wanted to, I could use different Chrome profiles for every account. But that’s a lot of extra browser windows. Is there really no other way to manage this?
While I understand the need for organisational security of the accounts, etc, at the end of the day I am the SAME person, and it was impossible to mix up what I was doing in Asana because the workspace you were in was very clear. I actually think there is a greater risk of me creating a post here relative to an issue I have in one particular workspace but using the wrong account to do so because I forgot to check (which I wish I didn’t have to) which Asana account got logged in.
TL;DR: I want to only use ONE account to log in to Asana Academy and the Forum, but because of the way multiple accounts works, I log in with other accounts by accident.
I hear your frustration, and having struggled with this myself I get it.
I’m not sure how much Asana is able to do about this as although you are the same person, when you use different email addresses they are tied to different org permissions. For example my work has control over my work email, but my personal/business email is under my control. Mixing these might result in my work getting access to my work/business data and/or vice versa.
The solution I use is to have my personal/business email (the one I will always keep) tied to all forum/academy things. And to open the forum I always use the same browser, which I force by running a one liner batch script (text file saved as filename.bat Windows) to open the forum:
(I can’t access it now to verify, but I’m fairly sure that’s it. Add it to your system32 folder and you can run it with a run command after typing the script name Windows +R)
It’s not the “one account to rule them all”, but it’s the best I’ve managed to come up with.
If you should want to move forum access from one account to the other the @Forum-team can probably assist/advise you. Some things might not be moved though, as I found votes I had cast on feedback didn’t move over when my account moved email.
Speaking of votes, don’t forget to vote for your own feedback.
Hi @Sarah_L, thanks for reaching out and sharing your candid feedback regarding the SSO experience for Asana Academy and the Forum. I’ve updated the title to make it more specific to your request so other users can upvote it.
As you pointed out, this change was implemented due to this update to our email policy. It is no longer possible to have multiple email addresses tied to a single Asana account, which also means that a Forum or Academy account cannot be linked to multiple email addresses. I understand your frustration about having to create multiple accounts even though you are the sole owner, but this change was made for security reasons.
To help differentiate your accounts, I recommend using distinct profile pictures or usernames if possible. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have a way to consolidate multiple Forum accounts when logging in with different email addresses. However, please feel free to send me a direct message, and I’d be happy to take a closer look at your Forum accounts to see how we can reduce any confusion.
We truly appreciate your feedback, and we’ll take it into consideration for future improvements to our SSO login experience Thanks again @Sarah_L!
Thanks for the responses both and valid points about the reasons to keep Asana accounts separate. Although of course there are always things that break out of the conventional reasons for having different Asana orgs. E.g. I’m in the non-profit sector, and carry out the same role for at least two similar projects where we use different domains, but it is otherwise essentially the same people working with both of those projects.
@Jan-Rienk - now, that gives me ideas of using multiple accounts to vote on feedback I feel invested in
@Emily_Roman - Thanks for the offer, although I don’t intend to use different forum accounts at this stage. In view of easing the SSO experience, here are some initial suggestions to get the ideas flowing in the dev team
I do understand that there would be limitations to adding an account switcher within the Discourse system.
I wonder, if there’s a way to detect that multiple accounts are logged in to Asana, and if you aren’t already logged in to the Forum, present a pop-up asking which account you want to use, before the sign-in to Discourse happens.
Alternatively, maybe if the account has never used the Forum before, there could be some kind of landing page where you click on a button to continue creating the Forum account, rather than doing it immediately the first time you open the forum while logged in to that Asana. Of course, after confirming that you’d want to go to the specific forum page from the initial URL, if one was specified.
and valid points about the reasons to keep Asana accounts separate. Although of course there are always things that break out of the conventional reasons for having different Asana orgs. E.g. I’m in the non-profit sector, and carry out the same role for at least two similar projects where we use different domains, but it is otherwise essentially the same people working with both of those projects.
