🥇 The #1 Game-changing Asana Feature of the Year: Saved view tabs

[Richard_Sather]

Hi, I’m Richard Sather, an Asana Solutions Partner providing professional training, consulting and support services for everything Asana, essentially helping new teams get their Asana up and running faster and strategically onboarding all their members, or helping existing teams tune up or optimize their Asana. I’m also an Asana Forum leader so you may have seen me around, having helped thousands of members by answering questions, providing workarounds and solutions.

If you’ve been keeping ‘tabs’ on Asana latest features, you will probably agree this has been an incredible year! From time-tracking to multi-filter and multi-sort, to Bundles and Formulas and of course all those exciting new AI features. But there was one feature that, for me personally, was a huuuuge game-changer…

For a (very) long time, all projects had the same views available: List, Board, Timeline, Calendar, Workflow, Dashboard, Messages and Files… sure it was consistent, but… boring!

Over the years, I’ve had clients ask me:

“well, we won’t be needing the Board view in this type of project, so can we remove it?”
“we never use the Messages tab in Asana because we use Slack or MS Teams instead - can we remove it?”
“can I change the name of the List view to something else?”

Unfortunately, to all these questions I used to say “no, sorry you can’t” … But this year, we finally got ‘Saved view tabs’ in Asana!

So what are saved view tabs? Well, in a nut-shell, we can finally customize the ‘look’ of our project by renaming the tabs as we like, as they make more sense to us, including emojis(!) and removing the tabs that we don’t use. But perhaps the coolest of all is the ability to create multiple views of the same type such as numerous List views but which show different tasks in different sorts. And this is where those recently added multi-filter and multi-sort features also come into play.

5 steps to understanding how saved tab views work

A. Master the Filter, Sort and Hide buttons

• Use the Filter button to show the tasks you want to see, and filter out the tasks that are irrelevant.
• Use the Sort button to sort your project by Due date instead of manually sorting your tasks.
• Use the Hide button to show/hide any important metadata such as Projects, Created by, Created on as well as relevant custom fields.
• Reposition your columns by resorting the list in the Hide button or by clicking & dragging the column headers in the List view.

B. Remember to Save!

This is super-important: any changes to…

• Filter, Sort, Group by or Hide buttons
• repositioning columns
• adjusting column widths
• collapsing/expanding sections
• changing a column’s function (SUM, AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT) of a number-type field

…will trigger the Save button on the far right corner.

Remember to choose ‘Save for everyone’ so that your revised layout is saved, i.e. it will persist every time you revisit this project’s tab. If you click away, without saving, all your changes within this tab view will be lost!

C. Make a copy, rather than creating new tabs from scratch

Make a copy of similar looking tabs, then adjust the layout accordingly and then ‘Save for everyone’.

D. Custom-name your tabs!

Rename your tabs and add an emoji at the start of a tab’s name to replace the native Asana icon!

E. Keep only the necessary tabs

Clean up by removing any tabs you will not be using such as Workflow, Messages or Files and any views such as Board or Timeline if not used in your particular project. You can always add them back using the icon on the far right.

Optimize your view tabs for your ongoing projects

The below use case is ideal for intake requests, tickets, content, posts, events etc.

Quickly switch between tabs to surface your most relevant data without fiddling around with the Filter, Sort and Hide buttons every time you need to review your tasks. Setup these view tabs once so that you and all project members can make the most use out of them.

1. Setup a ‘ To-do’ tab to focus on just the tasks that need to get done.

• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Incomplete tasks’
• Use the Sort button to sort by ‘Due date’ & ‘Ascending’ so you have the most imminent tasks at the top of your list.
• Use the Hide button to enable important metadata such as ‘Created by’ and ‘Collaborators’.
• Rename the tab to ‘ To-do’ and ‘Set as default’ view so that this is the tab that always appears when the project is opened by anyone.
• Save for everyone
• 

2. Setup a ‘ Completed’ tab to quickly see what has been completed and when.

• Make a copy of the ‘ To-do’ tab
• Rename the tab to ‘ Completed’
• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Completed tasks’
• Use the Hide button to enable relevant metadata such as ‘Completed on’ and disable any fields that are not necessary such as ‘Created by’ and ‘Collaborators’.
• Use the Sort button to sort by ‘Completed on’ & ‘Descending’ so you have the most recently completed tasks at the top of your list. Also, disable the ‘Sort within sections’ switch, so you only see that tasks listed by completion date, without the project’s sections.
• Save for everyone
• 

3. Setup a ‘ My tasks’ tab to quickly see just that tasks that you have to do.

• Make a copy of the ‘ To-do’ tab
• Rename the tab to ‘ My tasks’
• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Just my tasks’
• Use the Sort button to disable the ‘Sort within sections’ switch, so you only see that tasks sorted by due date, without the project’s sections.
• Save for everyone
• 

4. Setup a ‘ New’ tab to quickly see what has been recently added

• Make a copy of the ‘ To-do’ tab
• Rename the tab to ‘ New’
• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Incomplete tasks’ & ‘Created on’ set to ‘This week’
• Use the Sort button to sort by ‘Created on’ & ‘Descending’ so you have the most recently created tasks at the top. Also, disable the ‘Sort within sections’ switch, so you only see that tasks listed by created date, without the project’s sections.
• Use the Hide button to enable relevant fields such as ‘Created on’.
• Save for everyone.
• Move this tab to the first one on the left, but no need to set is as the default tab.
• 

5. Setup an ‘ Upcoming’ tab to quickly see what needs to be done over the next 2 weeks.

• Make a copy of the ‘ To-do’ tab
• Rename the tab to ‘ Upcoming’
• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Incomplete tasks’ & ‘Due date’ set to ‘Due next 14 days’
• Use the Sort button to sort by ‘Due date’ & ‘Ascending’ so you have the most imminent at the top. Also, disable the ‘Sort within sections’ switch, so you only see that tasks listed by due date, without the project’s sections.
• Save for everyone.
• 

6. Setup an ‘ Overdue’ tab to quickly see which tasks are overdue.

• Make a copy of the ‘ Upcoming’ tab
• Rename the tab to ‘ Overdue’
• Use the Filter button to set to ‘Incomplete tasks’ & ‘Due date’ set to ‘Before today’
• Use the Sort button to sort by ‘Due date’ & ‘Ascending’ so you have the most overdue tasks at the top. Also, disable the ‘Sort within sections’ switch, so you only see that tasks listed by due date, without the project’s sections.
• Save for everyone.
• 

7. Clean up by removing any unnecessary tabs.

• Clean up your tabs by removing any other tabs you will not be using for this project.

Things to know about saved tab views

1. Currently, you can have up to 12 view tabs in total and these could vary in type. eg. You could have 12 List views, or 12 Board views if you remove all other types.
2. By default, you must have at least one List view.
3. You can only make copies of the List, Board, Timeline, Calendar & Gantt views.
4. Currently, you cannot rename or make a copy of the Overview, Workflow, Dashboard, Messages or Files tab.
5. All tabs can be ‘Set as default’ (including Overview & Dashboard) except for the Workflow, Messages & Files tabs.
6. Keep your saved view tab name short & sweet. Asana will truncate it after about the 20-25 characters (as it’s dependant on a certain fixed width).
7. Right click on your tabs for the quick actions menu, such as ‘Make a copy’ or ‘Rename’.

I would love to know how you have been using the saved view tabs within your projects - let me know in the comments!

Wishing you all a happy festive season

See all of my top tips & tricks on my website.

[Rashad_Issa]

This is jam packed with useful tips.
I already went ahead and created a tab for completed work for couple of my projects. It never occurred to me to do so. Thanks!!

[Andrea_Mayer]

Great tips

I agree this new feature is awesome and it makes it so much easier to organise the tasks within a project.

One recent use case is that we were able to split up a social media calendar in a very nice way: Views per upcoming month (always the next two), views per post type (such as reels, stories, posts, carousel posts), priority tasks etc.

And yes emojis are a must add

[Bastien_Siebman]

Great post, I love Saved views…

@Richard_Sather

Clean up by removing any tabs you will not be using

I wish there was a “Remove all other tabs” option

[DJ_Kie]

Damn thats cool, didn’t know this existed!
Only thing that is left now is to do customised views and tabs per individual, so that multiple people can have a my tasks tab instead of having 5 “my Tasks” tabs

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @DJ_Kie , glad you found the post useful!

FYI, the ‘My tasks’ tab, which I mention in the post, is filtered by ‘Me’ which is dynamic.
i.e. the tasks shown in the List view will only be the ones that the relevant user is assigned to. So, no need to create multiple tabs for each user!

[Richard_Sather]

Good point, @Bastien_Siebman ! I just added this post to the Product Feedback category.

[DJ_Kie]

Thanks for the quick answer @Richard_Sather !
After all this time, this is how I learn that filtered by “me” is dynamic… wow
still much to learn in terms of Asana
TYSM!

[Caro_Marinacci]

Totally agree! Can’t wait to have the Saved view tabs on the mobile App!

[Arthur_BEGOU]

Awesome post, Richard

[Kemoy_Liburd-Chow]

cool tips using this ‘game-changing feature’

[Kristen_Corl]

I love this! If I delete the workflow tab, will it also delete my automations??

[lpb]

Welcome, @Kristen_Corl,

No, your automation rules will still be in Customize > Rules.

Thanks,

Larry

[Shiva_Thomson]

Is there a way to add customize tabs in project templates so that all projects from the template have the desired tabs?

[Richard_Sather]

Hi @Shiva_Thomson , good question! Unfortunately no, not yet, at least I hope…

I would love this too, that’s why I created this Product Feedback request where you can also add your voice and vote on using the ‘Vote’ button in the top left corner:

Saved view tabs to be supported in Project templates

Saved view tabs are awesome. But, currently, they cannot be setup within a project template so that they are predefined for a project that is created based on that proξect template. Currently, you need to set up view tabs manually each time, or as a workaround, duplicate a regular project, which unfortunately loses out on all the functionality of Project templates. Please add support for saved view tabs in Project templates PS: this would require Filter, Sort and Hide buttons available…

[lpb]

@Shiva_Thomson, In the meantime, if it helps you can use Project actions > Duplicate to create a new project with a “model” project’s tabs.

Thanks,

Larry