⚡🧠 Unlock Real-Time Intelligence: Master Web Search in Asana AI Studio

[Ethan_DeWaal]

Hello,

I’m Ethan, Strategy and Ops Lead from the AI Studio team at Asana!

Have you ever wished your AI workflows could access the latest information from the web? Whether you’re researching companies, tracking industry news, or gathering competitive intelligence, AI Studio’s Web Search feature transforms your automations from static knowledge bases into dynamic research assistants.

Despite being one of our most powerful features, only about 1% of AI Studio rules currently use Web Search. Today, I’m going to show you exactly how this feature works and share concrete examples that will inspire you to deploy it in ways you might not have imagined.

The Power of Real-Time Information

How Web Search Works in AI Studio

The beauty of Web Search in AI Studio lies in its simplicity. Unlike other platforms where you need complex prompting, AI Studio handles the heavy lifting for you:

1. Enable with One Click: Simply toggle on Web Search in your rule settings

2. Smart Source Selection: Returns up to 10 relevant sources per search query (up to three searches can occur per automation).
3. Citations Available: All information is able to be properly cited with clickable sources (just ensure that you instruct it to “Cite your sources.”)

The Technical Magic Behind the Scenes

When you enable Web Search, here’s what happens:

• The AI reads your prompt, the current task, any relevant projects, portfolios goals, and/or capacity plans, you have given it access and identifies what information is needed)
• It formulates specific search queries (up to 3 per request)
• Results are fetched and analyzed in real-time
• The AI synthesizes the information and provides cited responses

Pro tip: AI Studio automatically uses the appropriate search provider - Anthropic’s web search for Claude models and OpenAI’s for GPT models. Even models that don’t natively support web search can use it through our smart routing system!

Mastering Web Search: Prompting Strategies

The General Approach

The simplest way to use Web Search is to ask it for very generally for the type of search . For example:

Basic Prompt:

Generate a one-pager about the company from the task name including recent news and developments.

With Web Search enabled, the AI will automatically search for current information about the company.

Explicit Search Instructions

For more control and consistency, you can explicitly instruct the AI to search for categories of things:

Enhanced Prompt:

Search the web for the latest information about the company in the task title.

Focus on:

1. Recent financial performance
2. Product launches in the last 3 months
3. Executive team changes

Use this information to create a comprehensive company briefing.

Multi-Search Strategies

Since AI Studio supports up to 3 searches per request, you can design prompts that leverage multiple focused searches:

Advanced Multi-Search Prompt:

Perform the following web searches:
1. Search for the company in the task title’s financial results Q4 2024"
2. Search for the company in the task title’s product announcements 2025"
3. Search for the company in the task title’s competitors market share"

Synthesize the findings into an executive summary with sections for Financial Performance, Product Strategy, and Competitive Position.

Real-World Use Cases That Drive Value

1. Company Intelligence Automation

The Setup:

• Trigger: New opportunity created in Salesforce
• Action: Generate comprehensive company research report
• Output: Attach report to opportunity record

Sample Prompt:

Research {{Account.Name}} using web search. Create a detailed briefing covering:

- Company overview and recent news
- Financial health indicators
- Key decision makers and recent hires
- Competitive landscape
- Recent partnerships or acquisitions

Format as an executive briefing with clear sections and bullet points.

2. Competitive Monitoring Dashboard

The Setup:

• Trigger: Manual Trigger
• Action: Search for competitor updates
• Output: Post summary to Slack channel

Sample Prompt:

Search the web for news about our competitors from the past week:

- {{Competitor 1}}
- {{Competitor 2}}
- {{Competitor 3}}

Focus on product launches, pricing changes, executive moves, and strategic announcements.
Summarize key developments and potential impacts on our business.

3. Industry Trend Analysis

The Setup:

• Trigger: Monthly schedule
• Action: Research industry trends
• Output: Create Asana task with findings

Sample Prompt:

Search for the latest developments in {{Industry}} focusing on:

- Emerging technologies
- Regulatory changes
- Market predictions for 2025
- Notable investments or acquisitions

Create a trend report highlighting opportunities and threats for our business.

Combining Web Search with Web Links

Don’t forget about Web Search’s companion feature: Web Links! While Web Search discovers information, Web Links lets you reference specific pages:

Combined Example:

First, read our company positioning from: https://ourcompany.com/about/positioning

Then search the web for how {{Competitor}} positions themselves in the market.

Compare and contrast our positioning with theirs, identifying key differentiators.

This combination is particularly powerful for:

• Comparing your content with competitors
• Fact-checking against authoritative sources
• Enriching internal documentation with external context

Best Practices and Pro Tips

1. Be Specific About Information Needs

Instead of: “Research this company” Try: “Search for this company’s revenue, employee count, recent funding, and main products”

2. Use Temporal Indicators

Adding time constraints improves relevance:

• “Search for news from the past month”
• “Find Q4 2024 financial results”
• “Look for announcements since January 2025”

3. Leverage Domain Knowledge

For financial research, guide the AI to authoritative sources:

Search for {{Company}} financial information, prioritizing results from:

- SEC filings
- Company investor relations pages
- Reputable financial news sources

4. Structure Your Output

The clearer your output requirements, the better your results:

After searching, organize findings into:

1. Executive Summary (3 bullet points)
2. Detailed Findings (by category)
3. Implications for Our Business
4. Recommended Actions

Measuring Success and Optimization

Track these metrics to optimize your Web Search usage:

• Time Saved: Compare manual research time vs. automated reports
• Information Quality: Accuracy and relevance of findings
• Action Rate: How often do search results lead to business actions?

What’s Next?

Web Search in AI Studio is constantly evolving. While I can’t share specific roadmap details, the team is exploring ways to make research capabilities even more powerful while maintaining the simplicity that makes AI Studio special. Please let us know if there is anything you want to see in terms of enhancements to this capability.

Your Turn to Explore!

Now that you understand the power of Web Search, I challenge you to:

1. Enable Web Search on one of your existing rules today
2. Create a new automation using one of the use cases above
3. Share your experience in the comments below

Questions to consider:

• What research tasks are currently eating up your team’s time?
• How could real-time information transform your existing workflows?
• What creative use cases can you imagine for Web Search?

[Ayush_kumar]

Wow, Ethan — this is super exciting! The fact that AI Studio can now pull in real-time, cited information directly into workflows feels like a game-changer for teams that need fresh data daily. I love how seamless you’ve made it with the one-click toggle — no complex prompting or extra setup is huge for adoption.

The examples you shared make me think of so many use cases — from competitor tracking and market research to summarizing the latest client updates before meetings. The automatic routing to the right search provider is also a really thoughtful touch.

Definitely going to experiment with the “generate a one-pager” style prompt — I can see that saving hours each week. Thanks for breaking this down so clearly!

[Dennis_Schießl]

Really great post, thank you for that.
The examples shared definitely helped me with thinking of further use cases in our workflows.

I’ve previously given up on one specific workflow with the web search feature, as it didnt work as intended. Now reading your examples, it actually should work. I hope you don’t mind me asking about this now by explaining how i had set it up:

• Trigger: Asana Form filled out to add new public events to our “strategic events” database (project). In this form, the name, website and 1-2 other things of the event are shared.
• Action: (Here is where i had instructed the AI to review the incoming task/form submission, crawl the internet and specifically the shared URL of the form submission and then fill out some of our project custom fields via AI + add a task description.)
• Output: the event is now being added as a task to our internal database to trigger a (non-AI) workflow based on the filled out custom fields, which are supposed to being added by AI. Examples are Audience, Size, Event Duration, Costs, Event Focus etc. All things that are discoverable in the event website.

Now i tried this, but the AI rule always failed to populate the task how i described it.
Any thoughts/tips?

[Jan-Rienk]

@Dennis_Schießl

Action: (Here is where i had instructed the AI to review the incoming task/form submission, crawl the internet and specifically the shared URL of the form submission and then fill out some of our project custom fields via AI + add a task description.)

@Dennis_Schießl I think here is where you mistake AI studio’s capability. Web Search can retreive information, but not actually act on that in the information other than with the rule options you have.

It broadens the information the AI can have at hand, but as normal rule actions in Asana don’t allow you to fill in a form, neither can AI Web Search.

What you can use it for is using it to create tasks directly, and have AI populate the custom fields utilising the “Use AI” variable.

Note that using Web Access does increase AI Studio credit consumption quite a bit, especially when combined with a lot of output and a heavy model. I’d advise to keep an eye on the rule execution history and admin console to keep an eye on credit consumption. Also see: AI Studio add-on pricing

[Dennis_Schießl]

Thanks for your quick response Jan.

And sorry if this wasn’t clear or if i had described it wrongly.

A task is created by a person filling out a form. In this form, the person has to fill out: Name of the event, share the URL of the website and 1 or two more things.

Then the task is added to our internal database/project. Then “Task is added to the project by form” triggers the AI rule to review the task (e.g. name + URL) and access the internet to then bring back the details found in the internet into the task. And i also instructed the custom fields to be filled out by AI then: “use AI” with some guidance.
Hope that makes it clearer?

[Jan-Rienk]

My bad, I misread. I thought it was the URL of the form, not the url provided in the form submission.

According to Asana it should be able to read the URL:

What kind of links can AI Studio read?

Asana AI will read:

• URLs included in the guidance of a Smart workflow rule
• URLs present in the task which triggers the workflow

Just to check, have you enabled this toggle in the form settings?

Not sure if it makes a difference when the URL shows up as a custom field value or inside the task.

Also curious what reasoning Asana gives, which you can find under “All activity” in the task the AI rule(s) acted on.

PS: It’s Jan-Rienk or JR. We Dutch are funny like that with double names. Don’t sweat it though.