I absolutely adore Asana, but here is my TOP PET PEEVE with Asana after being an extremely committed user since 2012
What is the reasoning that by default all new project members get updates about new task creations? This seems like a super rare situation where someone would want to get those notifications. Thereâs actually only one case I can think of: I am a project manager and I live and breathe one project and want to know everything that happens within it.
But besides that scenario, when would someone ever want to get updates about ALL task creations within a project? Itâs totally information overload for 98% of people. Asana is normally all about reducing noise and allowing people to be in control of the messages they receive, and yet somehow this is enabled by default.
Itâs difficult for a casual Asana user to understand whatâs generating these notifications and how to turn them off. I suggest leaving that check box âuncheckedâ by default!
My gut reaction is that this default was created to - ta dah! - keep everyone on the same page. Iâll follow up with my colleagues on the product team to see if they can add more detail.
I agree with @Alexis here. Perhaps we are part of the remaining 2%
Like what you mentioned, Asana allows people to be in control of the messages they receive. Thereâs no one stopping the users to turn the notification off, unless someone else keeps turning them on. haha.
I was thinking maybe this is an issue with the guide? So I checked it out.
@LenSantos thanks for the thoughtful investigation you did. This is helpful!
I spoke with my product team and learned a few background reasons for this default @Todd_Cavanaugh. First, in general this speaks to the theme of minimizing the risk of people missing critical info. We took the trade off of potentially delivering too many (sometimes lower value notifications) in order to keep people up to speed with important work. In addition, the default is core to the âwork requestâ workflow where a team divides their work and assigns incoming tasks that get added to the project.
To piggyback off what @Alexis said, one of Asanaâs most powerful use cases is the âwork requestâ workflow.
A few of my clients use Asana as a IT Request flow as well as a design request flow. In these cases, project members need to be notified when a new request hits the project to ensure that a request does not fall through the cracks.
Given the customer feedback, we have added a box to enable/disable task creation emails when inviting new members to a project.
I definitely understand the rationale of defaulting to âtoo much infoâ as opposed to not enough. And I like the thoughts about the IT âwork requestâ workflows. But I think that âwork requestâ workflow is more of a specialized use case. For most types of businesses, most projects, and most users, itâs too much information to get those notifications. And every time people are adding new project members, they are signing them up for these notifications.
Yes, I understand people can remove themselves from receiving those notifications. But as someone who trains all sorts of teams in Asana, itâs not the most intuitive process for people who arenât super tech savvy. Think about the over 50 crowd or someone who has only used email and notepads for project management. For example the image @LenSantos shared above:
Unfollow project? I think thatâs pretty confusing. Does that mean Iâm no longer a project member? Does it mean I wonât get conversations? Because both of those seem likely to me based on that wording, and as a new user Iâm going to keep seeing these unnecessary notifications because Iâm either afraid or unaware about what to do.
First I agree that default ânew task notifications onâ makes sense in most cases, but it has to be blocked when spawning a new project from a template!
Second. From the three-dots project drop-down menu, add âNotifications >â with a sub-menu to toggle for âStatus updatesâ âconversationsâ ânew tasksâ, for the logged in person (if they are a project member). Each of which has a checkmark or not depending on the current member-notification-setting.
Iâll follow up with my colleagues on the product team to see if they can add more detail.
