šŸ„ā€ā™‚ļø You should not be notified about things you donā€™t care about

One of the biggest issue I see in peopleā€™s Asana is the number of notifications. Usually, within a few weeks, everyone at the organization is buried under notifications. And they quickly conclude that Asana is not the right tool.

It is actually wrong. It is up to each user to decide what they want to be notified about. You should not be notified about things you donā€™t care about. And I have two specific examples in mind.

:man_surfing: The first wave of notifications usually comes from tasks being added to projects you are a member of. Because, when inviting someone on a project, Asana by default checks the box to notify of new tasks. Go to your Profil Settings > Notifications > bottom of the page > Manage Individual Projects. There youā€™ll see all projects you are being notified by. Also from the Inbox itself, those notifications have a black bell you can click to disable notifications.

:surfing_woman: The second wave of notifications comes from discussions you were a part of once but no longer wish to follow. We are not in the email chain world anymore! In Asana, you can leave the conversation! Just remove yourself as a collaborator and voilĆ , you have fewer notifications right away. You can also post a comment saying Ā« I am leaving the conversation, for now, donā€™t hesitate to bring me back Ā».

Any other wave of notifications I forgot?

:man_surfing: :surfing_woman::surfing_man:

:fr: Version franƧaise

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Thank you for this article! My issue with Asana notifications is that I donā€™t want to receive any sort of email updates, except for project status updates. I donā€™t think there currently is an option to set this up in that way?

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Yes indeed I believe you canā€™t have that level of details regarding emails versus the rest.

I did not know this was here!

Super helpful ā€“ will certainly share with our team.

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Just be careful about this, even if you uncheck ā€œTasks addedā€, when people invite you they can check that box on the invitation panel but it will be ignored. So basically they would think you get notified when you donā€™t.

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I love the new ability to uncheck boxes for Status Updates and Tasks Added on the notifications, but I wish I could uncheck all projects that are already in our Asana. My boss and I are on every single project in Asana because of the way our team has grown, so we would have to go through every single existing project and uncheck all of the notifications on all projects that we donā€™t want. Is there a way to get around this?

Even if that seems a lot, if you take one sec to click a box that means 60 projects per minute. In 5 minutes thatā€™s 300 projects :slight_smile:

Hi Bastien! I have a question. In a project I have a collegue who doesnā€™t want to receive notifications from the task. Iā€™ve removed him from all task, but he still recieves sometimes notification about them. How can I do it?

He probably gets email about new tasks correct? You need to go into the project member settings > manage notifications > and uncheck the ā€œNew tasksā€ for him.

Hi, I have to enter in his account to manage the settings, right?

No just go to the project members settings at the top (click on members avatars)

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Thank you very much!

I do agree. This definitely scares people away.
I think, the default should be, not to notify about added tasks.
So letā€™s propose this in #productfeedback - what do you think?

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@Forum-team is there an existing thread on the topic?

@Bastien_Siebman this is super helpful! Thank you very much for sharing. Is there a definition of the different options somewhere? Like, what kind of notifications fall under ā€œstatus updateā€ which ones under ā€œmessageā€? ā€œTasks addedā€ is pretty straightforward tho :wink: Does ā€œmessageā€ only mean direct messages to me, or does that include @mentions as well? Basically, I want to make sure, that I do get notified every time I am directly involved (someone mentions me, assigns a task to me, comments on a task I am responsible for ā€¦). Thanks a lot for your help :pray:

Status means the actual status update (on Track, derailed) and Messages related to the Messages tab of the project, it has nothing to do with comments.

Hi Bastien,

When you noted:
Go to your Profile Settings > Notifications > bottom of the page > Manage Individual Projects. There youā€™ll see all projects you are being notified by.

I donā€™t see ALL projects, and that page notes ā€œRecently visited projectsā€ above the project list I see. Is there a way to force a project into this list so I can disable itā€™s notifications? I tried commenting on one of that projectsā€™s tasks but it still didnā€™t appear in this list.

You donā€™t see ALL projects, only projects you are a member of (notified by). Does that clarify it for you?

This has obviously changed: In the share dialog my Asana now displays a warning:

:ballot_box_with_check: Notify them when new tasks are added to this project

1 member has customized notification settings and will not be notified when new tasks are added to this project

So the decision remains with the individual people, whether āœ… The checkbox that hurts the world productivity will leave them unharmed :slight_smile:

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Yes @Daniel_Wittig it is fairly new! But still not good enough in my opinion: if you, as a manager, know that they need to be notified of new tasks, you canā€™t force it, unless you reopen the notifications manager window afterwardsā€¦

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