One of the biggest issue I see in people’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 don’t care about. And I have two specific examples in mind.
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 you’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.
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 voilà , you have fewer notifications right away. You can also post a comment saying « I am leaving the conversation, for now, don’t hesitate to bring me back ».
Thank you for this article! My issue with Asana notifications is that I don’t want to receive any sort of email updates, except for project status updates. I don’t think there currently is an option to set this up in that way?
Just be careful about this, even if you uncheck “Tasks added”, 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 don’t.
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 don’t want. Is there a way to get around this?
Hi Bastien! I have a question. In a project I have a collegue who doesn’t want to receive notifications from the task. I’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 “New tasks” for him.
I do agree. This definitely scares people away.
I think, the default should be, not to notify about added tasks.
So let’s propose this in #productfeedback - what do you think?
@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 “status update” which ones under “message”? “Tasks added” is pretty straightforward tho Does “message” 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 …). Thanks a lot for your help
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.
When you noted: Go to your Profile Settings > Notifications > bottom of the page > Manage Individual Projects. There you’ll see all projects you are being notified by.
I don’t see ALL projects, and that page notes “Recently visited projects” above the project list I see. Is there a way to force a project into this list so I can disable it’s notifications? I tried commenting on one of that projects’s tasks but it still didn’t appear in this list.
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 can’t force it, unless you reopen the notifications manager window afterwards…
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 you’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.
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 voilà , you have fewer notifications right away. You can also post a comment saying « I am leaving the conversation, for now, don’t hesitate to bring me back ».
Does “message” only mean direct messages to me, or does that include 
Notify them when new tasks are added to this project