Stay informed with your Asana Inbox

Collaboration is a crucial aspect of using Asana, and your inbox plays a significant role in it. Your Asana Inbox serves as a notification center that displays updates on projects you are a part of, tasks you work on, important messages, and communications related to team and organizational goals. By frequently checking your inbox, you can stay informed and interact more effectively with your colleagues and team members. 

In this article, you'll discover how to leverage your inbox to stay informed and explore practical strategies to minimize inbox clutter.

Checking your inbox

When should you check your inbox? Some prefer to schedule time in their calendars to check their inbox at certain times throughout the day, while others prefer to check it as they go about their day.

No matter which approach you choose, an orange dot will appear next to Inbox in the sidebar when there are unread notifications. New notifications in your inbox will have a blue dot next to them. If there's a new activity in a task within a project, you will see a bubble showing the number of new comments or attachments denoting new unread activity. 

Decluttering your inbox

Use your inbox to be more productive and focus on what matters. With filters, sorting, bookmark, and archive functions, your inbox can help you cut through the chaos and find clarity. 

Following and unfollowing specific tasks and conversations will mean that you only receive communications on items that are relevant to you. You can do this by adding or removing yourself as a collaborator on specific tasks. If someone @mentions you again in a task, it will still show up in your inbox, even if you have unfollowed the task. 

Sort your inbox by what matters most to you. You can choose from Newest First or Relevance. 

Inbox filtering allows you to hone in on the most actionable updates; you can filter by From Person, Assigned to me, and Unread only. 

If you love a clear inbox and aim for inbox zero, our Archive function is for you. As all your work is organized and searchable in Asana, you don’t need to save notifications. Once you’ve taken action on a notification, you can select to archive it. You’ll find your archived notifications in the archive tab.

Bookmarks can be used for important tasks that you would like quick access to and notifications you would like to save to check in or reference later.

You can also select Manage notifications. Here, you can turn on “Do not disturb,” schedule times you do and don’t want to receive notifications and select the type of notification.

Taking action from your inbox

Use your inbox to get involved and stay engaged with your teammates by taking action on your notifications. Let your teammates know you’ve seen their comments and messages by replying to them in your inbox. You can acknowledge a task or comment, say thanks, give a thumbs up, or send an appreciation sticker from your inbox. 

Appreciation stickers are a great way to give recognition and kudos to teammates and collaborators. For example, if a teammate hits their target or completes a milestone, add an appreciation sticker to their task from your inbox to show your support and recognition. You can access appreciation stickers through task comments by clicking the star icon. 

Inbox vs. My tasks

Unlike your My tasks, your inbox is not your to-do list. If you see a task in your inbox that you need to take action on, such as scheduling a meeting to discuss a particular topic, create a follow-up task that will hyperlink back to the original task, or assign yourself a task. Remember, when working in Asana, everything you need to do is in your My tasks, whereas everything you need to know is in your inbox.  

The more work you and your team create, discuss, and achieve in Asana, the more you’ll rely on your notifications to keep track of progress and actionable work. Keeping a clear inbox means you’ll see relevant notifications quickly without going through unnecessary information. Using filters to highlight important topics and archiving notifications you’ve read and don’t need to action leads to less clutter and gives you control.