Communicating in Asana

Collaboration moves work forward in Asana. When you communicate in a task, you inform stakeholders how the work is progressing or what is needed to progress. This article will describe how you can communicate in Asana to enhance collaboration and accomplish things.

What are comments?

Comments are at the bottom of tasks and can help you start a conversation about that particular task. You can leave a comment to provide feedback, ask questions, offer further insights, or share anything that you think is important for collaborators in the task to know. 

Adding a comment

To add a comment, scroll down to the bottom of the task, write your comment, and click Comment. You can use emojis, @mention collaborators to loop them in, add attachments and links, and format your comment with rich text.

Best practices

If there’s a critical comment everyone who reads the task should see first, you can pin the comment to the top by clicking the drop-down arrow in the comment and selecting Pin to top.

Use @mention to add collaborators to the task or mention other tasks, projects, or messages in the comment. 

Another way of communicating in tasks is by liking a comment. You can like comments to acknowledge them or to express agreement with them. 

Use appreciations to celebrate something big happening or to just show your appreciation for a teammate’s work. 

Comment permissions

Task comments will be visible to everyone who has access to the task. You can learn more about task permissions here.

Examples of comments

You can leave a comment on a task to provide an update and seek input on a marketing campaign. You can attach the latest version of the campaign brief for the team's review and use the @mention feature to specifically address the marketing team, asking for their input by the end of the day. The mention helps notify and involve relevant collaborators in the discussion.

What are messages?

Messages are a way of communicating with individuals, teams, or members of a particular project in Asana. 

Sending a message

There are four ways to send a message:

1. Using the quick add button, click + Create at the top left corner of your top bar and select Message. You can then send the message to a specific person, team, or project.  
2. From your inbox, by clicking Send message.
3. Send a message to project members from the Messages tab in your project.
4. From your team, navigate to the Messages tab and message team members.

Best practices

When writing a message, you can expand the window to full-screen mode. In this mode, you can drag and drop tasks and projects you want to mention in your message or use @mention to add any relevant work. 

Access previous messages within specific projects or teams to read important communications. 

Make sure to join messages as a collaborator if you want to receive notifications on replies. 

Messages permissions

Team messages can be viewed by anyone who belongs to the team.

If a project is public, its messages can be viewed by anyone. If it is private, however, messages are only visible to project members. Learn more about project permissions.

Messages sent to individuals can be viewed by anyone who’s a collaborator in the message. 

Examples of messages

Send messages for department-wide announcements or company-wide updates.Some examples of when to send messages are when you’re trying to deliver a message to an entire department. For example, if you’re in the Sales department and want to deliver a message regarding new quotas. 

Messages are also helpful when sending updates to your entire company, such as letting them know about an upcoming company event.

What are status updates?

Status updates provide a quick overview of a project, portfolio, or goal status and are visible to all the project members, portfolio members, and people following the goal. 

Creating a status update

To create a status update, navigate to the Set status drop-down next to your project or portfolio name. From here, you can choose if the work is On track, At risk, Off track, On hold, or Complete. You can also create a status update from the Overview tab for projects, or the Progress tab for portfolios.

Once you select the status, a new window will open, allowing you to add context on how work is progressing. You can structure your update using different sections and add highlights such as milestones achieved, tasks that need to be called out for next steps, and charts to provide visual insights.

You can create a status update for goals from the goal’s detail page. Learn how to do so here.

Best practices

Set reminders to send updates every Friday to inform your stakeholders of portfolio and project progress. For goals, you can set reminders to weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly.

Status update permissions

Anyone added as a collaborator on a status update can see the update, even if they don't have access to the underlying project. This means they can see whatever task details or text is included in the report. However, if they click on a task, milestone, etc., that is part of a project they don't have access to, they will see a request access page but cannot access the underlying data unless granted access.

Examples of status updates

Use status updates when you want to provide relevant information to stakeholders on the progress of a project or a series of related projects. 

For example, if you’re working on a series of brand awareness campaigns, each campaign will likely have its own project.  You can group these projects in a portfolio and send a status update to all the portfolio members. 

You can also send status updates on specific projects. For example, you can send a team monthly update on your Team weekly meeting project to summarize and celebrate accomplishments and next steps on projects.