This feature enables admins, super admins, and billing owners to pause the license of any member in the organization, effectively reducing the number of paid seats by one. Manage your billing cycle more efficiently by pausing licenses without the need to permanently remove organization members from your Asana space. If a member logs back in to Asana while their license is paused, their access and billing status are automatically restored.
Pausing a member’s license vs deprovisioning a member’s account
Pausing a member’s license provides an alternative to permanently deprovisioning their Asana account.
The feature is particularly effective where a member may be temporarily inactive in Asana, and it would be unsuitable to permanently deactivate their account via the admin console or identity provider. By pausing their license instead, admins and billing owners can manage costs without affecting the member’s access to the company's domain or any of their tasks and projects.
How to pause a member's license
Admins, super admins, and billing owners can pause a member's license from the admin console.
- In the admin console, navigate to the Members tab on the left
- Click the three dot icon next to the member's information and select Remove
When offered the choice between pausing the license or removing the account, choose the first option.
Pausing the license of a recently active member
Attempting to pause the license of a member who was active in Asana in the past 90 days will trigger a prompt asking you to confirm. This can help to avoid accidentally pausing the license of someone who is genuinely active in Asana.
Reactivating a paused license
How to restore a paused license as an admin, super admin, or billing owner
To reactivate a paused license, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Members section on the left side of the admin console
- Click the Paused tab to show members whose licenses are currently paused
Note that the Paused tab will only appear if there are paused licenses. If no licenses are paused, the tab does not appear.
How a member can restore their own paused license
A member with a paused license can return to Asana at any time, and when they log back in, their license is automatically reactivated. Their work is not deleted, and their tasks, projects and other work items remain intact - even their API and integrations. Rules owned by a paused license member will continue to run.
Notifying paused license members
Someone whose license is paused will not experience any changes to their access or their work in Asana, and therefore they are not informed when their license has been paused.
The alternative - permanently deprovisioning someone’s account - does inform the member that they have been removed from the organization and in certain cases might create more noise and follow-up communication than desired.
Where the goal is to manage costs by temporarily removing a member from the subscription's seat count, pausing a license provides a more seamless experience for the admins, billing owner, and paused license member themselves.
Collaborating with paused license members
Pausing a member’s license does not affect others who collaborate with them. They can be assigned tasks, @mentioned, or added to teams and projects just the same as any other organization member.
If a paused license member is the owner of a rule, the rule will continue to run when the member’s license is paused.
How many licenses can be paused?
Asana limits the number of paused licenses within any organization. The cap is set at 10% of the total subscription size. For example, the billing owner of a 100-seat plan can pause the licenses of up to 10 members.
If the 10% limit has been reached and admins or billing owners wish to pause another user's license, Asana will prompt them to restore a currently paused license first before they can continue.