Navigating Asana

Interface

highlight all 5 panes

Asana's interface is divided into 5 areas:

  1. Sidebar - access homepage, My tasks, inbox, teams, and projects in your workspace or organization
  2. Header - contains the actions and views for the project, My tasks, or view you're currently using
  3. Top bar - Search, quick add, My settings, and workspace or organization settings
  4. Main pane - displays a list of tasks, messages, calendar, progress or files
  5. Task details pane - contains the details of a task or messages

Sidebar

Global top bar and quick add button

top bar and quick add

From the top global top bar, you can:

  1. Run a global search
  2. Click the Quick add button to create a task, project, team, or invite someone to Asana
  3. Access your settings, profile, switch between your workspaces and organizations, create a new workspace or team, or log out

The checkmark indicates the workspace or organization you're currently viewing.

Customize your sidebar

customize

 

  1. Drag and drop your sections to reorder them
  2. Resize your sidebar

Changing your sidebar’s color

Click on your avatar on the top right corner. From the drop-down menu, select Settings and click on the Display tab to toggle the color setting for your sidebar.

Starred

Star projects, portfolios, people, dashboards, saved searches, and teams to save and bookmark them on your sidebar for easier access. Simply navigate to the desired page and click on the star icon next to the title at the top of the page.

The Starred section can be used to curate work that is top of mind for you or that you access often, like a favorites list. Only you see what you've starred. Everyone in your workspace or organization has their own starred list.

Newly starred items will be added to the top of the Starred section. You can reorder items by dragging and dropping.

Your saved searches will now appear on the Starred section

You can remove items from the Starred section by right-clicking the item from the sidebar, or on the page itself to remove the star.

Projects

The sidebar lists the projects in your team or workspace. The lock icon indicates a private project.

projects

 

  1. Click the + icon to create a new project or a new portfolio
  2. Click the three dot icon to view your top projects or recently visited projects

Open up the project to reveal more actions in the project header.

Portfolios are available to Asana Business, and Enterprise.

By default, your Projects section is set to show your Top projects. This automatically surfaces projects that are most relevant to your day-to-day work based on the projects you visit most.

Recent projects is an auto-updating list of your 10 most recent projects.

Right click on any item on the sidebar to open a menu to speed up your workflow.

Insights and teams

insights and teams

 

  1. Click the + icon to create new portfolios, goals, and dashboards.
  2. Click the + icon to browse all teams in your domain or create a new team.

Learn about the power of dashboards in Asana and how a project level tab containing charts can be used for visual reporting.

Teams are only available in organizations.  

Flyouts

flyouts

To view the flyouts, hover over the team or portfolio and click the > icon next to its name.

Portfolio flyout

Portfolio flyouts show you all of the projects and portfolios within.

Team flyout

From the team flyout, you can view the team’s projects, team page, add members or create a project. By default, this will show the list of active projects. To view the archived projects, click on the team to view the Overview page, then select Archived projects under the filter.

Head to our FAQ article for commonly asked questions regarding our sidebar.

Home

From your home page, you can view the number of tasks completed and the number of people you have collaborated with during the past week or month.

You can customize your home by dragging and dropping widgets from the customize panel. Click Customize to add the following widgets:

  • My tasks: view your upcoming, overdue, and completed tasks.
  • Projects: view recent, starred, and recommended projects, or create a new project.
  • People: view frequent, recent, and starred collaborators. You can also browse teams and invite people to the organization.
  • Private notepad: write quick notes and add important links.
  • Tasks I've assigned: view any upcoming, overdue, and completed tasks you've assigned, or assign a new task.
  • Draft comments: view all of your unsent comments.
  • Forms: displays your recent and favorited forms, and you can create a new form directly from the widget via the + Add new button.
  • My goals: easily track all your open and closed goals, or add a new goal.
Homepage Layout

You can organize your widgets by dragging them around or clicking the three dot icon at the top of each widget to change its size or remove it from your home.

Header

highlight header

From the header, you can:

  1. Access drop-down menu with actions for the project
  2. Favorite the project
  3. Set a status for your project
  4. View a list of project members and limited access members
  5. Share your project
  6. Acces the customize menu

Project actions

project actions

Click the drop-down menu to access the following actions:

  1. Edit project details - modify the name or description of your project
  2. Color - change the color of the project
  3. Copy project URL
  4. Save layout as default
  5. Duplicate the project
  6. Save as template if in a paid team or organization
  7. Add to portfolio
  8. Import CSV files, email and connect Wuffoo to project, export your project or My tasks, or print your project
  9. Move to another team (only available in organizations), archive or delete your project

Open up the project to reveal more actions in the project header.

Learn more about all of these actions in the project actions section of the Understanding projects article of the Help Center.

 

Forms are only available to teams and organizations on Asana Premium, Business or Enterprise.

Upgrade

 

Views

highlight views

The header allows you to switch between different views:

  1. Overview is the team's persistent hub to showcase a birds-eye view of the what, why and how of a project and drive easy understanding of its ongoing context.
  2. List is the default view and displays a list of tasks.
  3. Board view organizes your tasks within columns.
  4. Timeline is a paid feature that creates a project plan and displays how every element of a project fit together.
  5. Calendar view filters only tasks with due dates and displays them in a calendar format.
  6. Workflow helps you automate your team's process.
  7. Dashboard view offers you a real-time status update; where you can use pre-configured charts to visually report and communicate project progress.
  8. Use Messages to have discussions, make an announcement, brainstorm, celebrate accomplishments, or talk about any other topic. Messages can be used to communicate directly with people, projects or teams.
  9. Use files to access integrated project files such as Vimeo Video messaging.

Main pane

When you select a project, tag, or person from the sidebar, you'll see the relevant list of tasks in the main pane. This is also where you see search results, Inbox notifications and Messages.

main pane

From the main pane, you can:

  1. Add a new task, section, milestone, or task template
  2. Mark a task as complete or incomplete and view/edit the task name
  3. Filter tasks
  4. Sort tasks
  5. Hide custom fields
  6. Identify a task's assignee, due date, and other custom fields
  7. Create a public link to the task, save layout, search project and manage dependencies
  8. Customize the project

You can also see the amount of likes a task has received from the main pane.

Task details pane

The task details pane, is where you see the details for a task you've selected in the main pane.

task details pane

From the top of the task details pane, you can:

  1. Mark the task complete or incomplete
  2. Like the task, attach files, add subtasks, copy the task url, track the time spent on the task, view the task in full screen, view more actions, and close the task details pane
  3. Edit the task's name
  4. Assign the task
  5. Set a due date & time
  6. Identify what project the task is in, or add it to a project
  7. Set dependencies
  8. Add a description to give the task more context
  9. Post a comment, ask a question
  10. Add or remove task collaborators

Learn more about the functionality available in the task details pane in the tasks article.

You can also press Tab+X on your keyboard to enter full screen mode.