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Goals privacy and sharing

In This Article

Available on Asana Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as legacy tiers Premium, Business, and Legacy Enterprise.

Visit our pricing page for more information.

Define your goal’s privacy by choosing between private and public goals. Goals can be public to your entire company or private. Private goals are visible only to its owner and members.

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Choosing the privacy settings for a new goal

When creating a new goal, you can choose for it to be public or private. By selecting Public, you make the goal visible to the entire company. If you choose Private, the goal will only be visible to its owner and members.

Goal privacy setting


Edit an existing goal’s privacy settings

Edit a goal's privacy

To edit a goal’s privacy settings:

  1. Click on the desired goal from your goal’s list view
  2. From here, click on the Share icon in the top right corner
  3. Next, choose to make your goal Private to members or Shared with the organization

Set a default privacy setting for new goals

Admins can control the default goal privacy for new goals in their organization or division. Admins can choose whether goals are initially created as Public or Private to members.

Goal admins and editors can still update goal privacy for their respective goals at any time.

To set the default privacy for goals:

  1. Navigate to the admin console
  2. Select the Security tab
  3. Under Privacy and access permissions, click on Goals settings
  4. Choose the default privacy setting for new goals:
    1. Public: All members of your organization can find and access new goals
    2. Private to members: Only people invited to new goals can access them
  5. Click Save changes

Comment-only goals

Comment-only goals allow goal members to comment on goals without having edit access. Now, goal owners can decide who has edit access or comment-only access. Comment-only access will ensure that goals aren’t mistakenly deleted or edited by goal members.

Sharing a goal

By sharing a goal with others, you give them access to the goal. Goal members also receive status updates about the goal and other notifications in their inbox.

Sharing a goal

To share a goal:

  1. Click on the desired goal
  2. Click Share
  3. Enter the name or email address of the members you want to add and choose between Editor or Commenter
  4. You can also change their permissions by clicking the drop-down next to their name
  5. You can optionally send notifications to the invitees

Sharing a public goal

Public goals will say Shared with organization. You can join any public goals.

Public goals 

Sharing a goal with a team

Share goals with whole teams instead of just individuals. By sharing goals with teams, you can save time and ensure that everyone on your team is up to date about the goal.

When someone gets access to a goal through a team, they will keep that access as long as the team continues to be a member of the goal and the person remains a member of the team.

Sharing goals with teams

To share a goal with a team:

  1. Click the Share button
  2. Type the name of the team
  3. Click Invite

Members with Edit access can add or remove teams and change their edit permissions. Members with Comment access can only remove other members with Comment access and cannot change edit permissions.

Goals with accountable teams

When creating a goal, you can select a team to be the Accountable team for that goal. If you change the accountable team later, this will not remove the team from the goal.

Accountable team in goals

For example, the team "EMEA Marketing" is replaced as the accountable team by "Creative Production".

Exporting a goal

CSV export

You can export team or company goals to a CSV file.

  1. Click Goals from the left sidebar.
  2. Right-click on Company goals, Team goals, or My goals
  3. Select Export CSV
You will receive an email with your CSV file.

Goals PDF export

Available on Asana Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, as well as Legacy Enterprise.

Goals PDF Export enables you to export goals and their associated subgoals as PDF documents, complete with status updates. This feature provides a convenient way to share and document goal progress, making it easier to communicate objectives and achievements across teams and stakeholders.

Exporting goals as PDF

Export a goal

  1. Navigate to the goal you want to export and click the drop-down arrow
  2. Click Export PDF

From the PDF settings screen you can choose whether to include subgoals and status updates. Once you’ve selected your desired settings, click Download at the top right corner.

Download goal pdf

Depending on your settings, the exported PDF will include:

  1. Goal name, status, and owner
  2. Associated subgoals
  3. Latest status updates
  4. Supporting data such as accountable team, time period, progress, and goal type

Goal access levels

Goals support four access levels:

  1. Admin: Full control over the goal
  2. Editor: Can edit goal details but cannot manage permissions
  3. Commenter: Can comment on goals but cannot edit them
  4. Viewer: Can only view goals

To change a goal's access level for a team member:

  1. Open the goal
  2. Click the Share button
  3. Find the team member's name
  4. Click the drop-down next to their name
  5. Select the desired access level

Goal admins can change notification settings for users and teams.

The table below shows the difference between all access levels.

Action

Admin 

Editor

Commenter

Viewer

Like a goal

✅

✅

✅

✅

Link reference work

✅

✅

❌

❌

Copy goal link

✅

✅

✅

✅

Like status update

✅

✅

✅

✅

Comment on status update

✅

✅

✅

❌

Share with others via share modal or @ mentioning (Comment-only role)

✅

✅

✅

❌

Remove comment-only users

✅

✅

✅

❌

Change goal name

✅

❌

❌

❌

Link contributing work

✅

✅

❌

❌

Edit progress metric

✅

❌

❌

❌

Update status

✅

✅

❌

❌

Grant edit access to others

✅

✅

❌

❌

Change privacy setting

✅

❌

❌

❌

Close goal

✅

✅

❌

❌

Delete goal

✅

❌

❌

❌

Edit goal description

✅

✅

❌

❌

Add sub-goals

✅

✅

❌

❌

Remove Owner or team

✅

❌

❌

❌

Update time period

✅

✅

❌

❌

Goals privacy FAQ

Who can see a private goal?

Only the goal owner and goal members can see a private goal. Members must be added explicitly to the goal.

Who can edit a private goal?

Only goal members with edit access may edit a private goal.

Who can view a public goal?

Public goals can be viewed by everyone in the organization.

Who can edit a public goal?

If the goal has a default privacy setting of “Everyone in your company can comment”, then only members with Edit access can edit it. If the default privacy setting is “Everyone in your company can edit”, then everyone can edit the goal.

How do I regain access to a private goal if I accidentally locked myself out?

Ask the owner of the goal or another member to re-add you.

How do I regain access to a private goal if the owner left my organization or all members lost access?

Contact Asana’s customer support. They will help you regain access by working with your admin team.

How does a private goal appear to a user who cannot access it?

If you do not have access to the goal, you will not be able to see it. It will not appear on the list view, on the goals detail page (as either a sub-goal or a parent goal), or on the progress page of a project or portfolio.

It will not be counted toward the sub-goal count of a parent goal. You will not be able to find it by searching. If a link appears in a task or comment, you will only see “Private link” as the name of the link. If you paste in the URL, you will see an “Access Denied” screen.

Who can export the goal to PDF? 

Owners, editors, commenters, and view-only users can export goals to PDF.

Tip iconTip

New to Asana Goals? Check out Get started with Asana Goals.

 

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Goals Privacy & Sharing in Asana