The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Asana

Project management platforms have transformed professional work. Asana is one of the most popular task management tools available, and this guide covers the basics — what it is, how it is organized, how to create projects and tasks, and tips for getting the most out of it.

What Is Asana and What Are Its Benefits?

Asana allows you to create tasks and assign them to team members. Each task provides a space to collaborate and communicate about that specific piece of work. Managers can use Asana to track employee progress — how many tasks are they closing out, and are they meeting their deadlines?

Asana provides four core benefits for any team:

Better organization. Asana keeps all your work clearly labeled, nested within a hierarchy, and assigned to the right person. Every employee knows what they are responsible for, and it is easy to catch mistakes.

Better communication. Within each project and task, you can upload files, edit descriptions, and hold discussion threads. This increases collaboration within your team — especially important if your team is operating remotely.

Better delegation and assignment. Managers can distribute and assign tasks to balance workloads between team members and ensure everyone stays focused on bottom-line goals.

Better tracking and insights. Asana helps you track project progress. If a project gets derailed, you can analyze it to see what went wrong. You can review each employee’s assigned tasks and close rates to gain meaningful insights about team productivity.

How Much Does Asana Cost?

Asana has four pricing tiers:

Basic (Free). Designed for individuals and small teams. Includes unlimited tasks and projects, team management for up to 15 people, time tracking, and project reviews. Limited on advanced features.

Premium ($10.99/month, billed annually). Adds dashboards, a timeline view, advanced search, custom fields, guest roles, and an admin console.

Business ($24.99/month, billed annually). Adds portfolios, goals, workload distribution tools, approvals, a custom rules builder, and more advanced integrations.

Enterprise (custom pricing). Adds data exporting, SAML authentication, attachment controls, custom branding, and other enterprise-level features. Contact Asana for pricing.

If you are not sure what you need, start with the free Basic plan. It gives you access to most of the fundamentals.

How Is Asana Organized?

Understanding Asana’s hierarchy is essential for using it effectively. (See Asana’s visual guide for a helpful diagram.)

Organization is your company — the top level that contains everything.

Teams sit within your Organization. You can partition teams however you see fit — by department (Marketing, Sales, Accounting, HR) or by function. Each team has access to its own projects.

Projects are the core of Asana. They represent high-level objectives or initiatives that must be completed to advance the business. Some projects may involve multiple teams working together.

Tasks are individual to-do items within each project. They can be distributed to different team members, completed independently, or worked through in sequence with collaboration at each step.

Subtasks and Comments live within each task. Subtasks break a complex task into micro-level to-do items. Comments provide a discussion thread for updates, questions, and collaboration. You can also add comments at the project level.

How Do You Create Projects and Tasks in Asana?

Creating a project. Click the + or Create icon in the upper-right portion of your screen. Choose to start from scratch, use an existing template (recommended for beginners — it shows what a typical project looks like), or import a spreadsheet. Fill in the project name, description, deadline, assignees, and attachments. Once created, you can view the project as a list, board, calendar, or timeline.

At EmailAnalytics, we use board mode because it makes it easy to drag and drop tasks between stages like To Do, In Progress, and Waiting. List mode also works well. If you have many tasks within a project, you can group them into sections — think of these as sub-projects within the larger initiative.

Creating tasks. Use the + or Create button to add a task. Give it a title, description, deadline, and assignees. You can tie the task to a specific project or leave it as a floating task with no project attachment. Within each task, add subtasks for granular steps, upload attachments, or start a comment thread for discussion and updates.

How Do You Find and Organize Tasks in Asana?

My Tasks. Click My Tasks in the sidebar to see all tasks and subtasks currently assigned to you. When you finish something, click the checkmark to mark it complete and remove it from your view.

Inbox and notifications. Whenever you are an assignee or follower of a project or task, you receive notifications when it is updated — new comments, attachments, or completion actions. You can receive these by email or only within the app. Check your Inbox at any time to see a list of recent updates.

Search. Asana has an intuitive search feature. Type keywords associated with what you are looking for to generate a list of matching items. You can search specifically for recently completed tasks, tasks you created, or tasks you assigned to others. Advanced Search gives you even more control with filters by status, date, assignee, and other criteria.

What Are the Best Tips for Getting the Most Out of Asana?

Be consistent. Some people create subtasks for every step. Others keep tasks high-level. Some create new projects constantly, while others reuse the same ones. There are many viable approaches, but what matters most is consistency. Settle on a formula and stick to it — and encourage your team to do the same.

Set expectations with employees. Your team will not know how to use the platform optimally unless you tell them. If deadlines are firm, say so. If you expect all communication to go into the project thread instead of email, make that clear. Proactive, explicit expectations keep everyone organized.

Explore by clicking around. Asana has dozens of features that are not immediately obvious. When setting a deadline, you can set items to repeat at specific intervals for recurring tasks. You can “like” any task, subtask, project, or comment with a thumbs-up icon to acknowledge it without responding. You can also duplicate tasks, add follow-up tasks, create milestones, or set approvals (depending on your plan tier).

Use tags. Custom tags let you group related tasks even if they belong to different projects. This makes your work more searchable and helps you track themes across multiple initiatives. The key is being highly consistent with your tagging system.

Manage notifications carefully. Asana can notify you about virtually every update, which quickly becomes overwhelming. Disable most notifications and rely on the in-app Inbox when you want to check for updates. Encourage team members to use @mentions when they specifically need your attention in a discussion thread.

Where Can You Learn More About Asana?

Asana provides several resources for learning beyond the basics. The How to Asana video playlist offers helpful visuals for common workflows. Asana Lessons take about 3 minutes each and cover specific features. You can also browse the comprehensive Asana Guide, read the Asana Blog for updates and tips, and engage in the Asana Community Forum for peer support.

For time tracking within Asana, see this overview of how Asana time tracking works with third-party integrations. For a broader view of project management tools, see this comparison of project management apps for small businesses.

Project management is only a small part of your workday. Most professionals also spend about three hours a day managing email. EmailAnalytics syncs with your Gmail account to show you how you spend that time — so you can improve your daily email habits. Sign up for a free trial to get started.