Asana/Slack Integration

We are looking into the Asana/Slack Integration and its been very difficult to find any comprehensive directions, Q&A or “How To” information. So far the only thing we have found is: Slack + Asana • Asana Product Guide - which is a far cry from being comprehensive!
We don’t want to receive notifications in Slack (or email) every time anyone does anything!
For now we really only want - If we add a comment to a Task in Asana and @mention someone have it show up in their Slack feed so they can reply from Slack and the answer will show up on the same Task in Asana.
Is it possible to have ONLY that feature “turned on”?
TIA for the help!

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Hi @Julie_Prasch personally I don’t recommend the Slack integration. It’s not very useful and really just serves as another place to get notifications (as if we need more notifications in our lives). You can create tasks from Slack, however I find it easier to just go right to Asana (which I have open all day anyway) and create them here.

Please let me know if you have any more questions. If you’re interested in improving your use of Asana further or want to discuss team training, please feel free to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to discuss consulting options.

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I agree that having multiple locations to check / receive notifications is a pain in the backside! So for the same reason you say don’t integrate I say I would say it’s worth having a channel with the notifications @Julie_Prasch has described… bare with me on this!

We use Asana for project and specifically task management, and obviously comments and questions about specific tasks go directly in there where it’s fully contextual. We use slack for every other kind of (internal) communication. Chit chat, broader project discussion, stand ups etc.

In an ideal work anything agreed or discussed should end up in Asana alongside the task. In reality this doesn’t always happen, either it’s not specific to a task, or not important, or we simply forget or don’t bother. In those circumstances there’s still times when I think, I know we’ve discussed something but wouldn’t know where to look…

The beauty of pulling in comments (rather than just task updates) is you can do one search in Slack and still find the context very quickly as it will use the Asana task URL. You can pull in other sources for the same reason. I think we’re going to create some sort of tasks automatically for code releases in to Asana, and pull notifications of these in to Slack.

But first step, narrowing down which notifications get pushed through too, as we are currently displaying everything which is overkill and not being used.

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Yes @TheTim! Exactly! I love Slack’s search function, especially the ability to see the context of each result, which enables me to more quickly find the specific instance I’m looking for. If searching Slack would include comments related to an Asana task, I wouldn’t feel like I’m always forgetting something, and I would avoid wasting time searching through email and text messages.

Please consider this idea @Asana_team!

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Currently Asana will post updates to a Slack channel when:

  • A task is created
  • A task is marked complete
  • A task is renamed
  • A task description is modified
  • A comment is added to a task

It would be really cool, if in the integration set up, we can choose which of those events will post to Slack. I’d probably just choose comments to filter out all the other noise. Slack then becomes my main search function.

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Thank you all for the thoughts and feedback! Can anyone provide a link to comprehensive directions for set-up?

Here’s a detailed page in the Asana Guide:

This page also provides a place to start and links to relevant instructions through Slack :slight_smile:

Hi,

Reading up on this thread but I can not see how to filter the sort of notifications I get on Slack. I have added the Asana app to integrate with Slack, but I am getting notifications for EVERY action done… What if I only want to be notified when a task is assigned to me? Does that exist?

Thanks!

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Is there a solution to the original question? Basically to reply to a comment on asana from slack, which gets posted back to asana as a comment

While I agree with this post… the Slack integration is created by Slack not Asana. If you want to get something changed, you’ll need to talk to them.

I would imagine Asana has some pull in this area, but ultimately any features/additions/fixes/etc would be through the Slack team.

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The current slack+asana integration is really noisy to the point where enabling it will disrupt our normal conversations in the chat room.

It would also be great if we can limit the notifications to just particular teams / boards instead of the whole instance.