I often send emails to an external party (non-Asana user) and copy in my colleague (Asana user). In order to track a task that I have given to the external party I also bcc the x@mail.asana.com address. However, Asana automatically assigns the task to my colleague. Is there a way to set up my email so that the task arrives in My Tasks as an unassigned task? Thanks, Kevin.
Thanks for prompting me to finally play around with emailing tasks, @Kevin_Graham!
Here’s what seems to do what you want:
To: Your outside colleague
CC: Your inside colleague
Bcc: Your Asana address; x@mail.asana.com
Subject: Task Name
This creates a task in My Tasks, assigned to you, with your colleague as a collaborator. I got an email that my outside colleague’s address wasn’t recognized, but I assume you’ve been getting those all along anyway.
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Thanks Craig. The only thing I’m missing is the ability to control who tasks are assigned to and who I want to have follow those tasks - in my example I don’t want to have my colleague be a collaborator of the task (for reasons only I know!). If it’s not possible I’ll probably just have to find a workaround.
@Kevin_Graham, if you BCC your inside colleague instead of CC, he or she won’t be a collaborator of the task. But that may screw up your email thread when your outside colleague replies.
Sounds like the colleague is an Asana user as well? If so you could use email “plus” addressing if their email system supports it.
For example you can CC your colleague at their email address but put +something before the @ sign.
So if they were joe@testco.com you could send it to joe+asana@testco.com
Since Joe’s email address as setup in Asana is NOT joe+testco@testco.com they will not be added as a collaborator. But if their email system supports plus addressing (gmail does FWIW) then they will receive the email.
You will get the email “Your task was successfully created, but we don’t recognize some email addresses.” as @Craig_Fifer mentions since that address isn’t tied to a member/guest of your Asana org.
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Great idea, @Geoff_Manning! To piggyback if the + method isn’t supported… If @Kevin_Graham’s has a short list of typical inside colleagues, he can ask his email administrator to create alternate addresses for them. So bob.smith@company.com could be registered with Asana while bsmith@company.com is not, but email to both addresses goes to the same mailbox.
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@Craig_Fifer @Geoff_Manning Thank you both for your help. I’m going to take the path of least resistance - the BCC option is just what I need. One day I hope all my colleagues are on Asana so this won’t be an issue at all… Cheers, Kevin.
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