How to Get Started With Asana Goals | Product Guide

Goals are available to all Business and Enterprise customers.

Goals are a flexible goal-tracking system that helps drive measurable results by providing a single source of truth for setting and tracking Goals where your teams execute work.

With Goals, aligning your teams around clear objectives and prioritizing the right work is easier than ever. Goals help everyone at your organization understand why their work matters and what they should be working towards.

To do this, set, track, and manage both company-wide and team Goals. Company goals are longer-term Goals tied to the achievement of your organization’s mission. Team Goals are shorter-term Goals that ladder up to your company’s mission-oriented objectives.

In either case, Goals are visible to everyone so that individuals across every level of your organization have clarity on the company’s priorities at any given time.

Goals can be linked as parent or sub-goals, to create a goal hierarchy, and supporting work can be added to make the connection between Goals and work clear.

Follow along with our Feature Focus video to learn the Goals basics.

Goals overview

To access your Goals’ list view, navigate to the Goals section in your sidebar.

goals list view

From the Goals’ list view, you can:

  1. Filter your Goals by company or team level
  2. Add a new Goal
  3. Click into a Goal to view or edit its details

Company Strategy Tab

CompanyStrategy Tab

To Access the Company Strategy Tab:

  1. Click Company Strategy to bring you to the Goals Company Strategy Tab. Here you can clearly see your company goals outlined, as well as the Company Mission.
  2. By default this section is called “Mission”, however it can be changed to say something else i.e Vision, Strategy etc. You can enter a few lines to describe your company mission and bring further clarity to your team.
  3. The Company Goals feature shows all your company’s goals, and how supporting goals ladder up. You can also see the status of each goal and how they connect to the overall company mission. You can drag and drop sub-goals and goals to customize their order on the Company Strategy Tab. You can also add new goals from this page.

Company Goals

To add a Company Goal click the + sign beside Company Goals

Company Goals 2

From there you can add new goals, choose collaborators and owners. You can also decide on the privacy of the goal.

Filter your Goals at a company or team level

You can filter your Goals at a company or team level from your Team goals list view. When on the Team goals tab just click on the drop-down icon and select your Organization or team. You can also search for an existing team that you’re a Member of by typing the team name into the search field. You can also find public and request-to-join teams you're not a member of by searching.

Filter Goals

Filter your Goals by status

You can filter your Goals by status level at any time from your Goals' list view. Just click the filter button in the upper right corner of your Goals list view and select between viewing Open goals, Closed goals or All goals.

Filter Status

When a filter is applied, Goals that do not match all the selected filters (owner, status, and/or the team the page is filtered to) will not appear. To see all Goals for that team, remove the filters.

Creating a new team from your Team Goals’ list view

You can create a new team from your Team Goals’ list view, by clicking the drop-down icon and scrolling down to the Create New team prompt.

Creating a new team

create a new team 2

From the Create new team window, you can:

  1. Add a team name
  2. Write a description
  3. Add team Members
  4. Choose the privacy settings for your team
  5. Click Create team when all of your details have been filled out

Goals are public regardless of the type of team they're associated with.

How to create a Goal

You can add a new Goal at an company or team level, by clicking the Add Goal icon in your Goals’ list view.

Adding a new Goal

Add Goal step 2

From the Goals’ list view on your Team goals tab, you can:

  1. View the name of your Goal, the number of sub-goals associated with it, and you can expand to see sub-goals
  2. Edit or remove the team associated with your Goal
  3. Edit your Goal’s start date or due date
  4. View your Goal’s progress and click to enter the Goal's detail page
  5. Change the Owner for the selected Goal

When the team is changed, the Goal will be moved to the new team’s space. To find the Goal, click on the drop-down icon in your Goals’ list view and select the desired team.

View or edit a Goal’s details

To view or edit an existing Goal, click into the desired Goal from your Goals’ list view.

You must add a progress metric for your Goal before you can update a Goal's progress.

edit goal

edit an existing goal

From the edit Goal window, you can:

  1. Update your Goal’s progress
  2. View, edit or add a Sub-goal
  3. Edit the Owner of the Goal, adjust the due-date, or add a description
  4. View or edit the team or Collaborators associated with the Goal
  5. Edit or add Parent Goals
  6. Add Supporting work such as a project or Portfolio

Even if the Goal is public, private projects and Portfolios attached to the public goal will only be visible to people with access to that private project or Portfolio.

Track Goal activity

Business and Enterprise users can identify the ways in which the Goal has been modified, expectedly and unexpectedly, since its conception.

Activities are interactions that are recorded.

By scrolling to Activity on the left pane users can see a set of tasks that are being completed to accomplish the goal.

activity

View a historical trail of changes in activity in order to:

  • Conduct a look-back analysis
  • Assess the process for blockers
  • Forecast similarly shaped future Goals
  • Track the activity to inform decisions

In the left space users have room to write clear, well-defined, time-bound, measurable and attainable Goals. The right pane gives you the opportunity to link parent Goals and supporting work.

Editing your progress metrics

You can edit a goal's progress metric after setting it, including changing the metric type (ex. % to $), the initial value, and the target value.

To edit your goal’s progress metric, click on the drop-down arrow next to your goal header and select Edit progress metric.

edit progress metric 1

From the next window you can; change the metric type, the number of decimals, the initial value, the target value or the current value.

edit progress metric 2

Notifications

Notifications will be triggered for the goal owner and Collaborators (except the user who completed the action) when:

  • the metric type and target value has been set for the first time.
  • the metric type or target value has been changed.

Notifications will not be triggered if only the initial value or current value has been adjusted.

Adding progress metrics to your Goals

You can add a progress metric for your Goal, by clicking into the Goal from your Goal's list view and selecting the Add progress metric icon. These progress metrics are the same as those available when using numeric Custom Fields.

progress

From the progress window, select the format that is appropriate for your Goal.

progress window

Types of progress metrics

There are three types of progress metrics that you can use for tracking your Goal’s progress.

Percentage

The percentage metric is best for qualitative Goals and allows you to track progress by using 0-100% and estimating the amount completed. Set a percentage metric with “100%” as the target value for Goals like “Win customer loyalty” or “Grow and engage teams.” You can use the description field to add guidelines on how to measure progress.

Percentage can also be used as a progress metric to track Goals with % as the unit for measurement. For example, “Increase subscribers by 25%” or “Increase our satisfaction scores from 85% to 90%”

Numeric

Best for a goal where a concrete number of results are desired. For example, “Get 1,000 survey responses” or “Conduct 3 webinars.”

These can also be used for binary Goals like “Ship new feature” or maintenance Goals like “Maintain 99.9% uptime on all systems” where the goal is evaluated as achieved or missed. These types of Goals would be set up with an initial value of “0” and a target value of “1.”

Currency

These are best used for Goals involving currency. For example, “Increase ARR to $500,000” or “Generate $80,000 in bookings in Q3."

Updating your Goal’s progress

You can update your Goal’s progress at any time by clicking into the Goal from your Goals’ list view and selecting Update progress.

update progress

update progress two

While in the Update progress modal, update the progress, select the status and click Save.

Closing a Goal

From the Update progress page:

You can close your Goal at any time by clicking into the Goal from your Goals’ list view and selecting Update progress.

progress

close goal

From the Update progress window, select Close this goal.

close goal three

From here select the desired status and click Save.

Through the drop-down arrow next to your Goal's name:

You can also close a Goal by clicking on the drop-down arrow next to the Goal name and selecting Close this goal.

close goal four

From here select the desired status and click Save.

Deleting a Goal

You can delete a Goal by clicking the drop-down arrow next to the Goal name and selecting Delete goal.

delete goal

Goals privacy

Editing the privacy settings for a new Goal

From your Team Goals tab, click the Add Goal button.

add Goal 1

Enter your Goal name and details and click Public or Private then click Save goal.

add Goal 2

Edit an existing Goal’s privacy settings

Click into the desired Goal from your Goal’s list view.

edit an existing Goal 1

From here, click on the privacy icon in the top right corner.

edit an existing Goal 2

Next, choose to make your Goal Public or Private then click Save goal.

edit an existing Goal 3

Editing an existing sub-goal’s privacy settings

You can change the privacy settings for your sub-goal by clicking into the sub-goal and clicking the privacy icon.

edit an existing goal 1

From here, click on the privacy icon in the top right corner.

edit an existing goal 2

Next, choose to make your Goal Public or Private then click Save goal

edit an existing Goal 3

For common questions regarding individual Goal privacy, please see our Goals Privacy FAQs.

Key use cases

Clarity of work

  • One of the main benefits of using Goals, over tasks or projects in Asana, is everyone in the company has a shared space, that defaults to the company level view of Goals. This reduces confusion about "What are our goals and how do I find them" and they stay top of mind for you and your team.

Connects work to purpose

  • Increases employee engagement and team motivation because teams have a clear understanding of how their work relates to company Goals.

Helps teams understand what’s happening in the company

  • See how teams are tracking toward their goals in real-time, to see if initiatives need course correction and to recognize good work.

Drives results

  • Reduces worry that teams are working on things that aren’t strategic priorities by allowing teams to connect their goals to ladder up to company-level objectives.

Creates understanding around outcomes

  • Tracking progress and status throughout the Goal’s lifetime avoids the frustration of not understanding why goals were hit or missed at the end of the cycle.

For more information on how to use Goals, check out the Planning company goals: objectives and key results (OKRs). Looking for goal-setting best practices and ideas? Download a digital copy of our Asana Playbook to OKRs.

Goals FAQ

You can check out some common questions on Goals in our Goals FAQ article.

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