How to Get Started With Asana Goals | Product Guide
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- Goals overview
- Company goals
- Filter your Goals at a company or team level
- Filter your Goals by owner or status
- Filter your Goals by time period
- Creating a new team from your Goals’ list view
- How to create a Goal
- View or edit a Goal’s details
- Track Goal activity
- Adding progress metrics to your Goals
- Editing a progress metric
- Types of progress metrics
- Updating your Goal’s progress
- Closing a Goal
- Deleting a Goal
- Goals privacy
- Key use cases
- Goals FAQ
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.
Goals overview
To access your Goals’ list view, navigate to the Goals section in your sidebar.
From the Goals’ list view, you can:
- Filter your Goals by Company goals or navigate to Team goals. You can navigate to either tab by clicking the heading you want
- Add a new Goal
- Click into a Goal to view or edit its details
- Filter a goal by time period
- You can also access goals based on specific time periods
Company goals
To Access the Company goals Tab:
- Click Company goals to bring you to the Company goals Tab. Here you can clearly see your company goals outlined, as well as the Company Mission.
- 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.
- 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 goals tab. You can also add new goals from this page.
To add a Company Goal click the + sign beside Company Goals. 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 team level from your Team goals list view. When on the Team goals tab just click on the drop-down icon Show/hide teams 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 your Goals by status or Owner
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 or closed goals and their status. You can also search for particular goals using the search bar.
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.
Filter your Goals by time period
By default Asana sets up a fiscal year for all organizations, and new goals will have time periods attached. You can display Goals based on the time period from your Goals’ list view by clicking the All goals button and selecting the applicable time period. You can access a filtered view of Goals that are active in the current time period, as well as toggling to see past and future Goal periods.
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 Add goal button and in the Company or Team box scrolling down to the Create New team prompt.
From the Create new team window, you can:
- Add a team name
- Write a description
- Add team Members
- Choose the privacy settings for your team
- 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 a company or team level, by clicking the Add Goal icon in your Goals’ list view.
From the Goals’ list view on your Team goals tab, you can:
- View the name of your Goal, the number of sub-goals associated with it, and you can expand to see sub-goals
- Edit or remove the team associated with your Goal
- Edit your Goal’s start date or due date or time period
- View your Goal’s progress and click to enter the Goal's detail page
- 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.
From the edit Goal window, you can:
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.
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.
From the next window you can; change the metric type, the number of decimals, the initial value, the target value or the current value.
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.
From the progress window, select the format that is appropriate for your Goal.
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.
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.
From the Update progress window, select Close this goal.
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.
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.
Goals privacy
Editing the privacy settings for a new Goal
From your Team Goals tab, click the Add Goal button.
Enter your Goal name and details and click Public or Private then click Save goal.
Edit an existing Goal’s privacy settings
Click into the desired Goal from your Goal’s list view.
From here, click on the privacy icon in the top right corner.
Next, choose to make your Goal Public or Private then click Save goal.
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.
From here, click on the privacy icon in the top right corner.
Next, choose to make your Goal Public or Private then click Save goal
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.
