Lock it down: Introducing comment-only projects

“Wait, this doesn’t look right.” You’ve probably experienced that sinking feeling when you realize that something is missing, different, or not the way you left it. When you’re working on something important, unwanted and accidental changes aren’t just frustrating, they can derail your project and make you miss deadlines. But just because something shouldn’t be edited by everyone, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be shared with them. In fact, your teammates often need this information to do their jobs effectively. So how you do share important work, but guard your project against unwanted edits?

Create comment-only projects so your work always stays the way you left it. This new way to lock down projects in Asana Premium lets you share information with your entire team or company, without worrying about unwanted changes or edits.

Encourage collaboration, not edits

Some projects need input from a lot of people. An IT requests project, for example, is useless if employees can’t add to it. But other projects benefit from more eyes, and fewer editors. With comment-only projects, your teammates can still comment on tasks, but can’t edit crucial information like the scope of work, project instructions, and reference information. Here are a few projects you might want to make comment only:

• Company policies and procedures

• Strategic company goals and milestones

• Large scale project plans

• Project templates

Snowberry Media, a creative agency focused on transforming brands through web and print work, uses Asana to centralize all of their client projects. Asana also serves as a key communication channel between them and their clients. While it’s worked well for them to loop clients in as guests to give them updates or ask them questions, sometimes clients make accidental changes in Asana that cause confusion and disrupt project schedules. Now with comment-only projects, the Snowberry Media team can share information with zero worry.

Comment-only projects gives us confidence that we can share information with clients and provide the transparency that we pride ourselves on, without the risk of changes or edits. I can build a trusting, effective relationship with my clients, and keep control over the project”

How to create a comment-only project

You can easily turn any project into a comment-only project by clicking the + in the top right corner of your project (where you add more members).  From there, you can choose the access setting for the project at the team level, as well as the access settings for each project member.

How do comment-only projects work?

Once a project is set as comment-only, members with comment-only access will be able to comment on tasks, like tasks and task comments, and start conversations. They won’t be able to do other task and project actions, like changing due dates, editing task names or descriptions, and adding or deleting tasks. If you’re a comment-only member of a project, you’ll see a comment only badge in the top left corner of the project. Members with editing access have full control to change, add, or delete anything in the project.

If you have comment-only access to a project but have a task assigned to you, you’ll be able to reassign the task, change the due date, and update the custom fields of that task. However, you won’t be able to change the task description or edit any other tasks in the project.

For Scripps Networks Interactive, parent company of Food Network, Cooking Channel and other lifestyle media brands, Asana is the central place where they manage the creation and distribution of hundreds of videos each month. With digital series like “Mom Wins” and “Recipe of the Day”, each video sees hundreds of thousands- or even millions- of views. From the green-light all the way through to distribution, Scripps’ production team relies on custom templates to ensure that video projects run smoothly every time. Now, with comment-only projects, Michael Singer, Director of Digital Programming, is able to make sure that each template stays locked, so the process is set in stone.

Setting all our templates as ‘comment-only projects’ gave me the peace of mind that each template would always stay up to date, and nothing would get deleted or changed accidentally”

Share with confidence

With comment-only projects, you can share more work with more teammates, and feel confident that information will stay accurate—with no accidental changes or edits. If you’re using Asana Premium or Enterprise, you can start creating comment-only projects today.

For now, only projects in list view can be made comment only. Our team is actively working on supporting comment-only projects on boards, and we hope to make this feature available for boards projects in the coming weeks! Have more questions about comment-only projects? Check out the Guide.

If you’re using Asana Free, you can get comment-only projects and more by upgrading to Asana Premium. Learn more about the benefits of Premium or contact our sales team.