Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks
Let’s be real: email isn’t going anywhere in the near future. That means the ability to integrate your inbox with the online solutions you use everyday is more important than ever.
The good news? Asana knows this, and has given you the ability to do just that. Even better, they’ve automated the process of adding a task to Asana via email. In this post we’ll look specifically at how to do this with Outlook, but you can also do this with Google mail.
Set up Asana to Accept Emails as Tasks
This is the easy part.
Just send emails to Asana at x@mail.asana.com. Your email subject becomes the task name, the body of the message becomes the task description. The sender (that’s you) becomes the assignee.
Automatically Sending Emails to Asana Projects
So how do you make the automatic task adding magic happen? By setting up Outlook to auto forward emails to Asana.
First, open up Outlook — oh, who are we kidding, if you’re using Outlook, you never close it. So just, you know, go to Outlook.
Click on File, and then Manage Rules and Alerts. Go to the Email Rules tab, and then select New Rule.
Ok, don’t get scared here. This isn’t like defusing a bomb. Take a deep breath. You can do this.
Under Start From a Blank Rule, click on Apply Rule on Messages I Receive. Then click Next.
You’ll see a big list of conditions. Just find the one that applies to the messages you’ll want to send to Asana. If it’s emails from a specific person, for instance, choose “from people or public group”. If it’s always got specific words in the subject, choose that.
Next, you’ll need to you chose the condition that will allow your emails to forward. For instance, if it’s email from a specific address, click on the underlined text as shown below and select the address the email comes from. Then click the “Next” button.
Almost there.
On the next screen, click forward it to people or public group and then click on the link in the second red box in the image:
Now put the x@mail.asana.com email address in the To: field, and click Ok.
After that you’ll see an exceptions screen. You can skip this screen by clicking Next.
Last, name your rule. Bonus points if you name it Ja Rule. Or, you could be boring and name it something meaningful, like “Task forwards to Asana”.
Your forwarding rule now exists in Outlook and will send those emails to Asana as tasks automatically, making your life easier and putting all of your tasks in one place.
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