Asana Unveils New Offerings to Reduce Distractions and Improve Focus, Adds Innovative Video Messaging Powered by Vimeo

Exclusive Vimeo partnership brings Video Messaging into Asana

Personal productivity suite features intelligent prioritization and smart calendar assistant integration with Clockwise

Asana to debut the new product innovations at Focus and Flow Summit

Today, Asana, Inc., a leading work management platform for teams, announced a suite of features to eliminate distributed work distractions and help employees find their focus. The new productivity offerings enable people to reduce meetings with Video Messaging, prioritize their work with intelligent My Tasks, create time for focus with Clockwise’s smart calendar assistant, and quiet notifications with the Asana desktop app.

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In today’s distributed work world, teams are fighting a never-ending battle for their focused attention. According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index, 80% of employees work with their inbox and communication apps open, leading to nearly 75% feeling pressured to multitask during the day. As a result, individuals are less efficient and more likely to miss critical messages and deadlines.

“The rapid shift to distributed work has fueled distraction and disruption. Message pings and meetings are at an all-time high, while focus time has fallen to the wayside. One thing is clear — something needs to change,” said Alex Hood, Chief Product Officer, Asana. “We’ve designed a suite of new offerings purpose-built to align your attention with your intention. Featuring integrations with our newest Asana Partners, Vimeo and Clockwise, we’re removing distractions and making it easier to do the work that requires your full attention.”

Video Messaging

In partnership with Vimeo, the world’s leading all-in-one video platform, Asana now offers teams the power of asynchronous video communication that harnesses all the engagement benefits of live video communication while eliminating the need for more meetings. Video Messaging promotes accountability and action, with the ability to share rich updates and show work to teammates — anytime and anywhere.

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“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a thousand pictures,” said Hood. “With Vimeo’s expertise and unparalleled capabilities, Video Messaging in Asana enables customers to convey the emotion and context about the work at-hand via asynchronous video—delivering all the benefits of face-to-face communication without the tax of more meetings.”

With Video Messaging, customers can record short videos of themselves and/or their screen directly in Asana, eliminating information silos and creating a single source of truth for important initiatives across teams and time zones. Automated video transcripts become an accountable part of the plan of record housed in Asana’s proprietary Work Graph data model. With the ability to search for and share audio transcripts, customers have more personalized ways to convey context and exchange ideas.

“The future of work is video-first, and Vimeo’s goal is to bring this powerful medium into the day-to-day operations of every workforce,” said Mark Kornfilt, President and Chief Product Officer, Vimeo. “Video messaging drives productivity by giving teams a smarter, faster, more engaging way to share information and collaborate. Using our Vimeo Record SDK to bring our best-in-class video messaging capabilities to Asana means their global customer community can now work far better and more efficiently.”

Video Messaging will be available to all customers in the coming weeks.

My Tasks

Inspired by the productivity best practices of high-performance teams, Asana has supercharged My Tasks — your personal prioritization system that combines an individual’s to-dos with their broader team’s work and company goals. Now, customers can organize their work in Kanban, list, and calendar versions of their personal tasks to focus their attention while using automation to get and stay organized. For example, automation rules can organize your tasks based on a due date or let you know when a teammate has completed work that unblocks one of your dependent tasks.

Smart Calendar Assistant Integration

Most people’s task lists are in competition with their calendar — what they intend to accomplish for the day clashes with meetings and demands on their time. Asana now integrates with Clockwise, a leading smart calendar assistant, to easily schedule tasks into focus time without leaving Asana. By entering the amount of time needed and when you want to work, Clockwise will automatically reserve time on your calendar to complete the task. Once the time has been scheduled, customers will see the task calendar event directly in their Google Calendar for effortless prioritization.

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