A new way to search your tasks: by Section

Asana allows you to capture your team’s tasks and conversations in one place and then view this information in a variety of ways to help you save time, prioritize, and ultimately achieve your team’s goals. Features like Sections, Search Views, and Calendars let you to zoom in and out on projects and tasks, giving you more visibility into your team and helping you make better decisions with less effort.

Last year, we launched Search Views, which allow you and your teammates to view tasks based on search criteria. Then, we introduced Sections, making it easier to group tasks into stages, priorities, and milestones within a single project. Now, you can connect these two features to improve your workflow: Search by Section to see a list of tasks within certain Sections of a specific project, or across multiple projects.

How to search by section

1. Create Sections

If you haven’t yet created Sections for your projects, we encourage you to give them a try. By structuring your project with Sections, you’ll be able to customize projects for any workflow, from bug tracking to sales pipelines and applicant tracking.

2. Select search criteria

Search Views let you see all tasks that meet the criteria you specify in the search field(s). You can create a Search View for information in Asana that contains any combination of assignees, projects, tags, due dates, and, now, Sections. Simply click the down arrow in the search box in the left pane and start typing your selection in the desired fields until the item you’re looking for appears. You can search across as many projects and Sections as you’d like to get a list of tasks that meet your criteria.

3. Save your search

Saving your search is as easy as starring it to add it to your favorites, which appear in the left pane. Once you’ve favorited your search, you’ll be able to access it whenever you want, without having to recreate it each time. Select your saved search from your favorites and it will automatically update with latest tasks that match the search criteria.

Ways to search by Section

Searching by Section is useful to anyone; whether you’re a designer looking for the highest priority work, an engineer triaging bugs, or a recruiter assessing candidates across functions and interview stages. Searching by Section allows you to get a customized list of tasks.  Here are some ways we recommend using search by Section:

• Search high-priority work across projects

Create Sections for priority levels in multiple projects. Then, view only the most important upcoming tasks by selecting the appropriate projects and high priority Sections in the “In projects & Sections” box (see example search in screenshot above).

• See the work needed to hit your next milestone

If work required to reach the next milestone falls in multiple projects, create a Search View to see what still needs to get done. Organize your tasks into Sections for each milestone, then create a Search View that includes the right projects and Sections. You can even add due date to the search criteria and sort results by project or assignee — whatever works best for your workflow.

• Find all work you are responsible for in a specific category

Get a better understanding of your deliverables across projects. Select projects and Sections and tasks assigned to you. For example, find candidates in the “offer stage” across multiple roles that require follow up.

• Create customized reports

Use Search Views to create custom reports: just favorite the Search Views that you want to check regularly, such as all outstanding high-priority bugs or closed sales leads. Asana lets you access your information in whatever way makes sense for your process or workflow. Searching by Section gives you yet another way to view, analyze, and take action on the tasks you and teammates have already created. We’d love to hear how these tips may help you improve your workflow.