Introduction:
Getting started with Asana can feel overwhelming when you first log in, but the secret to long-term success lies in how you set up your workspace from the beginning. A well-organized workspace saves you from confusion down the road and helps your team find what they need without endless searching. Whether you’re managing a startup with five people or a small business with multiple departments, the initial setup decisions you make will impact your daily workflow for months to come. This guide walks you through everything from creating your first workspace to inviting team members and organizing your project hierarchy, and it’s part of our complete guide to how to use asana for project management effectively.
Understanding Workspaces and Organizations
Before you start clicking buttons, you need to understand what a workspace actually is in Asana. Think of your workspace as the container that holds everything related to your company’s work: all your projects, all your tasks, and all your team members. When you sign up with a company email address, Asana typically creates an organization automatically. If you signed up with a personal email like Gmail, you’ll have a workspace instead.
The main difference matters more than you might think. Organizations give you more control over security, permissions, and how teams are structured. Workspaces are simpler but have limitations once you grow beyond a handful of people. Most small businesses should aim for an organization setup from the start even if you’re just a team of three right now.
If you’re already in a workspace and realize you need an organization, don’t panic. You can convert a workspace to an organization, though it requires using a company email domain. This is worth doing early before you’ve built out hundreds of projects and invited dozens of collaborators.
Creating Your Team Structure
Teams are the building blocks of your Asana organization, and getting this structure right early prevents headaches later. Teams in Asana are groups of people who work together regularly and need access to the same projects. For a startup, you might have teams like Marketing, Product, Operations, and Leadership. For a small business, you might organize by department, location, or client type.
The temptation is to create too many teams at first. Resist this urge. Start with the obvious divisions in your company and add more teams only when you have a clear need. Every team you create adds another layer of navigation for your people, so more is not always better.
When you create a team, you’ll choose whether it’s public or private. Public teams mean anyone in your organization can see the team’s projects and request to join. Private teams are hidden from people who aren’t members. For most small businesses, public teams work well because they promote transparency. Save private teams for sensitive work like HR, executive planning, or confidential client projects.
Each team should have a clear owner who manages its projects and members. This person doesn’t have to be a manager in your company hierarchy, just someone organized enough to keep the team’s Asana space tidy and functional.
Setting Up Divisions for Larger Organizations
If your small business has multiple locations, departments, or distinct business units, divisions can add another helpful layer of organization. Divisions sit above teams in the hierarchy and group related teams together. For example, you might have a Sales division that contains teams for Outbound Sales, Account Management, and Sales Operations.
Most startups and small businesses with fewer than 30 people don’t need divisions. They add complexity without much benefit when you’re small. But if you’re planning for growth or already have distinct business units that operate semi-independently, divisions make navigation easier.
The key question to ask is whether people in your company think about work in terms of these larger groupings. If your team naturally refers to “the marketing side of the business” or “our east coast operations,” divisions might help. If not, skip them and keep things simple.
Inviting and Managing Team Members
Once your structure is in place, you’ll start inviting people. This is straightforward but there are details worth getting right. When you invite someone to Asana, you’ll add them to your organization and then add them to specific teams. Make sure you’re adding people to the right teams from the start because it determines what projects they’ll see and have access to.
Asana offers different permission levels: admin, member, and guest. Admins can manage organization settings, billing, and have full control. Members are regular team members who can create projects and participate fully within their teams. Guests are people outside your organization who you want to collaborate with on specific projects but don’t need full access.
For most small teams, you’ll have one or two admins who handle the administrative setup and billing, and everyone else will be members. Use the guest option sparingly and only for actual external collaborators like contractors, clients, or partners. Guests can only see projects they’re specifically invited to, so they won’t clutter your workspace, but they also can’t see the broader context of your team’s work.
When you invite people, take a moment to write a personal message explaining what Asana is for and how your team will use it. This small touch increases the chances that people will actually engage with the tool instead of ignoring the invite email.
Establishing Naming Conventions and Standards
This sounds boring but it’s genuinely important. Before you and your team start creating projects, agree on some basic naming standards. Should project names start with the client name or the project type? Do you use brackets for categories? How do you indicate archived projects?
A simple convention might be: [Department] Project Name – Year. So you’d have projects like [Marketing] Q1 Campaign – 2025 or [Product] Website Redesign – 2025. The specific format matters less than having one and sticking to it. Consistent naming makes it much easier to find projects in lists and search results.
The same goes for task naming. Decide whether tasks should be action-oriented (like “Write blog post about workspace setup”) or noun-based (like “Blog post: workspace setup”). Action-oriented usually works better because it’s clearer what needs to happen, but the important thing is consistency across your team.
Document these conventions somewhere everyone can reference them. A pinned project in your Company Team or a quick note in your team wiki works fine. You don’t need a 20-page style guide, just a few clear rules that prevent chaos.
Configuring Notification Settings for Your Team
Asana’s default notification settings can be overwhelming, especially when you’re new. Everyone on your team should spend a few minutes customizing their notifications to match their work style. You can control notifications by type: tasks assigned to you, tasks you’re following, comments on tasks you’re involved in, and so on.
A good starting point is to enable notifications for tasks assigned to you and @mentions, while being more selective about everything else. You don’t need a notification every time someone completes a task in a project you’re a member of. That’s what the project view is for when you check in during your regular workflow.
Email notifications versus in-app notifications is another choice to make. Some people prefer having everything come to their email inbox so they can manage it alongside other work communications. Others find that overwhelming and prefer to check Asana directly during specific times of day. There’s no right answer, but encourage your team to experiment and find what keeps them informed without drowning in notifications.
As the workspace admin, you can’t force notification settings on your team members, but you can share guidelines about what works well. In your workspace setup documentation or onboarding materials, include your team’s recommended notification approach so new members don’t have to figure it out from scratch.
Creating Your First Organizational Projects
With structure and people in place, you’re ready to create some projects. Start with projects that will be useful to your entire organization, not just one team. These might include Company Goals, Meeting Agenda, Team Directory, or Process Documentation. These foundational projects give everyone a shared space to reference important information.
Don’t create dozens of projects on day one. Start with three to five key projects that address your team’s most immediate needs. As people get comfortable with Asana and start seeing its value, you can expand. Overwhelming people with a fully built-out workspace before they understand how to use it usually backfires.
For each initial project, assign an owner who will keep it updated and relevant. Even a simple project like Company Directory needs someone to maintain it, or it becomes outdated and useless. Make ownership explicit from the start so nothing falls through the cracks.
Planning for Growth and Scalability
Your workspace setup should work for your team today while leaving room to grow. This means resisting the urge to over-engineer everything at the start, but also thinking one step ahead about what you’ll need as you add more people and projects.
A good rule of thumb: design your workspace structure for the size you’ll be in six months, not where you’ll be in three years. You can adjust structure as you grow, and trying to anticipate every future need usually creates unnecessary complexity right now.
As you add more projects and team members, schedule a quarterly review of your workspace structure. Are team names still making sense? Do you need to archive old projects? Has your naming convention held up or does it need adjustment? These small maintenance tasks keep your workspace functional as your business evolves.
The initial workspace setup isn’t something you do once and forget about. It’s the foundation of how your team will collaborate, and spending time to get it right pays dividends every single day. With a solid structure in place, you’re ready to start creating projects and diving into the actual work. To learn how to build out those projects effectively, check out our guide on creating and organizing projects in asana.
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