Collaborating in Asana by email: working with people who don't open Asana
Collaborating in Asana by email: working with people who don't open Asana
Not everyone on a project wants to live in Asana — think freelancers or external partners.This article explains what genuinely works when someone collaborates on Asana tasks purely by email, what doesn't, and how to decide whether it fits your situation.
How it works: guests + email notifications
Anyone whose email address is not on your organization's domain can be invited to Asana as a guest. Guests are free on paid Asana plans (they don't count toward your seats), and they only see what you explicitly share with them — a single task, a project, or a team (See Asana helpcenter: Guests FAQ).
The email-only workflow then looks like this:
Invite the guest once. Add their email address as a member of a project (see Asana helpcenter Invite people from within a project). They receive an invitation and create a free account — a one-time step; they never need to open the app again after that.
Asana keeps them posted by email. As a collaborator they get email notifications for @mentions, tasks assigned to them, new comments, and completions on tasks they follow (see Asana helpcenter: Email notifications).
They reply straight from their inbox. Replying to a task notification email adds their reply as a comment on the task, visible to everyone in Asana. Replies must come from the same email address the notification was sent to.
What guests can do from their mailbox
Comment on a task — reply to the notification email; the reply becomes a task comment.
Reassign a task — reply and put a teammate's email address in the To: field; the task is reassigned to them.
Add someone to a task — reply and put their email address in the CC: field; they're added as a collaborator.
Create a new task — email x@mail.asana.com to create a task in their own My Tasks, or email a project's own email address to create a task in that project (subject becomes the title, body becomes the description, attachments come along).
Mark a task complete. There is no "task done" button in Asana's emails — completing a task, changing due dates, or updating statuses and custom fields requires opening Asana. Practical workarounds: they reply "done" and someone on your team completes the task, or a rule flags their reply for review.
See the board. Email only carries activity on tasks they follow. Overviews, timelines, and everything they're not a collaborator on stay invisible.
Keep anything private. Every comment on a task they follow lands in their inbox — there is no internal-vs-external split on a shared task. If you need private team discussion per request, use the form-based ticket system instead (see below).
One thing to set expectations on: notification emails are personal settings. The guest controls them under their own Settings → Notifications, so ask them to keep email notifications (activity updates) switched on — otherwise the whole workflow goes quiet.
Which setup fits your situation?
The guest makes requests and waits for your team to handle them (helpdesk, intake, support) → use the ticket system with Asana Forms . Structured intake, selective replies, private internal discussion.
The guest actively works on tasks with you (a freelancer delivering work, an external partner in a project) → the guest + email approach from this article. Full conversation flow by email, at the cost of no private comments and no completing tasks remotely.
The guest needs overview, boards, statuses, or to close their own tasks → email won't be enough. Invite them as a guest and have them use the (free) Asana app or web version — even occasionally. When invited as a guest, they are automatically able to open the asana app, so all you need to do is encourage the guest to use it.