Asana status updates are periodic snapshots you post from a project’s Overview tab, setting a status such as on track, at risk, or off track and pairing it with narrative blocks, highlights, and charts. Progress reporting combines those updates with the project’s Dashboard charts, so stakeholders see both the current state and the trend over time.
What a status update actually contains
Every project in Asana carries a status color and a written update behind it. The status itself is one of six states: on track, at risk, off track, on hold, complete, or dropped. The update is the story behind that color: a summary, what has been accomplished, next steps, and any highlights or charts you drag in.
The design is deliberately templatized. Blocks let you mix real work pulled from Asana, such as completed milestones or a burnup chart, with plain narrative text that explains why the project sits where it does. Any project member can set a status, not just the owner, which matters when the owner is out and the number still needs to move.
One structural detail worth understanding early: an update is a frozen snapshot. The data captured at publish time, including project name, custom fields, task names, due dates, and assignees, stays fixed even if those things change afterward. That is the point, since a status report is meant to record a moment, but it also means an update posted on Monday will not reflect a due date you shift on Tuesday.
How to create a project status update
The full flow lives in Asana’s help documentation on project progress and status updates. The core procedure:
- Open the project and go to the Overview tab.
- Click Set status if the project has no status yet, or click the existing status to write a new update.
- In the What’s the status? field, pick one of the status states. You cannot post an update without choosing a status first.
- Add a title, then fill in the details: progress, project name, owner, and dates.
- Choose which custom fields to include, add a Summary block, and outline your Next steps.
- Drag in any highlights you want, then click the blue Post button.
Once posted, the update appears in both the project’s Overview and its Messages. On the Overview tab, past updates show up as a dots diagram, giving a quick read on how the status color has moved across recent reporting periods.
Highlights and charts
Highlights are the feature that separates an Asana update from a paragraph you could have typed into email. You drag items such as completed milestones or overdue tasks directly into the update to show recent wins or emerging blockers. After you publish once, Asana remembers the block structure and order, so the next update starts from the same layout rather than a blank page.
Charts add a visual read on the work. You can drop chart blocks into an update to show, for example, completed versus incomplete tasks. For deeper trend analysis, the Dashboard tab holds a burnup chart that tracks team velocity over time. If you want reporting that goes beyond what fits in a status block, that lives in dashboards rather than the update itself; the setup is covered in our guide to building Asana reporting dashboards.
Status update reminders
Asana nudges project owners on a fixed cadence. Each project owner receives a weekly task every Thursday to update the status, due Friday. This is a real task in the owner’s queue, not a passive notification, which is why it tends to actually get done, and also why it clutters the owner’s My Tasks list if the project has gone quiet.
To turn the reminder off:
- Navigate to the Status update view.
- Toggle the Remind me to update the status every Friday switch.
Note that this cadence is fixed to Thursday and Friday. Asana does not expose a setting to move the reminder to, say, Monday morning, and the update itself is not auto-generated. You still write it by hand. If you want the surrounding busywork automated, such as flagging overdue tasks before a report goes out, that belongs in Asana’s rules and automations, not in the status feature.
Portfolio status updates
Portfolios roll many projects into a single status, and they follow the same update mechanics at a higher altitude. Asana’s documentation on portfolio progress and reporting covers the detail. To post one:
- Open the portfolio and click the Progress tab.
- Click Set status next to the portfolio name, or Update status on the Progress tab.
- Fill in progress, owner, and dates, and drag in highlights such as projects that are on track or at risk.
- Post the update.
Portfolio updates have a stricter posting rule than project updates: you must select a status of on track, at risk, off track, or on hold and include at least one block of text before you can publish. Portfolio reporting is a paid capability, available on Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+ tiers, plus the legacy Business and Legacy Enterprise plans.
Where status updates fall short
Status updates are a communication tool, not an analytics engine, and treating them as the latter causes friction. Because each update is frozen at publish time, they are useless for answering a live question like “how many tasks are open right now.” For that you need a dashboard, which queries current data on demand.
The reminder cadence is rigid. Thursday-to-Friday works for weekly teams and irritates everyone else, and there is no per-project override of the day. Writing is manual by design, so a neglected project simply accumulates stale green statuses until someone posts the truth.
Privacy behaves in a way that surprises people. Anyone added as a collaborator on an update can see the entire contents of that report, including task details and text, even if they lack access to the underlying project. Clicking through to a restricted task still blocks them, but the report body is fully visible. For public portfolio updates, the whole update shows in the Progress tab regardless of project-level access. Review who is on an update before you paste anything sensitive into a block.
Plan gating to know before you rely on it
The basic status update, setting a color and writing narrative blocks, is available across Asana plans, including the free Personal tier. Two things you might assume are included are not. Adding custom fields to a status update requires Advanced, Enterprise, or Enterprise+ (or legacy Business and Legacy Enterprise). Portfolio-level status updates and reporting sit behind the same paid tiers. Asana adjusts packaging periodically, so confirm the current split against our Asana pricing breakdown before you build a reporting process that depends on either.
FAQ
Can anyone on the project post a status update?
Yes. Any project member can set the status and post an update, not only the project owner. This is useful when the owner is unavailable. Only the owner receives the automatic weekly reminder task, however, and you can only delete an update you posted yourself, not one written by someone else.
Do status updates change when the underlying tasks change?
No. Each update is a snapshot frozen at the moment you post it, capturing task names, due dates, assignees, and custom field values as they were then. If a due date shifts afterward, the published update keeps the old value. For a live view of current data, use a project Dashboard chart instead.
Can I change the day status update reminders arrive?
Not to a custom day. Asana sends project owners a reminder task every Thursday, due Friday, and the only control is a switch in the Status update view to turn reminders on or off. If the fixed cadence does not fit your team, many owners disable it and drive reporting from a recurring task or a rule instead.
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