Asana Goals and OKR Tracking in 2026: Setup, Progress Rules and Portfolios

Asana Goals lets you set company, team and personal goals, link them to sub-goals, projects, portfolios or tasks, and track progress in one place. It is on the Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans. Advanced costs $24.99 per user a month on yearly billing. Goal types for proper OKRs (objectives and key results) need Enterprise.

I have rolled out OKRs in Asana for teams of 30 to 400. The tool is rarely the problem. Teams fail when they write 40 goals, link nothing, and never update them. This guide covers the setup and the habits. It draws on Asana’s help articles on getting started with Goals, tracking progress and the goal tracking process, plus the pricing page, checked on October 15, 2026.

What each plan includes

If you are on Starter, you can still track goals as projects, but you lose the goal tree and roll-up.

Step 1: Write fewer, sharper goals

Asana’s own tips match what I see work:

• Be specific. “Increase trial signups by 25%” beats “Grow the funnel.”
• Make it measurable. A number, a percent or a clear done state.
• One owner per goal. Many collaborators, one accountable person.

My rule: 3 to 5 company goals a period, and no more than 3 per team under each. If a team has 9, half of them are projects.

A sample OKR, written for Asana

• Objective (company): Make onboarding effortless for new customers.
• Key result 1 (team: Product): Cut time to first project from 3 days to 1 day. Manual progress, updated from analytics.
• Key result 2 (team: Success): Raise 30-day activation from 40% to 55%. Manual progress.
• Key result 3 (team: Marketing): Ship 4 onboarding emails. Automatic progress from a linked project.

Each key result has one owner, one number and one data source. That is what makes the weekly update take two minutes.

Step 2: Build the goal tree

Open Goals in the sidebar. You will see tabs for Company goals, Team goals and My goals.

1. Create the company goal. Set the accountable team to your company name.
2. Pick a time period: quarter, half or year.
3. Add members so they get notices about status changes and comments.
4. Create team goals and set each one’s parent goal to the company goal.

On Enterprise, use goal types to label goals as objectives, key results or individual goals. Use goal templates so every key result has the same fields.

The grid view lets you add custom field columns, such as “Department” or “Confidence,” and update many goals at once. Saved views are personal.

Step 3: Choose how progress is measured

You have two options:

• Manual: the owner sets the number. Good for metrics that live in other tools, like revenue or NPS.
• Automatic: progress rolls up from linked sub-goals, projects, portfolios or tasks.

Manual is not a downgrade. A sales goal pulled from your CRM is more honest typed in each Friday than auto-calculated from task counts. Use automatic when finishing the linked work truly is the goal, like “Ship 4 onboarding emails.”

Step 4: Link portfolios and projects

Goals answer “why.” Projects answer “what.” Portfolios group projects so leaders see status in one place.

1. Create a portfolio per goal area, for example “Q4 Growth.”
2. Add the projects that drive it.
3. Link the portfolio to the goal as supporting work.

Keep portfolio nesting shallow. Two levels is plenty. For portfolio views and status, see our Asana status updates guide.

Step 5: Set an update rhythm

Asana suggests a cadence based on the goal’s length:

I push teams to update quarterly goals every two weeks. Each update has a status (on track, at risk, off track) and a short note. Asana also suggests monthly reviews with next steps and a full assessment at quarter end.

Step 6: Close and grade

In Asana, grading happens through a status update. Mark each goal achieved, partial, missed or dropped and note the impact and why. Grade a goal as soon as it is done, and hold formal grading at least mid-year and year end, or every quarter if you run quarterly goals.

Plan ahead for the next cycle. Asana notes that finalizing and approving new goals takes 1 to 2 weeks in small companies and 3 to 4 weeks in large ones. Start drafting before the current period closes.

Common mistakes I see in the first quarter

• Goals that are really tasks. “Launch the new pricing page” is a project. The goal is what the page should change, like “Raise paid signups by 10%.”
• No owner update for weeks. Set a calendar reminder for each goal owner on the same day every other week.
• Too many links. Linking 30 projects to one goal makes automatic progress meaningless. Link the few that matter.
• Grading late. If you wait a month after the quarter ends, nobody remembers why a goal slipped.

Fix these and the second quarter is much easier than the first.

Report on goals

Go to Reporting, add a dashboard, and choose Goals as the data source. Group by status, owner, team or time period. Our Asana reporting dashboards guide walks through chart setup. Home also has a Goals widget so people see their goals daily.

Keep goals visible

Pin the company goals page in the sidebar and open your weekly team meeting on it. Goals that people see every week get updated. Goals that live three clicks deep get forgotten by week four.

Where AI and rules fit

Rules automate tasks and projects, not goals directly. Use them to keep linked work tidy, like moving overdue tasks or posting status reminders. See our Asana automation rules guide. For AI help drafting updates, read our Asana AI Studio guide.

Common questions

Which Asana plan includes Goals?

Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise+. Starter does not include Goals.

Can Asana do real OKRs?

Yes. On any Goals plan you can nest key results under objectives. Enterprise adds goal types and templates to label and standardize them.

Should goal progress be automatic or manual?

Use automatic when finishing linked work is the goal. Use manual for numbers from other tools, like revenue.

Who gets goal notifications?

Owners and collaborators. Team members are not notified unless added as one of these.

How often should we update goals?

Quarterly goals at least monthly, and every two weeks works better. Annual goals at least quarterly.

This guide now also covers our earlier Asana Portfolios and Goals article. Checked against help.asana.com and asana.com/pricing on October 15, 2026.

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