Asana launches custom fields for paying customers

Asana, a company with an app for keeping track of work across teams, is announcing today the launch of custom fields, a new way for users to stay on top of specific aspects of projects.

The new feature, which is only available for organizations paying for Asana’s premium tier, requires only a few clicks to set up. Once new fields — for multiple choice answers, text, or numbers — have been set, it’s possible to search for and sort entries by information in custom fields.

“Teams can now move beyond ‘tasks’ by tracking things like applicants, deals, inventory — just about anything you can imagine — in Asana,” product marketing manager Christy Roach and product marketing lead Devon Watts wrote in a blog post. Templates will be coming in the next month to accelerate adoption of custom fields, they wrote.

Custom fields are now part of Asana’s application programming interface (API), and one existing integration, from Unito, turns Asana into a tool for tracking issues from GitHub. This is good timing, considering that this week GitHub introduced its own project management tool for all users.

The new customization feature could help Asana better compete against competitors, including Trello, Wrike, and Atlassian’s Jira.

Earlier this year, Asana announced a $50 million funding round at a $600 million valuation. San Francisco-based Asana now has 215 employees.