Coda vs Asana: Project tracking and task management

A deep dive into using Asana and Coda for project management.

Jordan Milner

Solutions Architect at Coda

Coda vs Asana: Project tracking and task management

By Jordan Milner

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Tool consolidation · 6 min read
If you’ve ever managed any type of project, you’ll know the importance of having an efficient, transparent system for keeping everything on track. No one wants to spend 50% of their time chasing updates, find out things are delayed before it’s too late to remedy, or let things fall through the cracks. A tool that can help keep things organized—and keep everyone else in the loop—is crucial. Two popular choices for project tracking are Asana and Coda. Both enable you to manage projects and tasks, but each has a different philosophy and approach. Asana is an out-of-the-box project tracker with pre-defined items like projects, tasks, and subtasks that make it easy to get started. Coda, on the other hand, provides a set of building blocks that empower you to create solutions for many different use cases. That means you can build and customize your project tracker to suit exactly what your team needs (from scratch, or using a template) and even build a whole project hub that also includes all of your project artifacts, including meeting notes, writeups, and embedded content from other tools like Jira and Figma. So, which tool is best? That depends on what kinds of projects you’re managing and how you like to work. Let’s dive into how Asana and Coda each handle some key elements of project tracking—tasks, dependencies, progress, and reporting—to help you evaluate which is right for you.

How do you create tasks in Asana and Coda?

 Tasks are the building blocks of any project, so having a fast, efficient way to create and manage them is essential.
Asana
  • Tasks in Asana are similar to tickets in a help desk—they exist as an item with predefined fields that you fill in. You can create a task within the UI or by sending an email to Asana.
  • You can add additional information to tasks using custom fields, which can be specific to that project or applied to all tasks in all projects. Custom fields have to be set up separately to then be available when creating tasks.
  • Asana allows you to duplicate a task and choose which components of the task you want to keep in the copied version.
  • In Asana, you can easily create recurring tasks by choosing “repeat” on the due date and selecting the days and frequency you’d like them to recur.
Coda
  • In Coda, tasks are created by adding rows to your project table, with each task as its own row. You can define what information to include by adding the relevant columns to the table.
  • Adding additional information to tasks is as simple as adding more columns to your table, which you can do before or during task creation. You can add as many fields as you need.
  • To duplicate a task in Coda, copy the relevant row in your table and delete any information in the fields you don’t want copied to the new task.
  • In Coda, there are several ways you can create recurring tasks. One method is to set up a formula on a “done” button that duplicates the task when it’s marked as complete.
Both tools enable you to add tasks to multiple projects without duplicating them, so the task stays in sync wherever you edit it. In Asana, this is called “multi-homing” and the task will be visible in the selected project views. In Coda, you can achieve this by having a multi-select “project” column in your table. You can then create filtered views of the table to display tasks for each specific project. Summary: Asana may be quicker to set up a simple project with “standard” types of tasks that don’t need much customization. Coda gives you more flexibility to customize your setup to your specific needs, so it might be a better fit if your project is more complex or you have tasks that require extra information.

Can I assign tasks in Asana and Coda?

 Unless you’re a one-person team, your project likely has other contributors. Assigning tasks and due dates in your tracker aids accountability and can also help you assess the feasibility of your plans (i.e., if one person has ten deadlines on the same day, it might not be doable!)
Asana
  • Asana takes an opinionated stance on drivers, allowing you to only have one assignee per task.
  • You can add multiple collaborators to a task, and they will receive notifications in Asana and via email (if enabled) when it is updated.
  • Each task can have a due date, due time, or date range for when it needs to be completed. You can also add start dates and times to create a schedule for your project.
  • Asana allows you to designate specific tasks as milestones to highlight them in your tracker and assign certain tasks as approvals, which can then be marked as approved, request changes, or rejected.
Coda
  • Coda gives you the flexibility to choose how you want to assign tasks. You can create one or more “people” columns to designate drivers, approvers, informed, etc. You can choose to restrict each column to a single assignee or allow multiple.
  • When you add people to your tasks, you can choose whether to notify them and subscribe them to comments so they’re alerted to any discussions on tasks they’re involved in. You can also create personalized views for each person involved in your project so they can see the tasks assigned to them.
  • You can use “date” columns to add due dates, due times, and durations for tasks.
  • In Coda, you can switch on milestones from the timeline view, and tasks with no end date or duration will automatically be highlighted. Or, you can create milestones, approvals (and approval status), or any other type of task you need with checkbox columns in your table. You can use conditional formatting to highlight milestones in your table or timeline or create a filtered view that only shows these key milestones.
Summary: Coda is the more flexible option for setting up your drivers and contributors exactly as you’d like, versus Asana’s more rigid approach to assignees. However, if you value the ability to designate milestones and approvals without having to do any setup, Asana may be the simpler option.

How do Asana and Coda handle subtasks and dependencies?

 Projects are typically made up of multiple tasks, many of which may be dependencies for other tasks. You may also want to break work down into subtasks that are owned by different people. Being able to visualize these subtasks and dependencies is helpful for seeing how things are tracking.
Asana
  • In Asana, subtasks are created in much the same way as tasks, with the same fields as the selected parent task. Marking a parent task as complete will not complete the subtasks within it.
  • Asana allows you to relate tasks to each other as dependencies, so you can see which tasks you’re waiting on and which are blocking others. You can do this in the task view or from the timeline view by dragging the “connector” between two tasks.
  • The assignee of a dependent task will be notified when the precedent task is marked complete or has its due date changed.
  • You can choose to automatically shift a task’s due date if the due date for a dependent task changes.
Coda
  • In Coda, you can add subtasks by creating a designed “subtask” column in your project table. Or, you can create a separate subtask table and use relation columns to connect them to the main task table.
  • You can create dependencies in Coda either by creating a relational column in your tasks table, or directly from the timeline view. Add conditional formatting to color code dependencies based on their status.
  • Dependencies will show all the underlying data of the parent task, so you can see all the context together. Tasks can have multiple dependencies.
  • To notify assignees about changes to related tasks, you can set up an automation to run each time a change is made.
  • To automatically shift due dates when dependencies change, you can easily set up enforced dependencies from the timeline view.
Summary: Both Asana and Coda make it simple to create and manage subtasks and dependencies in your tacker, so which is better will largely depend on which setup process you prefer.

How do I track the status of tasks in Asana and Coda?

 Keeping things up to date is essential for a smooth-running project, so your project tracker should be easy to manage and provide ways of cutting down the manual work of chasing down updates.
Asana
  • In Asana, tasks can be marked as complete or incomplete. You can also create customized status settings (for example, if you want to add an “at risk” or “blocked” status), which can be “locked” by the project owner so others can’t create additional ones.
  • By default, completed tasks will be removed from your dashboard. You can also sort by complete/incomplete tasks to view what has been done and what’s outstanding.
  • Project owners can receive a weekly task each Thursday to update the status of their project.
  • You can set up a custom rule to send notifications to the project owner when a status changes via Slack, Teams, and email. Rules can also be used to create follow-on actions like setting up calendar invites or creating a new task.
Coda
  • In Coda, you can create a “status” column and define whatever statuses you’d like to have available. You can choose a status to be a select list—“in progress,” “done,” etc.—or you can use a draggable progress bar. You can even add a progress bar to your canvas to summarize total completion across all your tasks.
  • You can use conditional formatting to make it easy to see a task’s status at a glance—for example, highlighting in green if on track or red if overdue.
  • In Coda, you can use automations to trigger notifications when changes are made to a task and choose who those notifications are sent to (for example, just the driver or contributors, informed, etc.)
  • You can also use automations to nudge drivers to update a task status based on when it was last updated. Notifications can be sent in Coda or via Slack, Teams, or email. You can even ask Coda AI to compose the message for you.
Summary: Asana provides a simple complete/incomplete approach to status tracking, but Coda will be better suited if you need more flexibility in how you want to track the status of tasks. Both can also automate update reminders, though in Asana these only go to project owners, whereas Coda enables you to choose who notifications go to based on whatever conditions you like.

Is it easier to share progress in Asana or Coda?

 When your leaders ask for a project update, you’ll want an easy, fast, and accurate way to share progress without having to copy-paste data into presentations or other docs.
Asana
  • Asana provides an “overview” tab that shows a snapshot of your project’s progress, along with milestones, goals, and key resources. You can also set up project views, with many different ways to visualize your tasks. You are able to save views with up to 12 tabs.
  • You can also create snapshot-in-time status updates, adding highlights, additional context, and progress charts. These are shared in the overview tab, and the data does not refresh once shared.
  • Asana allows you to embed media in your project brief from a select list of other tools including Figma, InVision, and Loom.
Coda
  • In Coda, you can create as many different and/or personalized views for your project and tasks as you like. For example, you can set up a view that automatically shows the viewer just their own tasks, a view of any tasks that are at risk, or a view of upcoming milestones. Any changes to the data made from one view will be updated everywhere.
  • You can also easily create always-live, simple-to-read dashboards. Display your project progress in multiple different ways—including a timeline, calendar, or cards view—and add as much context as you like with text or other media. These different visualizations can be displayed side by side, rather than having to toggle between one or the other.
  • In Coda you can also embed content from any other tool, either as a whole page or anywhere within your dashboard, to provide additional context. For example, you could display your designs from Figma, boards from Miro, or your tasks from Jira.
Summary: Both Asana and Coda provide options for viewing and sharing project progress but Coda’s more customizable system makes it easier to create live, shareable dashboards versus Asana’s “snapshot-in-time” status updates. Coda also offers more options for embedding other content, though Asana has more out-of-the-box visualizations.

Teams that need more flexibility choose Coda.

 Asana and Coda each have their own approaches to project tracking, and which will suit your team depends on what kind of projects you’re managing and how much flexibility you need. Asana might be a good fit if you’re managing simple projects that won’t require much customization, or you only want a standalone project tracker. It offers predefined fields and features like milestones and recurring tasks out of the box. On the other hand, Coda offers much more flexibility, making it ideal for more complex projects or for those wanting more control and customization. It allows you to define your own fields, build live dashboards, and automate the work of chasing updates. Plus, it enables you to create a full project hub for your tracker and all your artifacts, rather than them being spread across different tools, docs, and spreadsheets. Try out one of our project tracker templates to get started, or dive into our full Asana vs. Coda comparison guide to learn more.
Read the guide

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