Asana Data Retention & Recovery Policies

What Happens to Deleted Data in Asana?

When you delete content in Asana, it’s not immediately destroyed—it enters a soft-delete state for a limited period depending on the object type.

Tasks

• Can be restored by users from the “Deleted Items” tab in their sidebar (if recently deleted)

• Once permanently deleted, they cannot be recovered

Projects, Portfolios, Messages

• Only Admins or the person who deleted the object can recover it

• Must be restored within 30 days

Teams and Custom Fields

• Can also be restored by Super Admins via the Admin Console (within the retention window)

System-Wide Data Retention Defaults

• Soft-deleted content: Retained for up to 30 days before being permanently deleted

• Permanently deleted content: Cannot be recovered by Asana or any third party

• Asana internal backups: Maintained for disaster recovery, not for individual restoration

Asana does not support custom retention policies or legal hold capabilities.

Account Deletion and Data Retention

When a user is fully removed from an organization:

• Their assigned tasks remain in the workspace

• Their profile name changes to “Former user”

• Admins can still reassign ownership or rehome projects before deletion

• No automatic deletion of content unless explicitly deleted

Enterprise Guidance

To ensure recoverability:

• Avoid immediate deletion of users or projects—first reassign ownership

• Use a service/configuration account for rule ownership and automation to avoid losing access

• Encourage teams to archive projects, not delete them, unless absolutely necessary

• If you need audit trail capabilities, consider enabling the Audit Log API (Enterprise+ only)

Backup and Export Options

Asana does not currently offer:

• Custom backup scheduling

• Point-in-time restore

• Full database exports

However:

• Projects can be exported to CSV for manual backups

• Enterprise teams using integrations like Splunk or Panther can log activity events externally