Canarys Migration Hub

Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool: A Seamless Transition for Modern Engineering Teams

As organizations scale their engineering practices, the need for stronger DevOps integration, governance, and advanced work item tracking becomes critical. While Asana is widely used for task and project management, many engineering-driven teams choose Azure DevOps to gain deeper control over development workflows, traceability, and CI/CD integration.

To simplify this transition, Canarys has built a powerful Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool that enables organizations to migrate projects smoothly while preserving essential data, structure, and relationships.

Problem Statement

Teams using Asana often face challenges when moving toward enterprise-scale engineering and DevOps practices, such as:

  • Limited support for complex engineering workflows
  • No native CI/CD or repository integration
  • Restricted reporting and traceability for large development teams

Migrating manually from Asana to Azure DevOps is often complex, time-consuming, and risky, especially when handling dependencies, subtasks, comments, attachments, and custom fields.

A reliable, automated solution is required to ensure business continuity and data accuracy.

Solution Overview

The Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool by Canarys is an enterprise-grade C# ASP.NET Core MVC application designed to migrate projects efficiently while maintaining data integrity and structural consistency.

The tool supports migration of:

  • Tasks and subtasks
  • Parent–child relationships
  • Dependencies
  • Comments and attachments
  • Custom fields
  • Assignees, due dates, tags, and statuses

A structured 3-phase migration approach ensures a predictable and controlled migration process.

Migration Workflow

Phase 1: Task Migration

All core task information from Asana is migrated into Azure DevOps work items, including titles, descriptions, assignees, states, and supported custom fields.

Phase 2: Dependency Migration

Task dependencies are recreated in Azure DevOps to preserve logical execution order and blockers.

Phase 3: Parent–Child Relationship Migration

Subtasks are correctly linked to parent work items, maintaining the original hierarchy of the project.

Key Features of Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool

  • ✔ Comprehensive Data Transfer: Ensures all essential task-related data is migrated accurately, minimizing manual rework after migration.
  • ✔ Advanced Field Mapping: Supports configurable field mappings to align Asana fields with Azure DevOps work item fields, including custom fields.
  • ✔ Flexible Migration Modes:
    • Single Task Migration for validation and testing
    • Batch Migration for controlled execution
    • Project-Level Migration for complete transitions
  • ✔ Smart Resume Capability: Automatically resumes migration from the last successful point in case of interruptions.
  • ✔ Real-Time Logging & Visibility: Provides detailed logs and progress tracking throughout the migration, ensuring transparency and traceability.
  • ✔ Secure Credential Handling: All access tokens are handled securely in memory and never persisted.

Case Studies

  • Case Study 1: Enterprise Product Team
    A large enterprise migrated multiple Asana projects to Azure DevOps while preserving task hierarchy, dependencies, and attachments. The migration enabled standardized DevOps workflows without disrupting ongoing development.
  • Case Study 2: High-Growth Startup
    A fast-growing startup transitioned from Asana to Azure DevOps to align development, backlog management, and CI/CD pipelines. The migration was completed using batch and validation modes with zero data loss.
  • Case Study 3: Distributed Engineering Organization
    A globally distributed team migrated Asana projects into Azure DevOps while maintaining consistent field mappings and reporting structures across teams.

Limitations

While the Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool delivers a robust and reliable migration experience, certain limitations exist due to platform-level constraints and differences in how Asana and Azure DevOps store data.

🔹 Activity & Change History
  • Complete historical activity logs from Asana (audit trail) cannot be fully migrated.
  • Azure DevOps does not allow recreating historical state changes, timestamps, or authorship for past updates.
  • Work items are created with the migration timestamp, not the original creation or modification dates.
🔹 Workflow Transition History
  • Only the final status of each task is applied in Azure DevOps.
  • Intermediate workflow transitions that occurred over time in Asana are not preserved.
🔹 Comment History & Timeline
  • Comments are migrated as content, but:
  • Original comment timestamps may not be retained exactly.
  • Comments may appear as added during migration rather than in their original timeline.
🔹 User Attribution
  • Historical user actions (who made which change and when) are limited.
  • Migrated work items typically show the migration service account as the creator.
  • Assignees are mapped wherever possible.
🔹 Notifications & Activity Feeds
  • Asana notifications, inbox updates, and activity feeds are not migrated.
  • Azure DevOps does not support importing historical notification data.
🔹 Project-Level & Portfolio Data

Asana-specific constructs such as:

  • Portfolios
  • Goals
  • Project conversations

are not supported in Azure DevOps and must be recreated manually if required.

🔹 Reporting & Analytics History
  • Historical charts, analytics, and progress reports from Asana are not transferable.
  • Reporting in Azure DevOps begins from the point of migration onward.
Important Note

These limitations are common across all migration tools and are driven by Azure DevOps platform restrictions, not by tool deficiencies.

Canarys ensures that:

  • All active and critical project data is preserved
  • Task structure and relationships remain intact
  • Teams can resume work immediately post-migration

Conclusion

The Asana to Azure DevOps Migration Tool by Canarys is a secure, scalable, and enterprise-ready solution for organizations looking to modernize their engineering workflows.

With:

  • Automated multi-phase migration
  • Flexible field mapping
  • Smart resume functionality
  • Clear visibility and logging

Canarys ensures your move from Asana to Azure DevOps is smooth, controlled, and reliable.

👉 Contact Canarys today to learn how we can support your migration journey.