By default, the project status of planning does send minimal notifications. It will send 'New issue or work request on the project', 'Issue or task completion' and 'Milestone task is completed' notifications. It's not supposed to send out notifications for task assignment. You could disable notifications in your Email Notifications, but that will cascade for all users and all projects no matter the status. You might have to investigate to see why people are receiving unexpected notifications. Make sure they're not subscribed to the project.
https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216668548-Understanding-Project-Statuses Planning The project manager chooses this status when they are still planning the timeline of the project, the assignment of the tasks, or the approvals. As a best practice, we recommend that you set the default status for new projects in Workfront to Planning. As a system administrator, you can change the default status for all your new projects in the Projects area of Project Preferences. The project is active and users on the project team can see the project on their Projects lists by default, in the Projects area of Workfront. The tasks and issues that are assigned to them on the project do not populate their Work Requests list. The following notifications are sent: New issue or work request on the project. Issue or task completion. Milestone task is completed. The following notifications are not sent: Changes in due dates of work items or the project. Task or issue assignment. Approval decisions on tasks and issues. We recommend that all the changes that can trigger an update to the timeline of the project, or any changes to tasks and issue assignments, are made while the project is in the Planning status. This minimizes the amount of notifications users receive. The timeline of the project is not calculated automatically by the system. Jaclyn Reiter, PMP, SA Project Manager, Strategic Initiatives Equifax, Inc. St. Louis, MO 314-684-2693
