7 Asana Jedi Tricks to Become One with Business Workflows
Secrets from PCMag's sage Asana guru on unlocking the hidden power of the collaboration and productivity app.
By Rob Marvin
https://www.pcmag.com/news/7-asana-jedi-tricks-to-become-one-with-business-workflows
When it comes to workflow and productivity tools, Asana (Visit Site at Asana) blows other collaboration platforms out of the water. Workflows are what Asana was made for, and its mastery of them gave it an Editors' Choice nod along with getting PCMag to use it internally as our workflow tool of choice. Every feature and design element feeds into the ultimate goal of integrating and organizing all aspects of a project or every task on a user's plate into a completely transparent experience.
I sat down with our in-house Asana master, whose tutelage revealed the hidden tricks and techniques to wield the workflow management tool with nearly unlimited power. With great reluctance, he agreed to the calling away from his intricate web of cross-indexed tasks, subtasks, and far-reaching project calendar to share a few nuggets of workflow wisdom. The Asana master chose to keep his identity shrouded in shadow, asking for the purposes of this article that PCMag refer to him simply as Sheev.
1. Embrace the Power of Cross-Indexing
Cross-indexing is the difference between using Asana and mastering Asana. Sheev described it as the platform's most valuable feature: the ability to cross-index single tasks into multiple projects while using that task to display information differently to each user or team depending on where it's indexed. Cross-indexing doesn't duplicate a task either, so making use of it means a single task cross-indexed 10 times in different projects rather than 10 identical tasks in different places. To cross-index a task, hover your mouse just above the name of the task and a plus button will appear. Click it and type in the name of the project.
At the manager level, admininstrators can then view a high-level project containing a list of interwoven tasks and subtasks transpiring according to their workflow design. Once a task has proceeded as they've foreseen in one completed project, they can view how that same task might be doing across different teams to get a sense of productivity (and to decide whether or not that task might be completed faster if reassigned to a different team member or shared project).
You can cross-index subtasks as well: open the subtask, click the overflow button in the upper left-hand side, and select Add to Project. The subtask will appear in the specified project or projects but still retain its place inside its parent task. Asana lets you create infinite numbers and levels of tasks and subtasks while still remaining connected to the overall workflow design. As Sheev explained, thinking about cross-indexing in terms of parent tasks branching outward creates a design in which cross-indexing a task to different projects and teams gives that workflow a life of its own within your business.
2. Teams and Notifications
Sheev's next tidbit of Asana wisdom concerns team organization. He explained how users can leverage team conversations and configure notifications to create an organizational culture around workflows. In the Team Conversations tab on the Asana dashboard, Sheev says that, while the @mention-based basic chat works similarly to Slack (Visit Site at Slack) (also an Editors' Choice for collaboration), Asana lets you send out team-wide announcements that act as thread-based notifications. Conversations aren't attached to tasks but you can @mention users or reference tasks in them, which then show up as hyperlinks. Asana messages are limited by team and thus are not as suited for project-specific brainstorming as the team functionality you'll find in a platform such as Basecamp ($50.00 at Basecamp) . But team-based permissions make sure notifications with information on specific tasks go only to relevant users.
Team notifications are based on who is following a given thread, regulating how much information comes in. For administrators, they also control how much visibility you give other team members on different tasks. Asana messages pertain solely to conversations while notifications concern tasks and projects, but both now appear in the new Asana Inbox. Task and project permissions can be set as private to you, private to a specific team or user group within a team, or public to a team or larger organizational workspace.
3. Treat Advanced Search Like Bookmarking
As with Slack, all archived Asana data is searchable. Asana's search bar brings up useful default suggestions including searches for tasks you've assigned, and tasks or conversations you've either created or are following. But the true power can be found in its advanced search fields. An Asana user can narrow down a search by particular keywords, the team member to which a task or conversation was assigned, which projects or sections of the organization the task belongs to, or even who might be following it. You can also search by due date or whether the task is complete or incomplete, or narrow the search to attachments if you're looking for a particular file. There's an even longer drop-down list of search parameters including subtasks, specific tags, or a search across multiple projects.
Sheev explains Asana's search capabilities as a sort of canned search for managers. Any search can be quickly saved and will then appear in the manager's left-hand navigation under searches (as an easily accessible bookmark to access task, team, project, or file information they know they'll need again and again). Your search results will appear in the central window. Click the star just to the left of the page's title and it will be saved to your left search bar. Rather than searching their feelings to remember those same exact parameters the next time they need that exact project data, the information is right in their dashboard.
4. Unassigned Projects = Mental Organization Tools
Tasks can be assigned in Asana but projects cannot, though you can limit who sees projects. Before you share it, no one can see that project but you. Along with using Asana's calendar view to include task and project due dates, Sheev suggests leaving tasks unassigned in a private project as a mental organization tool. You can write down your wish list of every upcoming task you want to work on for the next year, for example, and cross-index those tasks one-by-one to public projects as they come up in real time. It's a way to keep all of your tasks organized and share with other teams and departments as you want, while keeping track of everything you're working on. This way, you can control when a user—your manager, for instance—finds out about a particular task you're doing rather than overloading that person with a deluge of your upcoming activity.
5. Keep a "Switching Station" Project Handy
Sharing between teams in Asana can be challenging, so Sheev recommends using a publicly visible project as a cross-departmental task list to keep the entire workspace updated on what different teams are working on. As Asana designations can get a bit tricky, this means a public project inside a team of which everyone is a member. As projects progress, admininstrators can assign different tasks in the list to various departments or users. This way, everyone knows what they're responsible for and which teams are sharing the workload on any given task.
6. Templates, Backup, and Onboarding
One of Asana's newest features is the ability to clone tasks across teams by assigning copies. By simply clicking to the right of a task and choosing Assign Copy, Asana users can essentially create a template out of that task without using the duplicate command. After assigning a copy to other team members, you're automatically added as a follower on that task as well, which is a natural way of keeping managers in the loop. Click the Assign field and then click on the person icon in the box just to the right. Next, enter multiple names and the task will be copied and assigned to multiple people.
Using the duplicate command itself is a good way to back up your project data, though. Asana includes a basic change log at the bottom of a task or project but, for a workflow that multiple members or teams are modifying, it's a good idea to use the cloning feature to create a template in a hidden project in case something critical gets deleted or overwritten. Every page in Asana also has a custom URL, so it's easy to take that locked template and share it if you need to. To manually duplicate a task, click the Overflow button in the far left-hand corner of a task, and then click duplicate. You can select whatever fields you want to be duplicated in the process.
Templates are also a good tool for onboarding. Creating an ordered series of templates can help get a new employee caught up on how to use the platform and what their project load entails by navigating through exactly what their team's workflow process looks like. Combined with the interactive tour Asana added in its latest major release, a cloned task or project list acts as a series of bullet points for getting newbies up to speed.
7. Multiple Assignment
Sheev's best trick for keeping projects moving if tasks or teams are stalled is, once again, to use cross-indexing. This allows managers to break up a project into multiple pieces, including subtasks, and move things around to keep a project humming—enabling multiple teams to work in parallel without being tied to a linear progress.
Asana doesn't take kindly to someone trying to assign a task to multiple users—based on the thinking that it decreases accountability by spreading out responsibility. However, Sheev's got a trick to get around this. When looking at a project you want to assign to more than one user, you can self-assign tasks, and then duplicate them with additional tasks or subtasks assigned to different team members. It's a technique Asana might consider unnatural, but it can help get a stalled project moving again by allocating manpower more efficiently.
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About Rob Marvin
Rob Marvin is PCMag's Associate Features Editor. He writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, business and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, M&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You can also find his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for Geek.com on movies, TV, and culture. Once a year you can find him on a couch with friends marathoning The Lord of the Rings trilogy--extended editions. Follow Rob on Twitter at @rjmarvin1.
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