- Project Management
- Views And Reporting
- Admin Controls
- Communication
- Automation
1 – Project Management
Effective management of your projects is one of the pillars of productivity. Ensure that you’re up to date with the progress of each project with the help of handy lists or kanban boards. In addition, you can break down work into pieces that different members or departments can work on or into subtasks to show your employees the steps for each task. Milestones let you set checkpoints in your project to gain a better understanding of the progress.
You can group tasks in projects based on several factors, which lets you build workflows and break down what sort of tasks need to be handled. Also, custom fields allow you to track any form of information that is crucial to the smooth sailing of your workflow. Deadlines that take time zones into account are a godsend for remote workers and freelancers working beyond borders. In effect, this ensures that everyone works together with more efficiency. You can also drop in attachments from anywhere, be it via cloud storage or from your device itself.
In addition to these features, forms let you create a formal submission process for any work-related requests your employees may have. Automate critical segments of your work, especially redundant tasks, with rules. Rules ensure that your teams don’t miss crucial steps while working on multiple projects at once. A streamlined approval process guarantees that everyone knows what needs to be approved, and when it requires approval. Furthermore, you don’t have to duplicate tasks and can include the same task in multiple projects. Asana will take care of the rest, changing context in the background. Task dependencies clarify which tasks are waiting on other tasks.
2 – Views And Reporting
Views ensure that you are up to date with the latest happenings in your organization, and reporting enables you to keep track of the details that pertain to every single project. Timeline shows you how parts of your project come together and ensure that things are running smoothly.
Further, Workload gives you a bird’s eye view of the work allocation of each member across projects. It also lets you rebalance work based on how stressed or overworked team members are. Further, Portfolios allow you to track the status of all your projects, and you can report updates to your team and keep an eye on how things are progressing. Inbox gives you updates on all the latest news on the projects and conversations that matter.
Asana offers several views that help you see your organization from different perspectives. A helpful Calendar view gives you a better picture of the tasks that need to be done to finish projects ahead of schedule. The Files view lets you find the files you need quickly, without fuss. Further, the Teammate view enables you to understand workloads by looking at tasks assigned. Advanced searching tools let you run reports based on the metrics that you deem essential.
3 – Admin Controls
The team settings ensure that everyone gets access to the right information. It also ensures that sensitive information is protected from the wrong eyes. Create teams based on their function, department, level of involvement in a project, or however else you see fit. Team members can use a shared calendar, and their conversations can be made private or public, based on what your firm requires. This flexible system takes into account freelancers and contractors as well, who may not necessarily be affiliated with your organization. Further, you can make hidden teams for sensitive work, or make public teams so that the entire company can view them.
To ensure that edits don’t get in the way, you can lock projects down using the comment-only mode. You can designate admins to manage members effectively and enforce data security and back up your data on a separate server. This ensures that data is secure and protected from breaches. Exporting or deleting data is a relatively simple process as well. In addition to these security features, you can gain access to more controls and the Admin API with an Enterprise plan.
4 – Communication
Communication forms the veins of any organization. Effective communication ensures that projects are done quicker and with fewer flaws. Also, it lets your team know the progress of work, allowing you to address the issues responsibly. Task comments let you clarify doubts and queries that your team members may have. You can also mention teammates on different tasks or projects to keep them posted. Further, you can add team members as followers, which lets them receive notifications based on the task at hand and operate accordingly.
Project conversations offer your members a space to converse on every task and subtask at hand. Next, team conversations let you announce important changes in the projects, like shifting deadlines. Status updates ensure that stakeholders are on the same page concerning the latest developments in your organization, and color schemes can indicate the stage of a particular project. This helps the higher management keep track of whether projects are going according to schedule or not.
5 – Automation
Cut down on time spent on menial and redundant tasks. Let Asana get it done, as you tend to more important matters. Rules let you automate tasks so that you can work on strategies and planning instead. In addition, you can design error-proof processes to eliminate dead ends and ensure that your team focuses on the tasks and subtasks that matter. Even when deadlines change, you do not have to update project schedules manually. Dependency date shifting takes care of it for you.
Use existing templates that have proven their mettle instead of starting from scratch, which cuts down on time and effort while getting you the results you want. Integrations with popular tools let you automate a variety of tasks. Forms can automatically assign incoming tasks as well, saving you the hassle.
