A Complete Guide to Asana (2022)

What Is Asana?

Asana is a popular project management tool that makes it simple to plan, track, and manage both commercial and personal chores. Former Facebook and Google employees devised the tool, which was first made public in 2012.

Since then, Asana has gathered a cult following, including executives from NASA, Salesforce, and Comcast, among others. Not bad!

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How Does Asana Work?

Asana is divided into three sections, each of which interacts with the others:

1. Create your Team

The term “team” refers to a group of people who will collaborate on a project or many projects. You’ll start with a general team description (such as Marketing), then add individuals who are part of that team.

You can create as many sub-teams as you need under this larger umbrella (such as content, visual design, social media, and so on), each with a list of people engaged.

2. Create your Projects

When building projects, start broad, much like when creating teams. A broad undertaking like creating a content calendar is a good example. It’s an open-ended project with no deadline, and smaller initiatives are likely to be filed under the content calendar, which will have measurable deadlines.

Broader projects don’t have to be open-ended; of course, how many sub-projects you expect to put under the primary project will determine this.

After that, you’ll enter your product information. (Asana has project templates, or you may start from scratch; more on that later in this article…) Give it a name, choose the project’s team, and customise your preferences (privacy settings, viewing settings, etc.)

3. Add your Tasks

It’s now time to divide your projects into tasks. The idea is to break down and organise larger jobs into smaller ones. For example, if I have four newsletters, two blog articles, and eight Instagram captions due in June, I’d definitely group them all together under the category “June Written Content.”

After you’ve broken down and arranged your tasks, you may click on them to bring up a side pop up where you can assign them to others, add or amend due dates and times, add task information, and communicate with collaborators.

Asana Features

Many useful tools come standard with Asana. We won’t list them all here; you can always go to the company’s website to learn more about the software’s features. Instead, we’ll concentrate on Asana features that help consumers complete more tasks in less time.

You’ve come to the right site if you’re wondering how to use Asana for productivity. Here are our three favourite Asana features for increasing productivity:

A) Project Views

Asana is flexible, allowing users to view their projects in a variety of ways. Here’s a quick summary of each of the four options:

1. Boards View:

If you’re a visual person, Asana’s Boards View is for you (shown above). This view functions as a Kanban board (Trello users will recognise this project management method!). Large projects can be divided into stages, which are represented by vertical columns, and individual tasks, which are represented by digital cards.

Writing blog entries for your company’s website, for example, may be broken down into four stages or columns: “Ideas,” “Writing,” “Editing,” and “Published.” Individual tasks (cards) would represent the blog post ideas you want to compose in this case.

Asana will enable you shift a task from one column to the next when a post moves from the “Ideas” stage to the “Writing” stage, making it exceedingly easy to track project progress.

2. List View:

Asana projects are similar to traditional to-do lists. This view is ideal for folks who want a complete image of the project they’re working on. You’ll be able to see every task that needs to be accomplished on one screen.

You’ll also be able to see when each assignment is due, how far along it is, and which team member is in responsibility of doing it all at a glance.

When you click on a task, a full-screen view appears with extra information, including detailed task instructions, employee chat boxes, text or image attachments, and more. Your particular tasks are entirely up to you.

3. Timeline View:

The Timeline View, on the other hand, allows users to plot their projects on a timeline and see how they relate to one another.

This view is ideal for projects with a large number of moving parts. What if, for example, you plan out an entire project with dozens of tasks to perform, some of which must be completed before others can begin?

Users can quickly create dependencies in Asana’s Timeline view by dragging the connector icon from one task to another. If two or more dependent tasks overlap, Asana will alert users to the possible conflict.

4. Calendar View:

Finally, there’s the Calendar View, which is a standard monthly calendar that shows tasks on the day (or days) they’re due. Tasks on the Calendar can be clicked to bring up a wider screen with more specific information, as previously mentioned.

Asana allows users to colour code their tasks based on their preferences for each view. Specific types of work, such as marketing and sales, can be assigned specific colours.

This functionality is particularly useful in the Calendar View, where tasks that must be accomplished on different days of the week overlap. Each activity is colour coded to assist distinguish it from the others.

Users can choose from any of the four views described above to view their projects. Simply choose the view that best suits their needs, and Asana will modify their screen accordingly.

B) In-App Communication

Although we only covered it briefly, Asana’s in-app communication tools are really useful and deserve more attention. Take a look at this:

Project management often necessitates the collaboration of a group of experts. And providing quick and convenient means for several individuals to interact is the only way to get them to work together efficiently. Asana’s in-app chat tool shines brightest here.

Asana users can save time by speaking directly within the project management platform, rather than using a supplementary tool like Slack or old-fashioned email.

Every job has a chat area where users can exchange ideas, provide links and attachments, like colleagues’ remarks, and more. Users can also use the @ sign before their username to tag other team members and bring them into the chat as needed.

C) Proven Templates

Finally, the templates that come with Asana really help this project management software stand out from the crowd. It will also assist you in getting more done in less time, especially if you are new to project management.

Asana includes a template for every department — marketing, design, HR, and IT — to help you manage the frequent projects you’re requested to accomplish on a regular basis.

To demonstrate how this functionality works, let’s look at a Marketing template. If we were to plan an event, we’d use the “Event Planning” template, which comes with a checklist of critical event-planning chores and deadlines.

All we’d have to do now is edit the template so that it only contains the tasks we need to do, that the due dates are correct, that team members are assigned to each task, and that we stick to the template until the day of our event. It’s quite practical!

It’s also worth noting that Asana allows you to develop your own unique templates. Don’t keep reinventing the wheel if you manage the same kind of tasks again and over. Simply design a custom template with the tasks and milestones you need to do on a regular basis, and use it each time a new project begins.

The template function in Asana is a must-have for individuals trying to enhance project management productivity, and we highly suggest it!

5 Asana Best Practices

Take note of the following best practises if you truly want to learn how to use this project management software properly. These Asana tips and tricks can help you maximise the tool’s potential and elevate your team’s productivity to new heights.

1. Get Comfortable With “My Tasks”

All of your personal tasks are stored in “My Tasks,” as you might expect. You’ll find it in the My Tasks area if you’ve been allocated (or if you’ve assigned it to yourself) a specific task in Asana.

Don’t waste time searching through the company’s project Calendar and Timeline views for “that one task” you know you need to complete today. Simply go to My Tasks to see your workload for the day, week, month, and so on.

This is one of our most basic Asana ideas, but incorporating it into your normal workflow will undoubtedly increase your productivity.

2. Focus On Team Collaboration

Asana works because it provides users with an intuitive platform to collaborate on projects and ensure work gets done on time and on budget. If you don’t use the collaboration features that Asana offers, you’re not getting the most out of the tool.

So don’t be afraid to @mention co-workers, chat with them in-app about the projects you’re working on, send links and attachments, and otherwise use Asana to connect with your team.

As mentioned previously, communicating with your employees and/or colleagues inside Asana will save you from switching back and forth between multiple apps — a practice that absolutely kills productivity for many office workers.

3. Take Advantage of Color Codes

The unsung heroes of the Asana platform are colour codes (seen above). When colour codes are applied, you’ll be able to tell a lot more about your project at a glance than you would have been able to before. It appears straightforward — and it is! — but it is also effective.

You could, for example, use the colour red to indicate high-priority initiatives. When you look at your task lists (in whichever project view you like), you’ll be able to tell right away which ones need to be completed first and which ones (non-red ones) can be deferred.

We recommend that you create an internal colour theory for your company. Don’t pick colours at random.

Make sure each colour and tint has a distinct meaning.

4. Commit to Clean Up

It is not enjoyable, but it is necessary. The only way to get the most out of Asana (or any software application, for that matter) is to keep it tidy.

Make it a habit to clean up your Asana projects on a regular basis. Check that all tasks have been updated and are in the correct location, that your colour codes are correct, and that old projects have been archived properly.

Don’t let something as basic as spring cleaning prevent you from being as productive as possible!

5. Integrate Your Favorite Tools With Asana

Finally, integrate Asana with the other tools you and your team use on a regular basis. Slack, Trello, Google Sheets, Zapier, and (our personal favourite) CloudApp are just a few of the popular tools that interact smoothly with Asana.

You’ll be able to swiftly communicate information between products and avoid time-consuming data input jobs by integrating your company’s software solutions together.

As we’ve seen, Asana is a robust project management programme with a lot of power and flexibility for its users. Asana may be used to keep track of essential details, meet deadlines, and get more done in less time on everything from tiny, one-man operations to large, complex projects with a lot of moving pieces.

However, if you truly want to increase productivity, you must combine Asana and CloudApp!

Users can easily access screen and webcam recording, GIF creation, and image annotation features in our visual communication software, which can be utilised to connect successfully with coworkers and generate premium content faster than ever before.

After you’ve finished creating your content in CloudApp, drag and drop it into Asana to share it with the rest of your team. It couldn’t be much easier!

The best part is that CloudApp is completely free to use. Get started with CloudApp with Asana today to boost your productivity.

Asana Pros

• We compiled a list of benefits and cons based on what Asana users had to say after conducting some research:
• The timeline view simplifies dependency management.
• Streamlined and modern interface design
• Has the ability to integrate email
• You can see both your personal and group projects in one location.
• All of your tasks are synced with a color-coded calendar.
• When browsing workspaces, you can choose between a list, a board, or a calendar style to suit your needs.

Asana Cons

• Onboarding does not include a product tour.
• A task can be viewed by numerous collaborators, but it cannot be assigned to multiple people for completion.
• Will not list all jobs due on the same day from various projects in one place.
• Asana’s text-based format is not for everyone, especially those who are more visually oriented.
• Because Asana lacks time and budget monitoring features, you’ll need to use third-party software.

Asana Pricing

Asana charges for their packages based on the additional functionality you require. For some, the free version will suffice, but for others, more comprehensive packages with advanced features are the best option:

Basic- Free. For individuals or teams just getting started with project management

Premium- ($10.00 per user, per month, billed annually. $13.49 billed monthly) – For teams who need project planning with confidence.

Business- ($24.99 per user, per month, billed annually. $30.49 billed monthly) For teams and companies who have to manage and organize work across initiatives.

Enterprise- (Let’s talk….) For teams and companies who need additional support, control, and security. 

Conclusion:

Asana’s game is to create a dependable workflow. It specializes in expediting the procedures of forming teams, generating projects, and tracking allocated work while keeping everyone in the loop. Its highly adjustable features and smooth interfaces with Slack, Instagantt, and Everhour allow you to customize it to your team’s specific needs.