Does Asana simply not possess any of the basic functionality one would expect in a task management app?

Thank you Neil for taking the time to respond and to provide such great examples. They were indeed helpful for shifting from a small team needs focus to seeing Asana in the context of the expanded needs larger companies face in simply defining project tasks and tracking timelines across multiple departments and supervisors and objectives. I suspected I was trying to approach Asana in a way that it was simply never designed for.

The custom fields video with Rashad Issa of Workplace Options was particularly helpful in shifting from a task tracking and reminder based mindset to seeing the potential of shuttling everything into a strategic, trackable framework and moving those larger goals from inside my head to inside the project management app where they can be quantified. Thanks again!

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Thank you Hendrik. I really appreciate you taking time out to respond. I’ve been using multiple services to juggle a lot of ideas, tasks, projects, research and deadlines and trying to find a single system that would bring all of that down to a simple interface to eliminate overwhelm. I can totally see the benefit of focusing within a single workspace and letting go of the overwhelming everything else that needs to be done while you’re working within that space. It’s funny to see that I’ve been trying to find a system to eliminate that overwhelm but also expecting that system to do all of those things that actually produce the overwhelm. :slight_smile: I knew I was missing something. Thanks again!

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Thanks so much Crystal. You’re right. I’ve definitely gotten hooked on reminders. And my experience with them in practice is pretty much the same as yours. When the reminder pops up, I’m always in the middle of something else and so the reminder gets ignored. And because I pretty much ignore all of my reminders, I think it just creates a feeling of not keeping up with things. Apparently though it’s just my reminders that I’m not keeping up with. Funny the things we hold onto! Thank you for your time in responding. Your perspective definitely helps me pull back and recognize that the reminders are exactly part of the problem I’m trying to solve. :slight_smile:

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Hi Jill, could you point me to the custom fields video you mentioned? Thanks!

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This is the video Neil pointed me to …

[link broken]

Well, I think that didn’t work. :slight_smile: Let’s see if I can get the link in there for you.

[link broken]

I’m on Android Marshmallow and real-time notifications have stopped. Not having them has kept me from fully embracing Asana and feeling like I have a true, trusted system. It seems silly to have due dates with times and yet, no notifications. And yes, as a creative, I live by reminders. Rabbit trails and interruptions are impossible to avoid with my client work.

Are any of you getting real-time push notifications on older Android devices? I can’t seem to get a clear answer from the Asana website nor from this group.

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I was on Android Lollipop and just updated to Marshmallow. I never received real-time notifications on Lollipop and I’m realizing now I may not have tried with Marshmallow yet. I’m receiving a daily notification in the morning but no other push notifications. The daily Inbox summary I receive only contains about 3-4 things that are due for the day. I’ve decided that Asana is maybe trying to live up to its name and be very Zen and not overwhelm users with stressful things like all the pending tasks and deadlines facing them for the day. :slight_smile:

I haven’t quite sorted out how I’m using it yet but I’ve added some of my Asana projects as additional calendars in Google Calendar so I can get real-time notifications. I’m totally perplexed that you can’t get notifications in Asana. It just seems like the most basic functionality ever. But alas. I saw an official reply on another forum thread that the Android app can’t provide real-time notifications but I’m not sure how old that was. I really can’t fathom it.

I’m very attached to my reminders too. I like having that situational awareness. Everything I have is automated and I get my Android phone notifications and calls on my Chromebook so that my two devices work interchangeably. I’m super used to all the automation and notifications. I use Trello like a fiend but, as great as it is for capturing zillions of things, I haven’t really mastered using it for tasks. I think it’s the absence of check boxes. I tried Wunderlist but it doesn’t seem as robust as Asana and I’m not really into the military insignia icon on Todoist and the interface isn’t as pretty as Asana.

My goal was to use Asana as a task and project system for work and personal. I’m also hoping to use Asana to create dedicated workspaces for guest users. I’m currently trying to embrace the suggestions I received from others that maybe I’m just a little too attached to notifications. :slight_smile: I haven’t figured out yet how to get the Inbox to show me more than a few items for the day but I’ve been sticking to the My Tasks where I can see everything separately for each workspace and getting things checked off.

I’m still testing it out on the free version but starting to play around with the Dashboard. It seems so obvious that you would want to have a dashboard where you could see all of your tasks and deadlines from all of your projects every day. But apparently not. I’m sort of adapting to the intensified focus that being in one workspace provides and getting used to just switching around between them to check on stuff.

If you really want the notifications you might try syncing calendars. If you use Google Calendar it’s super simple. Sync Asana with Google, Outlook and Apple Calendars

Good luck!

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Thank you for your reply. It’s nice to find another someone who seems to work like I do. I’ve also tried Todoist, Remember the Milk, GTasks, Wunderlist, Springpad, Nozbe… if it’s out there and PC-based I’ve tried it. I’ve tried GCal and even though the integration was seamless, the creation of a separate calendar for each project didn’t work for me. I didn’t like having to add and remove calendars based on whether the project was active. If you’re trying to use GTD (everything is a project), it got messy and still spent the time going through the projects to keep the calendar/project setup current.

I’m a solo freelancer with clients and grad school, so the inbox doesn’t add much value to my particular workflow so the digest isn’t really helpful. (Great feature though!) Asana is the most attractive and robust platform out there. I would even pay for the notifications as it seems several of the other task managers put the good stuff in their premium levels. I just get frustrated that once again it seems like the iOS works and works well and the PC/Android platform does not. If the option is there, it should work and work well. I hope it will someday. I want to trust my system and without trusting the notifications, I can’t really do that.

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I’m running Android Nougat 7.1.2. on my Pixel XL. I have gotten pop-up notifications from Asana but to be honest, I tend to swipe them away without even looking at them. I’ll try to test this out for you guys.

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Crystal – The notifications apparently work for Nougat, but not any other versions of Android. The Asana website isn’t clear about which version. I only found a “by-the way” in the blog announcement. Nougat was only rolled out last August but my phone will not be receiving the upgrade. Seems like Android M should be recent enough for notifications to work.

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Thank you Crystal. I’m checking to see if I can update but I’m also waiting out the September release date on the Samsung Note 8. Maybe my notifications are not too far off! :slight_smile:

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Sounds like you may not have everything set up correctly. I get real time notifications on my phone all day long every time a task is updated, completed, created, etc. Is this what you are referring to? Also, I can see on my task list immediately when things are overdue.

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The notifications seem to work on iOS phones and Android phones running N/Nougat, but no others. Real time notifications do not work on Android Marshmellow phones - which both Jill and I are using.

See: Asana mobile app updates: tags, spotlight search, 1password and more under the “Updated Push Notifications” section.

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This is a reply concerning push notifications that was posted in another thread under “Product Feedback”. I am posting it here as it addresses the way in which apparently tasks be setup in order to trigger a push notification. I’m still a bit baffled as to how this could work. Seems like one should be able to set a due date/time and have the phone notify you when that date/time happens. Just like the myriad of other task managers do without fail.

Please note that her statement about “all android devices should support” notifications is does not match what was posted in this blog announcement (Asana mobile app updates: tags, spotlight search, 1password and more) as it states that only Android N devices are compatible with push notifications. So confusing. I really love Asana and want desperately to have one home for my trusted system.

Reply from other thread:

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Hi Jill,
We use Asana as a task management in some teams (like the team I manage who is responsible for email marketing) and more of a collaboration and project management tool in other teams. It works well for collaboration / project management, but unfortunately I have found that Asana lacks a few essentials that you expect and need when using Asana as a task / ticket management system:

  • easy dashboarding (displaying tasks ordered in a few dimensions, not setting up a project as a dashboard where you manually move tasks across like is possible in Asana)
  • task numbering (a number that can be referenced by all)
  • reporting that is easy to do (including custom fields, not just by complete / incomplete, assignee etc)
  • linking tasks with proper dependency visibility (currently you can mark a task as waiting on another task, but this is then only visible on that task, you don’t get notified when the task you are waiting on gets completed, and of course you can’t say this task is blocking another other etc)
  • more options of how to view tasks across different projects
  • being able to force certain minimum fields to be populated when a new task is created (we have people adding sub-tasks, not adding anyone to the sub-task and then wondering why nobody has started working on it…)
    So let me know if you have found work arounds for any of the above! Asana has added / improved functionality over the last year, so i can just hope it continues getting better.
    Regards, Ines
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Thanks Ines. That helps a lot to get a confirmation that a lot of people are using this as a collaboration tool on projects but it still seems weird to me that things like due dates are so minimized across the system. Lol.

I haven’t seen much about the issues you’re having but I know that custom fields are available. I included a link to a video about it up above if you scroll back.

I agree. The interface is just so streamlined and beautiful. There’s nothing else out there that can compare. I’m planning to just hang in there and hope they add robust push notifications and an overall everything dashboard at some point really soon.

Thanks. I’m pretty sure I have everything set up correctly. Are you getting email notifications or push notifications? I turned off email notifications because I am hardly ever in my email inbox anymore.

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Hey, Jill. If you haven’t already, be sure to vote on the topic @AmyHampton referenced earlier in the thread: Push Notifications at 'Due Time'. This still seems to be a pretty lively topic/request.

Good luck with your other use-case scenarios! The tip @Crystal_Alifanow mentioned about the search ‘reports’ is a good one. I’ve just recently started using those reports and they’re very useful.