Future of Asana

It would be interesting to hear from Asana what their thoughts are in regards to the future of Asana. Right now the “to-do” / task level is very good. We can all agree on that. But the management / high level element is not really that developed. I understand that you have to start somewhere, but i would like to know if Asana as a program/platform is thinking about expanding that element like described above (or something else), or if they want to keep the focus on the “task” / to-do level.

So 1) do you (asana) agree that Asana is more about “tasks” than “high-level” view as it is right now and,

  1. Do you see a future for Asana that expand the “high-level” element or would you prefer to leave that to Instagantt for example?

/Peter

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We’re using asana in our product management workflow and will need for it’s high level functionality to increase, otherwise at scale we will need to leave for another platform. Here is what’s needed

  1. View only users on the project and team level
  2. Creation of better reporting tools, including using custom fields to create SCRUM reporting for our sprints
  3. An expansion of the “Sections” functionality to indicate the state of a certain task
  4. The ability to paste code snippets without the horrible formatting (currently we need to attached the files)
  5. Generally, the platform is incredibly slow to load. Once you are in it it responds fine, but the loading times when starting or switching projects is simply too long.
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Love #5 Alex! I agree that the speed time on loading Asana in the first place or loading projects is a hindrance for me. I find myself reverting back to storing information in other tools because of that. For example, I store a lot of CRM data in Evernote instead of in Asana (where it would be much more fluid for me in Asana) because the workflow of having to load Asana and get to the CRM contact “card” (task) in Asana is too slow.

However, that is also a small issue for me in an otherwise amazing platform :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the thoughts @WideSmiler, @Alexander_Brockhoff, and @Peter_Skjoldager

Asana’s Product Team has a few things on our near-term roadmap that I think will excite y’all :slight_smile:

  • First and foremost — Performance! We are making significant headway to rewriting Asana’s data framework one component at a time. Our team is tackling the areas of the product customers use most often first, but plans to continue focusing on performance until the entire experience feels super speedy. :rocket: More on this here — Learn About the Latest Performance Updates to Make Asana Faster

  • Start dates and timeline view — To make it easier to accurately understand how much work still needs to be done in a particular project — or by a group of people — we’re getting started on multi-day tasks and how to best visualize work that isn’t all one-size-fits-all. In the meantime, Instagantt is a great third party application that visualizes Asana projects in a Gantt chart view — Syncing Asana with Instagantt | Product guide • Asana Product Guide

As for some of your other feedback, @Alexander_Brockhoff, I’d recommend —

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We are going to build out an API to generate better sprint reports - if we come up with something nice I’ll ping Asana devs to demo.

I can’t stress enough how important View Only members of teams and projects would be for our team We want transparency of what the dev team is working on but have been unable to provide because we cannot simply open up all the projects to the entire company. Anyone else also run into this?

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YES. View-only (ideally with toggl options to turn on/off viewing specific details) would be great. I’d prefer it for client-facing. I’d like to share progress with clients without literally regurgitating my project tasks and list in emails. At least with copy/paste of lists (unless you’re in board view) we have workarounds. for client-facing, we’d need to be able to turn off viewing who a task is assigned to and comments.

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Will there be an ability to have the task dependencies exist within the timeline view so that if you shift a date for one task, the dependent tasks follow suit? Also, it would be awesome if we could somehow see a report/view of a target project end date vs. actual project end date (with changes history would be even better!).

That said, Asana is an incredible product and I love what you and your team are doing. Keep up the good work! :slight_smile:

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@Dan_Olson thanks for asking! Timeline view is still in production, so we’re working out those details now. Thanks for the suggestion and feedback!

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@Dan_Olson Dependencies in instagantt actually work pretty well: If you move interdependent tasks, the entire link chain shifts. The due dates in Asana are also updated. Worth checking out!

Multiple dependencies are however missing, and a meaningful way to use milestones.

For your upcoming timeline PLEASE include dependencies - it is absolutely essential!

Also: Workload management is possible but not great in instagantt. Hope you are looking into that future for the timeline as well?

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@Alexis this timeline feature is a huge issue for my agency. My team and staff love Asana but I agree with @Dan_Olson without timelines Asana is just not very scalable. Instagantt is just not a long-term fix unless the developers make huge improvements with both organization, folder structure and the ability to view custom fields. Is there an expected roll out date for timeline view with dependencies?

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@Carter_Grotta we aren’t able to state a specific date, but as Shannon mentioned it’s in the pipeline :slight_smile:

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Our biggest pain points are the following:

  • Files view (lack of sorting/filtering/ability to see the entire filename)
  • Inability to search for Archived Projects
  • No way to private message
  • Truncated or lack of project names in many areas of the interface (examples include no project names in the calendar view, truncated on the My Tasks page when sorting by due date)

The first 3 are becoming deal-breakers for my organization. I’ve heard that a Files view update is happening, but nothing about the other 2. The voting function here is much appreciated though and definitely gives us a sense for what are the most popular feature requests.

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Very glad to hear it :slight_smile:

Alexis, any confirmation on if any of those features are being worked on?

Hi @Colin_Hall - at this time I’m able to refer you to Shannon’s post above. For more information about Asana’s roadmap process I suggest you take a look at this post:

Also @Alexis, when a project is saved as a template, the links (dependencies) are not retained in Instagantt when a project is later created from that template. We have a project for the tasks required to open a new store, and they all follow a similar timeline, i.e. 6 months before the new store opens we need to order internet. But every time we create a new project from that template I have to go to instagantt and re-link ALL of the tasks so that when I shift the date they all then move together.

We find that the Slack integration, where you can shoot personal tasks into Asana, covers most of our chat needs outside of the comments on specific cards.

I’m with you on 1, 2, and 4, but I’m genuinely surprised you would want to add a chat client when there are dedicated chat apps that work beautifully and connect with Asana.
I would much rather message someone in Slack than use a half-baked integrated chat program like the ones you can find in G-Suite programs (e.g. Google sheets chat).
It probably depends on how you’re using the program though. There are so many ways to use Asana. How do DMs fit into your workflow?
Is this something private tasks could help with? When you share a private task with no project, it’s only visible to you and the collaborators of the task.

Hi Team

I am facing the same issue regarding summary of all projects.

Having a list of all projects with columns for:

  1. The year week the came in
  2. The stage of the project (came in, on hold, in progress, closed)
  3. Smooth handling of priority order of projects: which project to do after the one we are done with

Having a more functional home page would be really helpful.

Thanks