Thanks Phil for this information.
Still trying to evaluate Asana, so you might give me some tips.
How would you organize our projects as we have 2 types of classification : per Brand (benefit, kenzo,…) and Axes (skincare, make up,…). One project manager will follow around 80-100 projects for the couple brand-axes.
(for example, in wrike, you have this folder structure which is quite intuitive to organize the project. After that, it’s not perfect for other things, this is why we try Asana.)
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Hi @David_Kierbel, and thanks @Phil_Seeman!
Given that you have hundreds of projects and hundreds of users, I’d certainly want to hear more about your needs and goals before offering any kind of suggestions. Please Private Message me here or click my avatar for other contact info. Or see https://certifiedpros.asana.com/ or http://www.productivity-experts.com/.
Thanks,
Larry
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I did find out how to get “Teams” which gives me another level to group projects. If you create a workspace as an Organization you can have teams – even with the free version. To define an organization, you will need a company domain e-mail address. If Asana does not recognize it, they can add it for you. How to Create, Join, and Manage teams in Asana | Product guide • Asana Product Guide
This is not true for us. We manage clients in Asana and need to be able to add clients into projects, which automatically then makes all the tasks in the project public and we can’t have any private conversations in our team without the client being able to see it. Hive solved this by having sub-projects, and you can add clients to the sub project and they see only tasks there, and in the parent project you see all tasks from sub projects but in addition can add tasks that only internal team can see.
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@Jeff_Kemp @James_Leo @Attila_Saghy @Michel_Kant @Michael_Trafton You have all mentioned how Wrike enables the folder / project hierarchy, just wondering if you can share what led you to using Asana instead of Wrike (or in addition to?). Not having the ability to view projects in this way is making Asana less that useful for our team, so any insight would be appreciated.
Thank you!
Sabrina - I could not overcome this shortcoming, especially considering it has been requested for years. Thus, I switched my team to ClickUp and haven’t looked back. There are elements of Asana I miss, but project organization is critical to any successful platform.
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Thank you for the feedback. It’s rather unfortunate that such a highly requested feature has not been implemented for years! I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a hack that would make Portfolios worth the expense, to no avail. Appreciate your suggestion, will definitely take a look at it.
Yes, Portfolios was Asana’s “solution” to this, but (a) it cost more and (b) it wasn’t what users have been asking for. Best of luck.
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I have been a casual Asana user for years, but am now a part of a team launching a new enterprise, and we could easily created dozens of projects, that would neatly fit into 5 - 10 ‘departments’ or parent projects. As I have dug in, I was sure I was just missing the sub projects feature, but this thread (that @James_Leo has valiantly managed for over a year) proved that at least I am not alone.
I have been avoiding creating too many tasks, for all the reasons stated in this thread, but tasks and subtasks are just not robust enough to be the primary planning unit.
I assume someone has posed these questions to Asana and they say ‘upgrade’ and get the Portolio feature?
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@anon87210418. I would suggest using the Teams feature for your departments or parent projects. (See image above) This is available in the free version of Asana with a corporate e-mail. Then, each project can be listed under each department, along with Tasks within the Project. (you don’t need to dig for sub tasks). These are assignable within your organization to one or more people. I also created a My Tasks Board to pull together those items I want to focus on across the company. I can show you if interested.
Thanks @Brenda. We are a very lean team, so if i use this feature, individuals would likely be assigned to more than one team, but I could still see it being useful as a way to break up projects into categories.
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yes, Asana has the ability for people to be on more than one team. I can relate though, to being a lean team and wearing many hats. Within our support staff (outside of doctors and nurses), Me, the IT guy and H/R also take on duties related to purchasing, building maintenance, etc. I like having the same types of projects and tasks under one category, so when the same three people and maybe an additional meet about another topic, it’s segregated from our Accounting and IT duties.
Hi Brenda,
Your comment of viewing your task list as a board is interesting… how can you show us this initiative?
Phil.
I did make a work-around to get what would be on My Tasks into a board view… I created a project called “My Tasks Board View” and added specific tasks I want to work on currently across all projects. You can either assign the task to yourself (to make My Tasks like normal) or add to the new Project board view (or you can do both). The advantage of having a task on the My Tasks Board view project, is that when you check it completed, it disappears from the board as well as the project it belongs to. So, each task would reside under the original Project (i.e. Remodel conference room) and the My Task board view (Measure conference room) when you want to have it more prominently visible (current tasks).
This isn’t an additional step, it would be instead of “assigning” the tasks to yourself.
Also, Since you now have a board view, you can change the column (section) headings to be “Do First”, “Next in Line” and “Sometime”. The task can be easily slid into whichever column you choose. You can also switch to list view with the same section headings displayed.
Keep in mind, I only apply the tasks I want to work on currently to the My Tasks Board View project. I hope this helps someone. I can also show screenshots if needed.
I agree 100% with this post. We need sub-projects that can be “completed”
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I have hundreds of events to coordinate. I know this is not an ideal setup according to how Asana is designed, but I created a good workaround. I have a Project for each type of event, so “New Member Meetings” would be a project. Each task in that project is an event. I will have close to 30 of these types of events at different locations and dates. So a task may be “New Member Meeting - Atlanta, Jan” and another may be “New Member Meeting - Atlanta, May.” The subtasks are the actual tasks to be done to make that event a success. Adding custom properties like Budget and Status allows me to see how these events are doing at a high level by looking at the list view of the “New Member Meeting” Project. I am curious about what everyone thinks of this setup.