Why Make Asana Part of Your Toolkit?
In this post, we’ll outline the Asana features you can use to get the most out of the project management tool.
We like to discuss the tools we use here at Orientation Marketing to help you choose the right tools with your marketing campaigns and day-to-day operations.
We all have a variety of tools that we like to keep close to us, for example, Excel, Calendar (Outlook) and Word. Often, we get used to the way we do things and find it hard to let go of dated and inefficient practices but it can get to a point where that tool belt is too heavy, and the thought of adding more to it might create more work when we are looking to achieve the exact opposite
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Asana is constantly offering the opportunity for you to learn more and develop the skills you have and have recently carried out a series of webinars to help better understand the platform and how it works. These workshops were developed to walk through the best way to structure work in Asana and increase productivity which we will discuss in this post that should make you reconsider adding Asana to your toolkit.
If you are already using Asana it is likely you’re not using all the features that are available to you. There are even a few features that we have access to but were not making the most of. Let’s take a look of some of them to help you decide if the platform is right for you or to increase your current usage of the tool.
1. SELECT MULTIPLE ELEMENTS
This is one of the simpler features that can actually save a lot of time. Asana allows you to select multiple entries at one time. All you have to do is click the first task, hold shift, click the last task and all in between will be selected. Once you have all of the elements selected any change you make will be made to all of them. For example, if you have them all selected and assign one task to yourself they will then all be assigned to you.
The example above shows the process you would normally follow to use this feature. The whole point of Asana is to make life easier and the process of collating tasks and information a lot quicker. this feature in Asana will save you a lot of time when collating information.
2. ATTACHING DOCUMENTS TO TASKS
Asana offers the ability to attach documents to tasks; a very useful feature. If you are using Asana to keep track of ad creative that is due you can attach a spec sheet to the task for later reference. There are two ways you can do this, either by adding them through a comment at the bottom of the task or the top right-hand corner and you can add documents straight from OneDrive or SharePoint.
3. CUSTOM FIELDS
The Asana webinars introduced me to this new “custom fields” feature, which could be really useful for customising projects. The default fields in Asana are Assignee and Due dates which are applicable to most tasks. But there are always more you can add to the custom fields. Two additions that might be useful would be priority and hours. It can be helpful to know which tasks are the most important that way you can decide what would need doing first.
To add a custom field you would need to click on customize in the top right-hand corner and select add a new field. You can then decide what type of field you want be it drop-down, text or number. For this example, priority dropdown will work best and then you can add your options be it High, Low and Medium.
4. SUB-TASKS
Sometimes you will have large projects that have lots of individual tasks related to them. Some projects, like Webinars, will mean you need to supply lots of content to fulfil them - adding subtasks will allow you to see what is required within each task. In this example, you can see a webinar with the different elements of the campaign added as linked tasks. As you can see, all of these tasks are now linked to one another.
These sub-tasks will help you keep all of your work collected and in one place. This is a good way to keep all of your information together and not forget about anything.
5. CALENDAR
Everyone likes to view things in different ways. Sometimes a list, sometimes a board and other times a calendar. Asana can take all the tasks you have created and allows you to view them in different formats one of my favourites is a calendar because you can see everything all on one page.
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6. MILESTONES AND DEPENDENCIES
Milestones and dependencies are good to use when you have a lot of tasks going on all at the same time. Setting milestones will help you feel a sense of achievement when you complete certain tasks. It can create a rush of adrenaline that helps keep you and your teams motivated.
Dependencies could also be useful in large organisations because dependencies are another way for you to attach one task to another and make it dependent. This means that the current task would then be dependent on the last task being completed.
To mark a task as a milestone is simple. You click on the task you want, go to more options and select mark as a milestone, you will know when the task has changed because it will turn from a circle to a diamond. Dependencies are set the same way, but you will also have to select the task you want it to be dependent on. You can also set these in timeline view by dragging to create a dependency.
7. FORMS
Forms are completely personal and you can make them however you like. To create the form you would use a drag and drop feature, selecting the elements from the right-hand side and from there you begin to formulate the form. They can be shared with anyone inside your organisation or outside of your organisation. To share outside of the organisation you would just need to send them the link.
When you are creating the form, you can deactivate it which will mean it cannot be used yet (just remember when you're done to turn it back to active otherwise people won’t be able to use it). Once requests are made and submitted, they are automatically added to the project as a task.
The great thing about forms is people can make requests and because it’s not written on a piece of paper they don’t get lost or forgotten about everything goes straight into the online project meaning that it will be difficult to miss it.
8. PROJECT TEMPLATES
A template is something you could use if you have campaigns that use the same format which you run on a regular basis. To create a template you select the project you are in and save it as a template then in the future you can select that template and the timeframe you want to work in and Asana will automatically populate everything with the tasks and the due dates will be adapted to the timeframe you selected.
This is useful when you run a lot of similar campaigns because it can take time to populate tasks from scratch this means you will only need to do everything once you might have to adapt a few deadlines here and there but you won’t have to re-enter every individual task.
9. AGENDA
All companies carry out meetings some more important than others but we all know it’s hard to remember everything that is spoken about in a meeting and the tasks you need to do afterwards. Asana offers a feature that allows you to create an agenda, you can add the items to start with and when you create a task and assign it to someone it will be entered into their personal tasks from there they can edit it to go into a specific project by just clicking in the task deleting the agenda project and adding the new one.
WHY MAKE ASANA PART OF YOUR TOOLKIT?
The main reason you should use Asana is efficiency. Using the tool will help you keep everything organised and in one place. You are less likely to lose track of tasks or forget things because the platform will remind you. Asana has lots of features that will help you stay on top of your workload and get things completed in a timely manner. This tool will help you organise these tasks and keep yourself working productively.
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