Understanding Asana App: 4 Comprehensive Aspects

Last Modified: December 29th, 2022

With the rising IT services, organizations face many challenges in managing incoming projects. Of the many available Project Management tools, Asana handles the entire project workflow in one place. It allows you to toggle tasks, schedule projects, organize the workflow, and collaborate with teams to meet the requirements.

Apart from assigning tasks, team leaders can visualize progress with dashboards and generate reports to update clients with work status. The Automation and Integration feature of the Asana App further enhances the ability to handle multiple projects and data simultaneously. And since Asana is a cloud-based service, it does not compromise Data Security and Privacy.

This article provides you with a broader aspect of the Asana App. It also explains the basic structure, layout, and features. Lastly, it addresses the importance of the Privacy, Automation, and Integration service offered by Asana.

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

  • An idea of SaaS.
  • An active Asana Account.

Introduction to Asana

Asana App Logo
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Asana is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) designed to enhance task management with versatility in team collaboration. Founded by Moskovitz and Rosenstein, commercially launched in April 2012. It not only gives the best customization service that allows users to break down projects into smaller tasks. But it also integrates with 100+ third-party applications like Tableau, Jira Cloud, etc that help businesses to expand their service and availability.

Asana App comes with a customizable dashboard to streamline tasks, specify deadlines, and generate reports. It helps organizations to escalate their productivity and deliver requirements for stakeholders. Asana, in broader terms, assists companies of any size to analyze their work progress and issues in one place, eliminating the need for constant meetings, E-Mail updates, and memos.

To know more about Asana App, click here.

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Basic Structure of the Asana App

Dashboard of Asana App
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To get a brief understanding of this app, one needs to create an Asana account. A user can create or join multiple Workspaces and organizations to collaborate with various groups of Asana users. A Workspace involves the collection of people assigned for a project and task.

Asana App is known for its project and task management tool. It offers various options, listed below:

  • Specify tentative start and end dates with task dependencies (priorities) to improve work productivity.
  • Organize work by grouping tasks into sections. It also gives the option to create subtasks for detailed work distribution.
  • Assign tasks to specific people to make every individual understand their role in the project.
  • Automate task tracking and assigning process by creating rules.
  • Enables integration with numerous software to add attachments.

Features of Asana App

Asana App provides a user-friendly interface to manage projects, programs, and processes. With a simplistic layout and features, it can handle teams of any size and minimize the complexity of work. Few aspects are listed below:

1) Manage Project Workflows

Streamlined workflow benefits organizations as it acknowledges the entire phase of a project. Asana App allows users to access various tools to create workflows, track teams, and work efficiently, which helps them to keep everyone on the same page. Few features of workflows are listed below:

1) Projects

Asana App Project Dashboard
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A project consists of a group of tasks, more likely created to achieve bigger/multiple goals. It involves the active participation of many teams. To create a project, click the + button located at the top bar and select the Project option. Asana App helps you set Privacy to Private, Public, or specific to some members of the team.

2) Workspace

Structure of Asana Workspace
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A Workspace involves a group of team members collaborating on projects who can manage tasks and access conversations. To create a new Workspace, click on the profile photo and select My Profile Setting then select the Accounts, and click on the Create a New Workspace.

3) Reports

Reporting Dashboard
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To get the best out of teams, the Asana App features a dashboard that provides an overview of projects for drilling down and obtaining insights. Both the features help to access status updates and activities of an undergoing project. It facilitates users with customizable charts, task progress, and space for discussion to solve hurdles.

2) Agile Management

Organizations make effective use of the Agile approach development by responding to changes and iterating quickly. Asana App helps manage Agile projects to optimize work by a Sprint (set period to complete a specific task), planning, Bug Tracking, and Kanban Board (a visual way to create workflow). The 2 Agile methods generally used are listed below:

1) Kanban Boards

Kanban Board
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It gives a clear picture of the stages involved in a project. Each phase of a project represents a column and task by using Cards. This Board helps identify bottlenecks to optimize workflow.

2) Scrum Boards

Scrum Board
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This Board is used for software development teams designed to iterate quickly by calculating the number of Sprints. There are three artifacts in Scrum — the Product Backlog (list of work to be done), the Sprint Backlog (collection of work committed by a team), and the Product Increment (work delivered at the end of the sprint).

3) Team Collaboration

Quite often, team members are required to collaborate for expediting the task completion. However, team members may work remotely and at different times, leading to a lack of visibility, unclear objectives, and poor planning. Asana App provides collaborating tools to strengthen teamwork in the following ways:

1) Tasks and Sub-Tasks

Details of Subtasks
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Tasks are the basic unit of action in the Asana App. It provides users to create, edit, replicate, merge and delete a task as per requirements. You can share a task with respective collaborators via mail or through a link with prior permission configurations.
A subtask consists of smaller units of a task usually done to divide work evenly among team members or teams. To create a subtask, click on Subtask in the right pane or press Tab + S shortcut and configure it accordingly. Users can drag a task into the subtasks section that allows them to create nested subtasks. Asana App represents tasks and subtasks in different views like — List, Board, Grid, and Gantt View.

2) Tags

Tags Field in Asana App
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Sometimes, tasks require additional context, and Tags help in categorizing similar tasks. It provides a Sort and Filter option to improve the visibility of tasks. A user can save a custom view of a project or a Board using Tags.

4) Organize Work

Any incoming project involves the contribution of many teams in an organization. Asana App connects an individual’s work to a team and further, team’s work to a project to improve productivity. This hierarchical structure organizes the workflow. Asana App leverages team leaders and management plans, brainstorm, and set goals. Few tools to manage work are listed below:

1) To-do List

To-Do List of Tasks

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Asana App provides a list, enabling users to overview incomplete, in-progress, and completed tasks. With an inbuilt To-do List app, you can sort a checklist of the various tasks. Each To-do List has an expandable description, and a user can attach supporting documents, assign tasks, set a due date, and even collaborate their work to accomplish tasks.

2) Calendar

Calender View of Tasks
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Deadlines and milestones always hover in any team working on a project. Asana App offers Calendar View that keeps track of events and comes in handy when tasks are independent of each other. This view comes with the option to label tasks with color and count subtasks under a given task.

3) Timeline

Timeline of Asana App
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Compared to a Calendar View, the Timeline View serves a different purpose. The Timeline View enables scheduling deadlines to monitor continuous progress. This view has tasks that have dependencies, and hence work occurs in a specific order. It becomes an essential view to focus on because the Calendar View is shared with higher officials. 

Seamless Automations and Integrations in Asana

Creating Asana App Automation Rules
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Since manual interventions are inefficient, Asana App streamlines processes such that a team does not miss any critical steps and aids in faster delivery. Automation helps businesses save time by spending more energy on strategic work rather than investing it in repetitive tasks. 

Asana helps bring all tools and data together in one space with its integrated service (100+ apps) to build custom applications using Asana API.

Asana Privacy Control

Page of Privacy and Security Settings in Asana App
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Asana respects user’s privacy and secures its website with standard Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. It encourages researchers to identify security vulnerabilities with a Bug Bounty program. They also conduct Service Organization Control (SOC 2) Type I and Type II audits by independent third parties, representing the gold standard for security compliance being a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Asana App also provides configuration for a project at the user level, it helps organizations to make information private (individual or group) without impending collaborations. It allows users to assign permissions and restrictions for a project such that members can either only comment or edit their inputs respectively.

Conclusion

This article provides you with a brief introduction to Asana App. It also explains the structure, layout, and features to accomplish a project. Lastly, it addresses the importance of the Privacy, Automation, and Integration service offered by Asana. As organizations become data-driven, the demand for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has escalated. Asana App has proved efficient to organizations with its Project Management features.

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Freelance Technical Content Writer, Hevo Data

Amit Kulkarni specializes in freelance writing within the data industry, by creating informative and engaging content on data science by using his problem-solving and analytical thinking ability.

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