Asana Calendar View: 6 Critical Aspects

Most organizations, whether they are just starting up or are already a successfully growing enterprise, reach a stage where coordination across various teams becomes a challenge. You may get overwhelmed by the increasing number of new projects as managing them manually becomes chaotic. Overlapping roles, missing up on deadlines, and regularly updating project status are a few hurdles that might delay you from achieving your ambitious goals. This requires an autonomous solution that keeps a tab on everything and answers all your Project Management questions.

Asana is one such Web-based Task Management Tool that offers a variety of features to simplify your Project Planning and Execution process. With Asana, you can track the project status throughout its journey and know who it is assigned to, what are the subtasks, due dates, etc. Using its excellent reporting features such as Interactive Dashboards, Asana Calendar, Portfolios, and Timelines, you can get insights into your business performance and can take the required actions accordingly. 

In this article, you will learn how to use Asana Calendar View to your advantage and organize your project tasks effectively.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Asana
  • Key Features of Asana
• 6 Critical Aspects of Asana Calendar View
  • Basic Calendar Options
  • Set the First Day of the Week
  • Create New Tasks in the Calendar
  • Add Custom Fields
  • Search in the Calendar
  • Team Calendar
• Limitations of using Asana Calendar View
• Conclusion

Introduction to Asana

Asana is a Cloud-based Project Management Software that helps business teams manage, organize, and design their workflows. It is offered both as a SaaS platform as well as a Mobile app. Here, you don’t need to spend hours writing emails or on unproductive meetings to follow up on the project status. With Asana you can easily assign tasks to team members, set task priorities, and track project progress, keeping everyone on the same page. You can add subtasks to a project and add Task Dependencies to see what needs to be done by whom first.

You may need to organize an event at your place or write your next blog, Asana can help manage your deadlines and goals. Whether it is for personal use or if you are building a new company, you can get started right away as it is free for a team of up to 15 folks. As your business grows, you can opt for Paid Business Plans that provide more flexibility to automate your workflows with no user limit. 

Key Features of Asana

The developers at Asana have put in continuous efforts to enhance the platform by taking regular Customer Feedback. Aiming to make Projects across businesses manageable, they have come up with some of the most intuitive features:

• Remote Access: You can go online and access all your projects from any location, anytime, or from any device of your choice.
• Asana Timelines: You can set stages for your project and check the status of various tasks as things get done.
• Asana Portfolios & Workload: According to different departments, you can build separate portfolios and see an overview of each team’s performance. The Workload tab lets you see how much work is assigned to whom, allowing you to distribute responsibilities in the future carefully.
• Asana Calendar View: In a bird’s eye view, you get the list of tasks assigned to you and your team that needs to be completed on a specific due date.
• Collaboration: With each task mentioned in the Asana Calendar View, you and your team members can attach files, leave comments, and appreciate someone’s work using the Like button. 
• Customization: Based on your style, you can customize and design your workflow process. You can start building Asana Calendar, Boards, Timelines from scratch or use the templates provided in the catalogue. 
• Online Communities and Support: If you get stuck at something in Asana, there is a well-established online Asana Forum that can assist you to easily solve your queries so that you can quickly get back on track with your work.

Prerequisites

• An Asana account.
• Working knowledge of Asana.

6 Critical Aspects of Asana Calendar View

Asana Calendar is a simple and visually appealing source of information where you can see all that is planned for you and the different teams in your organization. Just at a glance, you can identify what projects are assigned to whom, what sub-tasks are high priority and the respective due dates. 

To view the Asana Calendar, do the following:

• Step 1: Log in to your Asana account. 
• Step 2: From the left side menu, select the desired project.
• Step 3: In the header, Displaying Tabs Lists, Timelines, etc, click on the Calendar Tab as shown in the Redbox.

Now, let’s dive more into the Asana Calendar View and understand the following 6 main aspects:

• Basic Calendar Options
• Set the First Day of the Week
• Create New Tasks in the Calendar
• Add Custom Fields
• Search in the Calendar
• Team Calendar

A) Basic Calendar Options

When you land on the Asana Calendar View, you will notice that the following options are available:

• Date Drop Down: Found to the right of the Date, it helps you navigate to a specific month in a year.
• Today: Click on it to jump to the present day’s tasks in the Asana Calendar.
• Colour: It provides a list of colour schemes to make your display more dynamic.
• Weekends: Click on this to show or hide Weekends in the Asana Calendar View.
• Customize: Click on it to add fields in the task details, custom rules to automate repetitive tasks, and apps to integrate with asana.
• Checkmark icon: To mark tasks complete, hover the cursor over the task and click on the tick mark.  

B) Set the First Day of the Week

In Asana Calendar, by default, the start of the week is selected automatically. To choose a specific day, follow these easy steps:

• Step 1: Click on your Profile Icon available in the top right corner.
• Step 2: Select Profile Settings from the Menu.

• Step 3: Now, the profile settings window will appear. From the horizontal menu, click on the Display tab.
• Step 4: Choose the desired day from the Drop-Down menu of the “First week of the Day” field.

C) Create New Tasks in the Calendar

To add new tasks, follow these simple steps:

• Step 1: Choose a date and click on the empty space in that Date on the Asana Calendar.
• Step 2: Type the Name of the Task and hit Enter.
• Step 3: Click on the task and a window will pop up asking you to fill in the Task Details. This includes :
  • Top Menu Options: In the header of the window, you have the following main options:
    • Like Button: Appreciate someone’s work by hitting the Like button.
    • Attachments: You can attach files related to the Task.
    • Subtasks: Shortcut to directly add Subtasks.
    • Links: Attach important Links to the Task.
  • Add Assignee: You can assign the work to a particular team member.
  • Due Date: Here, you can choose the Deadline for the task at hand.
  • Projects: Displays the project, you are viewing the Asana Calendar for. In the drop-down menu, you can set the status as Todo, Doing, or Done. 
  • Dependencies: Here you can choose which other tasks should be completed first so that the current one can start.
  • Priority: Set the task priority from Low, Medium, or High. You can edit the priority names also.
  • Status: Set the status according to the progress of the task.
  • Description: A summary of the task.
  • Add Subtask: You can further divide a task into subtasks and add assignees, set due dates, and enter comments. Use Tab + S to add subtasks quickly. 
  • Comments Box: This is a great tool for collaboration as team members can write suggestions in the comments box or ask task-related queries.

D) Add Custom Fields

To add more fields for a better task description, follow the simple steps given below:

• Step 1: Click on the Customize Button and select the Add Fields option.
• Step 2: An Add Filed window will appear. Click on the Create New tab. You can also select an existing field from the Asana Library.
• Step 3: Fill in the details such as the Field name, data type, and field options. Here, Phases has been selected as a new field.
• Step 4: Hit Create Field.

To check that the field has been added, create a new task following the steps discussed earlier. The below-shown figure depicts that a new Field “Phases” with the drop-down menu options has been successfully added.

E) Search in the Calendar

You can search through projects and their tasks in the Asana Calendar by following the simple steps:

• Step 1: Click on the Three Dots present in the right of the Customize Button.
• Step 2: From the two options that show up, click on the “Search this Project” option.

• Step 3: A Search window will now pop up on your screen. You can search by keywords, assignee, due dates and can add more options by clicking on Add Filters. Here, the search is determined using the “Drafting” Keyword.
• Step 4: Click on the Search button.

• Step 5: From the two tabs on the horizontal menu, click on the Calendar Tab. Asana Calendar View is displayed with your required task.

F) Team Calendar

You can view the schedule for the whole team in a single view through the Team Calendar. This will help you set your own tasks for the week and get an overview of the current week’s workflow.

To view the Team Calendar, follow these steps:

• Step 1: From the Left Side menu, Navigate to Teams. Select the Team for which you want to see the schedule. Here, the Engineering Team is selected from the drop-down menu.
• Step 2: Click on the Team Calendar option present below the Team Name.

For more tips and information on Asana Calendar View, visit Asana Guide.

Limitations of using Asana Calendar View

In Asana, you get all the answers for your Business Task Management challenges under one roof. Though there is sometimes a possibility where you may encounter some obstacles while using Asana:

• For a small project, managing and making reports can be done seamlessly but in the case of complex large projects, handling and preparing insightful Reports Manually in Asana can be an exhausting job.
• In-built Integration service with other platforms is very limited. You can export the Project Progress Data you see in the Asana Calendar view as a CSV file but for Real-Time Analysis you have to manually update the data in Google Sheets. 
• Currently, no scope for Data transformation is there when you are trying to sync data between different applications across the enterprise.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about the Asana Calendar View and how it can make Tracking Task Progress effortless. From the beginning, Asana provides clear and simple instructions so that you can use the platform to the fullest without any difficulties. With smart and useful Views like Kanban-based Boards, Project Timelines, and Asana Calendar View you remain aware of a Project from Start to Finish in an organized fashion. The colour-coded labelling for task priorities and due dates keeps you updated on the upcoming deadlines.

Asana is undeniably one of the most intuitive Project Management tools with a simple onboarding process. Though, when the customer base starts rising, handling large scale projects can become a cumbersome task in Asana. With the growing business, the data associated with these complex projects across all the software you use in your organization is massive. You would require to invest a significant amount of your engineering bandwidth that would Integrate, Transform and Clean this data to generate Business Reports for further analysis. All of this can be comfortably handled by a Cloud-Based ETL Tool like Hevo Data.

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Share your experience of using Asana Calendar View with us. Let us know in the comments section below!