Asana Reporting: Key Charts, Customizations & Interactions Simplified 101

Often business executives struggle to enforce visibility and transparency among the teams. When they need to know about the progress of a project or the performance of a department, they may need to have many discussions and pass information up and down the chain. This is not only inconvenient and ineffective, but it also frequently leads to a lack of clarity, disinformation, and a lot of lost time. 

Asana is a popular Project Management Software that many teams use to keep track of their tasks. It acknowledges that both large and small projects can become too complicated, resulting in team inefficiencies. Asana’s simplicity, adaptability, and versatility make project management a breeze.

In this article, you will gain information about Asana Reporting. You will also gain a holistic understanding of Project Management Applications, Asana, its key features, Asana Workflow, and the key features of Asana Reporting. Read along to find out in-depth information about Asana Reporting. 

Table of Contents

• Understanding Project Management Applications
• Introduction to Asana
  • Key Features of Asana
    • Remote Access
    • Asana Timelines
    • Asana Portfolios & Workload
    • Asana Calendar View
    • Collaboration
    • Customization
    • Online Communities & Support
• Understanding Asana Workflow
  • Project
  • Workshop
  • Reports
• Understanding Asana Reporting
  • Asana Reporting: Dashboard
  • Asana Reporting: Status
  • Asana Reporting: Goals
  • Asana Reporting: Advanced Research
  • Asana Reporting: Universal Reporting
• Conclusion

Understanding Project Management Applications

Project Management Software is an application that aids an individual or a team in efficiently planning and managing their projects and tasks in an organization. Its goal is to make the Workflow of a team working on the same project easier. It is appropriate for small startup teams, large seasoned teams, and even numerous distinct teams that must collaborate to build a project. The program enables you to assign and reassign tasks, conveniently track deadlines to ensure they are met, and, of course, control the entire process from a unified management location.

The software is ideal for both workers and executives. It aids in Project Management, Team Objectives, and Work Synchronization. An ideal Project Management Software suite includes a variety of tools for allocating resources, controlling output, and managing workloads.

Project Management Software is more than just Task Management. It provides a comprehensive, larger-scale solution. It allows you to lead the team, monitor document efficiency, and counterbalance projects, whereas Task Management Software splits components within the same project, defines individual efforts, allows for self-management, and assigns due dates.

The Workflow is automated using modern Project Management Software. For example, it alerts all parties involved when a specific phase is completed and it is time to assign new tasks.

Introduction to Asana

Asana is a Cloud-based Project Management Software that helps business teams manage, organize, and design their Workflow. 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.

You may need to organize an event at your place or write your next blog, Asana can help manage your deadlines and goals. When you manage your work in Asana, you have the freedom to organize your projects in a way that is best for you and your team. This helps your team focus on the most important tasks with less effort. 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. 

Asana runs on the Work Graph Data Model which provides a fully connected, accurate, and up-to-date map of the work happening in your organization. It represents all the units of work such as tasks, ideas, goals, agendas, relevant conversations, files and status information, etc.

For further information about Asana, you can follow the Official Asana Documentation on Features.

Key Features of Asana

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

• Remote Access
• Asana Timelines
• Asana Portfolios & Workload
• Asana Calendar View
• Collaboration
• Customization
• Online Communities & Support

1) Remote Access

You can go online and access all your projects from any location, anytime, and from any device of your choice.

2) Asana Timelines

Through Asana Timeline, you can set stages for your project and check the status of various tasks as things get done.

3) 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 efficiently.

4) Asana Calendar View

In Asana Calendar View, you get the list of tasks assigned to you and your team that needs to be completed on a specific due date in a bird’s eye view.

5) 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. 

6) 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 catalog. 

7) Online Communities and Support

If you get stuck at something in Asana, there is a well-established online Asana Community Forum that can assist you to easily solve your queries so that you can quickly get back on track with your work. It also provides other resources such as Asana Help where you can get instructions from an Asana expert. You can also access webinars, training, and other courses to increase your knowledge about Asana. It also provides Asana Guide through which you can access documentation on how to leverage Asana to the optimum potential.

Asana Workflow

Users may use the Asana App to design processes, track teams, and work more effectively, keeping everyone on the same page. Some critical parts of the workflow are:

• Project
• Workshop
• Reports

1) Project

A Project is a collection of tasks designed to accomplish a larger or other multiple purposes. 

2) Workshop

A Workspace is a group of team members working on a Project together and having access to tasks and communications. 

3) Reports

The Asana app has a Dashboard that aids with Goal Setting, Tracking, and Management. You can use milestones and portfolios to track progress and organize and manage key Projects.

Asana Reporting

With Asana’s Reporting features, you can keep track of Project updates and send update reminders to your team as needed. You can also use Asana to define objectives for your team and track their progress simultaneously. 

Some of the key features that can help you in reporting are:

• Asana Reporting: Dashboard
• Asana Reporting: Status
• Asana Reporting: Goals
• Asana Reporting: Advanced Search
• Asana Reporting: Universal Reporting

1) Dashboard

The Dashboard tab is a place to look for data to obtain a fast overview of how the Project is going. This functionality is accessible in Asana’s Premium tiers (Premium, Business, and Enterprise). You can access it by clicking on the “Reporting” option on the left navigation bar.

It is fully customizable, allowing you to visualize and report on any Project data. Data can be used to Monitor Team Objectives, Enhance Performance, Spot Patterns, Make Forecasts, and more. The Asana Dashboard aids strategic decision-making by showing your company’s most vital information in real-time, eliminating the need for further, unwanted research. 

The Dashboard tab also has charts that load automatically when you first open the page. You can also include personalized charts and numeric roll-ups. Dashboards will update the charts automatically every time you visit the tab or reload the website, ensuring that the data is always current.

Some of the charts options available in Dashboard are:

• Bar Chart: It helps to view tasks by section or custom field to identify inefficiencies and potential bottlenecks in your team’s workflow.
• Donut Chart: It helps to get a fast overview of jobs that are complete, unfinished, or late, as well as Milestones and Approvals.
• Lollipop Chart: It will help you to see how your team’s workload is allocated.
• Burnup Chart: It will keep track of how quickly your team finishes tasks over time.
• Numeric Roll-ups: It will add up any numeric custom fields, such as budgets, expenses, or projected hours.

Using these charts in Reports can help users in:

• Workflow Management and simplification.
• Taking responsibility and providing clarification.
• Managing our data and turning it into useful information.
• Sending a more powerful message in a shorter amount of time.

2) Status

By consolidating all of your project information in one place, Status makes it simple to keep all of your cross-functional stakeholders in the loop. You can keep everyone up-to-date on the status of your Project using Status, without having to schedule regular follow-up meetings or shifting through different tools for updates and information. For using this feature, you will need to select the areas you wish to display, then use Highlights and Charts to graphically convey critical Project information, such as completed tasks, relevant milestones, and so on. 

3) Goals

Goals is a versatile Goal-tracking feature that gives team leaders and executives a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) for Defining, Tracking, and Managing corporate goals on the same platform where their employees are working. Asana allows business and enterprise users to set two types of goals:

• Company Goals: Longer-term Goals connected to achieving your organization’s mission are known as company goals.
• Team Goals: Shorter-term Goals that lead to the mission-oriented objectives of your firm.

Goals are accessible to everyone in your business in any instance, so everyone knows what the company’s goals are at any given time. This also means you won’t have to spend numerous hours re-aligning and re-communicating important objectives if any changes take place. Instead, you can quickly update your goals and pivot your organisation to focus on high-value tasks.

4) Advanced Search

While you can easily focus on metrics inside a single Project using Dashboards and Status, you’ll need Advanced Search Reports to report on activities and data across several Projects. In other words, in Asana, the easiest approach to obtain detailed information is to use Advanced Search. You can use Advanced Search to find tasks depending on who they are assigned to, which project they are in, and when they are due. After you’ve completed an Advanced Search, you can save the results as a Report. Every time you access the saved search, it will get immediately updated. 

Listed below are some instances of searches to save:

• Work you need to finish: Looks for assignments you’ve made for others that aren’t finished and are due in the next three days.
• Tasks at risks: Looks for tasks due today or tomorrow that have a “high priority” custom field. It’s ideal for project managers to maintain momentum across several projects.
• Blocked approvals: Looks for tasks with an “available for review” custom field and give comments to assignees to help them unblock work that is awaiting approval.
• Work I’ve completed this quarter: Look for jobs you’ve been assigned that were finished within a certain time frame. It’s a great way for anybody to assess their accomplishments or keep their résumé up to date.

5) Universal Reporting

This Premium Plan feature allows you to consume and translate data in a visual, easy-to-understand style. It’s simple to organize your teams around clear objectives and prioritize the proper work as well as to receive an accurate view of what’s going on in your organization using Universal Reporting. Business employees can use Dashboard views to combine visualizations to receive a rapid overview of the metrics that matter most to them.

With Universal Reporting, you can have up-to-date Dashboards across teams and Projects that don’t require human updation or maintenance, including information on workloads, budget, scheduling, and more.

Conclusion

The reporting features of Asana enable users to make sense of the project overview and track stats in a visually appealing and comprehensive way. In this article, you have learned about Asana Reporting and its key features. This article also provided information on Project Management Applications, Asana, its key features and Workflow.

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