[App Review] For the Love of Asana


01.07.16

Driving, restructuring your bill reminders on your calendar, and organizing your to do lists; What do all of these things have in common? They’re all vying for the ultimate award for “most boring things on Earth”. And while I know that that’s a pretty hefty claim, few things are more boring than trying to reorganize and restructure your to do list.

But likewise, few things are as important. If you’re using the wrong tool to help you stay on top of all the little tasks life throws at you, you could end up in serious trouble. Especially in our industry, where you’re juggling the projects and tasks and interests of multiple clients, we put a lot of time (and I mean a LOT of time) into finding the perfect time and project management tool.

All of this to say, when we finally stumbled onto Asana, it rocked our freaking world, man. So without further ado, it’s high time we review the very tool we use (almost) ceaselessly.

Relationship status = “Shared Calendar”

Screen Shot 2016 01 08 At 3 13 49 Pm

This is our number 1 favorite feature, and to be frank, if we didn’t have access to this feature, we would be under our desks with coffee and Netflix because we would be toast. Within the shared calendar, you can assign tasks to colleagues, duplicate tasks to yourself, assign sub tasks within a given project, and set due dates for everything. This can also allow you to take a week-long snapshot, a project-by-project snapshot--or if you’re feeling a little cagey--a personal snapshot where you can literally “heart” all the goodies you have coming your way.

Set Phasers to Project Charts

Projectcharts

Here’s where you get to see how amazing your whole team is, because let’s face it, we should have that reminder in our back pocket at all hours. View project progress, assign due dates, and ask the project lead about the status. Plus, it’s super pretty.

Everything is Attachable

Attachable

With a left-to-right view pane inside any given project, you can see a list of upcoming General content on the left (including who it’s assigned to and when it’s due), and project details on the right. If you so choose, you can attach from a Dropbox, Box, Google Drive integration or just throw in a screenshot from your desktop. This feature is everything when tossing about multiple clients and working through an internal content strategy.

Need a Recurring Task? They've Got It:

Recurring Tasks

Asana actually does have the ability to create recurring tasks! In the date picker, select the task to repeat and then give it the correct parameters by which it should repeat. Do you need your task monthly? Weekly? Daily? It's got the capability for it.

The only thing-- and I mean the one and only thing-- I wish we had within the Asana app (since it does everything else up to cooking your lunch for you) is an option to add a recurring task. You can certainly duplicate, copy, turn a task into a long form project, move a task from one project to another or set as a template. But as a content manager, so many little things like “Social Media Post - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday” must be mapped out on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and it would be the loveliest if we could just make those recurring. In the meantime, copying the task as is stands will just have to do.

All in all, Asana is an amazing app and we would be lost without it here at Masonry HQ. So if I had to put a grade to a brand, I’d give them a full A.


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