Asana ( https://www.asana.com) is a web-based and mobile app meant to help teams stay organized, track every task at hand and collaborate with one another from one tool and at the same time.
Team members can create assignments or get assigned tasks by their boss; deadlines can be specified and smartly break all tasks to fit in place before executing the tasks.
Chatting is also available for easier communication flow and feedback on a particular task directly with the involved teams.
Task layout is also another great option that comes with Asana. For instance, you can choose either to list your projects, then add sections that in turn have tasks underneath them or you can use ‘board layouts / kanban’ to create columns, which have cards that contain assigned tasked. This is important for one to visualize their weekly plan outs, and moving around tasks under different days of a week.
Organizing tasks assigned to you is possible to. For instance, when you get assigned to specific task – they are added to your private ‘my task’ space, which are then listed as to-do list items. The list is sorted in sections based on the project timeline, and you can view your Today, Upcoming and Due tasks later on the week.
Asana is quite a helpful tool for small business that want to stay organized and keep a clean track record of what they do, who they do it with, how they do it.
Outstanding Features of Asana
⦁ Workload Management: Assigning tasks to the under-worked team members while relieving the overloaded ones is a possibility with asana. Also, multi-select bulk task reschedule can be done by using a simple drag and drop. Additionally, you can set up maximum weekly amount of work to be handled by an individual member. In the event there’s an over capacity – the track graph of the member turns red for easier adjustment.⦁ Timeline: Since there’s a deadline on every project, this feature helps you figure out how every piece of your project plan falls into place to ensure no deadlines are missed. This helps highlight any issues that need fixing before executing a project, and you get a sneak peek of how the entire project will progress, how long it will take to handle combined tasks without conflicting. The timeline plan can then be shared with the team members, to have everyone updated. Also, Asana allows you to breakdown larger tasks into subtasks to ensure you have a better manageable or doable task within a short-term basis. You could also outsource some of the tasks to the rest of the team to help beat the deadline!
⦁ Automation: For specific tasks that need to be done regularly, with automation means you can set rules that run these without monitoring. For instance a form that automatically assigns incoming tasks, instead of sharing assignments for each member. Also, if there’s a deadline that has been extended, this feature auto-shifts all tasks for a streamlined experience.
⦁ Remote Work: You don’t need to be on the field to collaborate and manage your project. Asana allows teams to work altogether in one place, give feedback on the situations on the ground and give response to requests made. Work can also be organized from the “High Priority” to the “least priority”.
Basic Asana for your small business
The free/basic version of Asana simply works as the premium one; only that this is limited upto 15 people. Should your business be in need of increased member limits or require special administrator capabilities then you could upgrade to premium version.
Asana is an excellent choice when it comes to high-quality task management, furthermore it is action-oriented, easy to use and encourages the users to stay organized. Below are some of the ways it can prove helpful to your small business.
Integration: For one, Asana is cloud based, meaning speedy and flexible to access on any device at any time. Also, the ability to integrate with 100+ apps means, tracking your work and adding important information to a particular project from all other apps that you rely on every day, makes it a plus.
You can manage interactions with emails, calendars, files, customers feedback etc
Some of these third-party include: Gmail, Google Drive, dropbox, mailchimp, hubspot and Adobe Creative Studios.
Free – No pay. Free version of asana woks great for small businesses due to the packed features meant for easy workflow on projects of all types. For one, you won’t need to pay to use the asana as a beginner – meaning freedom while exploring the tool.
Meetings: Plan one-on-one meetings in advance, organize all agendas. Additionally, you could use asana to brainstorm – think of it as a digital whiteboard for all team members to pour ideas and pick the most actionable ones. To select what idea tops the board, the members can use a “thumbs-up” button to vote for the most likeable idea. Once an idea is settled, it can be assigned to a proper member for them to transform it into solution straightaway. Additionally, you can share sensitive info on private chats with pre-selected members.
Product Marketing Launch: From the start of your campaign to the final stage and managing to-do lists; with Asana its easier to map out and organize in-detail what needs to be done to accomplish your product launching exercise. This saves time and ensures no important steps are missed out.
Combined with ‘priority’ feature – it’s easier to communicate to the entire team on where their attention should be focused till a given task is done; before embarking on the next.
If there’s something at risk, say a task that needs feedback, or approval and has been pending for awhile – the system will issue an alert and all this is done autonomous without having to manually compile it. Furthermore, with “comment” function it’s easier to keep tabs on the entire team directly and real-time.
For instance, if you are running a marketing event, you can keep track on: the entire launch event’s budget, hotel rooms reservations and travels, invite list, caterers, speakers, A/V tests, Presentations loading, etc
