How to Manage Projects with Asana

“Did you have a chance to look at that email?”

Unsure of where to go next, my pointer hovered over my inbox.

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The email my boss was referring to was a collateral piece she wanted my opinion on. I know I’d received it, but who sent it? One of the designers? Did my boss forward it? My mind went blank.

After digging through various inbox folders, I finally laid eyes on the most recent version, and we were able to continue our conversation.

If that sounds familiar, then you know the frustration of using email as a project management and collaboration tool. So stop already.

Author Robert Fritz teaches that every moment you realize you are unhappy or frustrated with a situation is “your point of power”, for now you have a clear Picture of how you don’t want things to be. Imagine the exact opposite of that frustrating situation and there you have the makings of your vision. - The Path

I imagined a tool where conversations existed in one place, instead of scattered across a dozen “reply all” emails. But does such a tool exist?

Of course it does. But the problem wasn’t finding one as much as choosing from the dozens available.

I’d used Asana a few years back and upon revisiting it, I was pleasantly surprised with the improvements they’d made. So here’s an inside look at how our team of two marketers, two designers, a copywriter, a sales director, my boss and myself use it to collaborate on marketing projects.

Setting Up Asana

The first step was deciding on the organizational structure. Asana uses the following hierarchy:

1. Workspaces
2. Projects
3. Tasks
4. Sub Tasks

Workspaces

Asana’s free version allows 15 members per Workspace. Each Workspace is a self-contained unit, so Projects and Tasks from one Workspace won’t appear in another.

This is important because if you have too many Workspaces, you’ll have to jump back and forth between each to manage all your projects. So rather than creating multiple Workspaces, I made a single Workspace called “Marketing.”

Projects

Next, I added our current projects. These appear on the left sidebar:

Setting up an inbound campaign requires the same steps every time. So I created a reusable Project named “Template” that included each of those steps as Tasks.

You duplicate the template by choosing “Use as Template (Copy Project)” from the Project menu drop down.

Tasks and Sub Tasks

Within each Project, you have the ability to create Tasks and Sub Tasks. In the next section, I’ll use a real world example to show you how that works.

Managing Campaigns with Asana

The following Project was a campaign for a webinar we offered in April. It involved five people and multiple steps. Here’s how we set it up in Asana:

You’ll notice completed Tasks are grayed out. Asana defaults to showing incomplete tasks only. But by changing the view to “All Tasks,” I’m able to see both.

On the right, you can see which team member each Task is assigned to, along with the due date.

You can also view a graph of the Project’s progress and notify your team if it’s off track.

Managing Assets with Asana

Most campaigns require assets like an ebook, CTA button or infographic. Asana integrates with Dropbox, Google Drive and Box, so attaching files from a shared folder in one of these services simplifies asset management.

Unlike images, files like PowerPoint or Word don’t display a preview. So unless you keep them in a shared Box, Drive or Dropbox folder, you’ll have to download the attached file to view it.

Using a shared folder has the added advantage of showing the most recent version.

Managing Team Members with Asana

I can view each team member’s Tasks by clicking on their icon:

This helps keep our weekly meeting to around 15 minutes, which leads into the next item.

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by John Tabita via SitePoint