Asana FAQs
The most common questions we get about Asana...
Where do I find Asana tasks I have assigned?
Great question!
Well this depends on your plan; if you’re a Premium, Business or Enterprise user looking for tasks that you have previously assigned to others in Asana, you have a few options:
- You can use the search field in the top right - there's a saved search that lives there.
- There is now also a widget you can add to the Home screen called 'Tasks I've assigned' - this is really useful because it has three tabs: Upcoming, Overdue and Completed.
For those of you with a Free plan you could click this link it’s a bit of a back door to incomplete tasks by assignee.
Shh, don’t tell anyone! 😎
Asana’s ‘Portfolios’ is a feature that allows you to manage and view multiple projects in one place at a high level.
So if, for example, you have a number of products launching, a number of current clients or a number of events, you can pull them together in one place.
The Portfolio view allows you to track the status of each project (fed by the project's most recent Status Update), the progress of each project as a percentage (based on tasks complete), a project's due date or date range, a project's priority - you can also click on any project to access a Project overview where you have further details and options.
Portfolios also give you access to resource planning functionality with Asana Workload.
Portfolios are only available to users on the Asana Business or Enterprise Plans.
How can I import tasks from Excel, Google Docs or CSV into Asana?
Good question - importing projects into Asana from Excel, CSV or Google Docs is super-simple - you just need to ensure you follow a few basic rules:
- Tasks must be in column A
- Date format must be in US format MM-DD-YYYY
- Assignees need to be uploaded by their email address, as recorded in Asana
We actually have a brief tutorial on our YouTube channel - here's a link to it! We will follow up with a more detailed upload video in due course - so please subscribe and click that notification bell!
Subtasks are just like a normal task - except they belong to a 'parent' task.
Subtasks can be useful when a task has many components that need to be completed, they can be added to the parent task, and different team members can be assigned to them.
However, subtasks have some unusual characteristics - by default they do not belong directly to the project that their parent task belongs to.
IMPORTANT: I always urge people to use subtasks only when necessary and to try to never create subtasks of existing subtasks, you can very quickly find yourself in a confusing situation of multi-layered subtask hell!
Absolutely, you can open up the task you want to move, click ‘Add to project’ and select the project you want to move it to - you can then hover over the project you want to remove it from and click on the x that appears alongside it.
Sometimes you might decide that a task should belong to multiple projects - but when you do this there is still only one task so be aware that comments will appear in both projects and if you complete it, it completes in both projects!
Yes - depending on your plan!
If you're on a paid plan each project allows you to customise the fields so they are relevant to your specific project.
You can also create Organisation-wide fields that can be selected in multiple projects.
Since the end of 2022 you've been able to customise your 'My Tasks' view too...
To add a custom field you can
- do it within a project by clicking the + sign on the far right of the row that shows the field names
- click Customise on the right of a project and click 'Add Custom Field'
- create a custom field when uploading a project from a CSV
Any questions, just shout!
Can I use Asana for free? Yes absolutely! Asana has a free plan for 15 users!
You won’t have access to all the functionality you’d get in Asana Premium, Business or Enterprise but the free version is still a great tool!
Well yes - but only if you create a private workspace.
But you can still create a private project in a team…
Or create your own private team…
If you want to create a private workspace you can
- Click on your photo (or initials) on the top right of the screen
- Click My Settings
- Click on the Account tab
- Scroll to the bottom and click on Create New Workspace.
Enjoy!
A LOT.
The official list can be found at https://asana.com/apps but don’t be limited by it!
You can also connect to other tools and apps using the API and your own coders or using tools like Zapier, Unito, Tray.io (which FlowFlows can support you with)...
You can add a priority field to any project in Asana.
When in the chosen project, simply click on the + in the column, to 'add a field', then select 'choose from library' and here you can add in Asana’s custom Priority field.
However, this only has three options, so you may choose to create your own instead - this is done in the same way as creating a custom field.
Asana Goals allows you to mirror any of your team or company goals in Asana - you can configure Asana goals to be updated automatically by completion of tasks and milestones or to be updated manually.
Goals are only available to users on the Asana Business or Enterprise Plans.
How you will ‘manage’ users will depend on whether you are operating a ‘workspace or an organisation - and your role within Asana.
In a Workspace, if you have access to the Admin Console, you can create Members or Limited Access Members.
In an Organisation, if you have access to the Admin console you can decide whether they have the following types of access:
- Super Admin: A super admin has access to all settings, including organization-wide security controls.
- Admin: An admin has access to the admin console, can manage members and team permissions.
- Member: A member does not have access to the admin console, but has access to the premium features in Asana.
Access is then provided downwards from team > project > task - so if you give someone team access they will have access to all projects (public to the team) and all tasks within those projects. If you provide project access (but not team access) they can access that project and its tasks. If you provide task access the individual will only have access to those tasks.
There are also user management options within each project, you can decide whether each member has edit access or comment only access…
All rules run instantaneously, except for the ‘Due Date is Approaching’ and ‘Task is Overdue’ triggers which run around midnight each night.
People often misunderstand the way that these two triggers work - they fire ONLY when a task becomes due or overdue - so they will not run for ALL overdue tasks.
In a similar way a rule relating to tasks that are due in a week will not run for tasks that are due in less than (or more than) a week, just those that are due in a week at the time the rule runs.
It depends on what you mean; you can track time in time tracking tools like Harvest or Everhour within Asana.
Asana have also just released Estimated Time and Actual Time fields which require you to record the time spent on each activity…
Asana time tracking is only available to users on the Asana Business or Enterprise Plans.
Well this depends on your plan; Premium, Business and Enterprise plan users can simply click into the search box and select ‘Recently Completed Tasks’ and voila - they are displayed.
Free plan users are less fortunate - these poor souls can look at tasks they’ve completed either by selecting ‘Completed Tasks’ in 'My Tasks' (if they were assigned to them prior to completion) , or by looking at individual project - or they can click this cheeky little link I created to show completed tasks by their completion date - you are welcome!
When you are in the 'Home' screen, you can click on the customise button to change the colour of your Asana background, as well as adding, and moving around, different widgets to show you snapshots of different projects and tasks on the home page.
Please note that some widgets are only available on paid plans.
You used to be able to do into Settings > Display and change the background image across all pages, but it currently only affects the views in a Project’s ‘Board’, ‘Files’, and ‘Messages’ screens…
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