How to store operating procedures SOP's in Asana

[@jessicamergen1954]

I am learning so much from your videos, thank you for keeping this great content coming! I realized as I was watching how I was already sort of doing this, but how it could be so much better. I am still new to Asana, and didn't know about task templates! Great stuff. Thank you!

[@minor-co]

Thanks, glad the videos are useful Jessica.

[@magedojo]

Just one comment. Using your blog post checklist as an example, I find it's better to link to an external document (e.g. Drive, Dropbox, whatever) in the description. The reason being is this content may be used across different task or project templates. Say you have 5 different templates that require you to create a blog post. If this content is maintained in task or subtask descriptions, you now have 5 different places to update that content if a process changes or needs to be updated for whatever reason. If they are all linked to the same document, you have one central place to update, and anything that references that will have the current process detail. Just my 2 cents. This is of course a matter of preference and largely dictated around how much SOPs need to be shared across task templates. Outside of that, brilliant as usual. I've gotten tons of great ideas, use cases, best practice advice, etc from your channel Paul. Thanks so much!

[@minor-co]

Great insight, I think you're 100% right and that's a great situation where an external document would be better.

[@duaitami]

Great insight!!!

[@nzoutofoffice]

OMG - this is exactly what I need in my biz - I'm super excited to get everything set up now! [there goes my weekend!]

[@minor-co]

Glad this was useful 😀

[@RalphErvin]

Another awesome video. I've been working on this, but you provided some best practices that I hadn't considered and will now implement. Thanks!

[@minor-co]

Happy to help and thanks for the support as always Ralph 👍

[@apostolis_23]

Great video and tutorial Paul! Cheers and greetings from Greece 🇬🇷

[@minor-co]

Glad I could help 😀

[@morganschumann]

Can SOPs be set up using 'workflows' instead in order to apply groupings of tasks to a project?

[@minor-co]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. But yes you can create workflows to apply rules to tasks so as you make updates or changes to your tasks, the rules can create new subtasks or make other changes. So in a sense, your process is built out using rules.

[@lovemakerbgo5394]

Thanks Paul for the video, nice job. Though i think this is more like a project managment mechanism or change management mechanism when you create template for certain repeating tasks such as new video, new blog post, new social media photo etc... What i though this video shows me is real efficient storage of SOPs - something that store the defined steps one by one (aka bullet list etc) and its folder logic will be very nice(i.e. the way how you get to certain SOP via multiple layers of folders). Do you know if something like that exist?

[@minor-co]

Thanks for the feedback. The way I see it, the subtasks are the defined steps (aka bullet points) that you are referring to.

[@DustinGlendinning]

We started doing this in our company, but we made a separate project for our SOPs. For now, we just @ mention them to link to them from other active projects. Is there an easy way to make the tasks in the SOP project task templates that appear throughout our asana account?

[@minor-co]

I'm afraid not Dustin as a task template can only exist in one project. An alternative is to do what you're doing and have all task templates in a master project that you then move to the relevant project after you've created the actual task.

[@richardpwillan]

Question - can you create a section template? 1 task won't do it (as multiple operators logic etc) and if I have loads of projects everywhere that's super messy

[@minor-co]

I'm afraid not. You could use a series of task templates maybe?

[@AshantyDarling]

How do you do the video of you going through the process ?

[@minor-co]

I use an app called CleanShot, I have a video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYiuoqGjp55ojKM&pp=ygULY2xlYW5zaG90IHg%3D

[@kelleylinn143]

VERY HELPFUL! Thank you for what you do! Is there a way for Asana to send links back from completed tasks in apps that are linked to asana? Like can we set up folders in Dropbox that will, when filled, update links and completions of tasks into Asana?

[@minor-co]

Thanks. Hm, I don't think this would be possible I'm afraid.

[@Jayhay1ooo]

I can not understand, why da hell they did not just add a feature like documents instead of tasks. It makes no sense, to use TASKs for SOPs. Someone can hook them and finish the tasks haha. Is there any possibility to fix this? This makes no sense to me..

[@minor-co]

This is why I rewcommend using a task template as the SOP. That way, you can reuse the template multiple times every time you need to do the work.