When to use (and not use) 'Projects' in Asana

[@TheBikeFather]

I have a web design agency, and I'm coming from Trello. I used to have multiple boards for each project + an additional board called Project Tracker, where I would just list all the projects to see where we are: to-do, progress, pending, complete, etc... But this would feel a bit disjointed. So now that I'm transitioning back to Asana, I think I will take your advice on setting up clients projects as Tasks instead and that will allow me to connect these 2 pieces together. Basically have a main project Board style, with the traditional boards like In progress, pending, complete, etc.. and then each task will be a website that we build. The websites we build only take a few weeks, so I don't need all the extra bells and whistles that an actual project gives me. Quite excited about this.

[@minor-co]

I would also consider getting Business so you can create a portfolio showing the status of all your client projects on a dashboard.

[@SkyCharter]

Absolutely perfect intro to Asana projects. Now I have incentive to use Asana for more projects than just "Podcast." Thanks!!

[@minor-co]

Thanks 😀

[@dothedamnwork]

I'm just getting started with Asana and, naturally, watching a lot of videos on it. This one was right on time to help me understand how I can use projects and tasks. I appreciate you putting this out.

[@minor-co]

Thanks, glad I could help :)

[@DaveLopezMixing]

Great tip, Paul. I have lots of small "projects" that could easily be sub-tasks within large projects. Thanks!

[@minor-co]

You're welcome 😀

[@DrewHanna-qj2gv]

Great video. Would love to see a follow-up going deeper into the use of managing external emails through Asana. Example would be would be an email from a vendor that requires a quick internal review and which generates a reply. Asana has to be more useful than forwarding an email losing track of it.

[@minor-co]

There are some email extensions for Gmail and Outlook which you may find more useful for inputting tasks into Asana.

[@AustinCrawford-or7kq]

Hey Paul great video! My company just recently got started with Asana and I can already tell we will run into an issue with overcrowding sooner rather than later. Two biggest issues is a lot of daily tasks are going unnoticed because they aren't necessarily associated with a project that we have set up. The other issue is I am not sure what reporting function to provide to the executive team between admin console level reporting, dashboards, and portfolios. I like the idea of consolidating smaller work into task/subtask and using a "department" style project to contain them all, but then I run into the issue of subtasks not attaching themselves to the project by default and getting unrecognized in portfolio workload views.

[@minor-co]

Hi Austin, glad the video was useful. It may be worth having a 'Misc' project for random tasks that don't belong in any other project so they don't get forgotten about. For the executive level, normally Portfolios provide the most useful view as it gives you an overview of the status of projects, % completion and team capacity.

[@NathanElectricalEmbassy]

Great video Ive been wondering where a good reference point for projects vs tasks with subtasks should be and you nailed it looking forward to the next video in the playlist!! :))

[@minor-co]

Thanks, glad this was useful!

[@LJRebhan]

This is fantastic information. Clear and concise. I have started numerous Asana (how-to) videos and quickly find myself popping out after a few minutes, as it didn't address my needs. This is the first one I watched from beginning to end! I did like AND subscribe ;-) Would you please let me know the following...Am I able to use Asana to manage onboarding new clients, assign those clients to different team members and then see in a calendar view, (all) the numerous clients we're currently onboarding and have some indication as to which client(s) is assigned to each team member?

[@minor-co]

Thanks, I'm glad the video was useful. Yes, each client would likely be a project. The project owner would be the person on your team who's looking after the client. You can then use a Portfolio to see all the client projects you have on the go at once.

[@rachellipsy850]

I’m just starting to use Asana for work and looking around for tutorial videos (since I’m not a fan of their official ones). This was great! One small comment though, not about the material, is that seeing a lot of hand motions on screen was a bit distracting. I’m a hand-talker too, so I understand the impulse, but it made it difficult for me to pay attention to what you were saying (unlike in-person interactions, where it’s not distracting).

[@minor-co]

Thanks for the feedback Rachel. To be honest, I'll probably keep talking this was as it's what feels most natural to me and I like the videos to feel as genuine and natural as possible. But I appreciate the candid feedback.

[@JackieJeter]

Excellent idea and help! Thank you 😊

[@minor-co]

Thanks Jackie!

[@melindakoth6869]

Tab N game changer 😛

[@minor-co]

Yeah, nice hidden secret there.

[@bhartirajput8552]

Really love your videos- super helpful

[@minor-co]

Thanks, glad I could help!

[@bhartirajput8552]

Just sent you a message thru your website

[@triciahagerty8410]

Great videos Paul! My question as a complete newbie considering this app: Are the tasks linked? If you are in a project and there are subtasks and tasks, can you click on the task and assign it? Can you click on it and it will go back to your My Tasks board?

[@minor-co]

That's right. You can assign tasks to people on your team and they'll show on that users My Tasks page.

[@davidlin3279]

Really helpful❤

[@minor-co]

Thanks 🙏

[@TheBikeFather]

great video. Do you actually use Asana for the Sales CRM, instead of something like Pipedrive, OR was this just an example that is possible?

[@minor-co]

I use Pipedrive (this was just an example)

[@NatalieCarter-lf7rj]

Hi Paul this is great i have a conference coming up & i want to sort the timeline can i have one prjects called Events & then the specific conference inside of that & also have many others or only 1 per project? If it is just 1 project i find there will be too many projects on the side

[@minor-co]

It depends. If there's a small amount of work to manage, you may be able to get away with having one task per event in your master project. But if there are a lot of tasks to set up and manage the event, you may find an entire project is best.

[@verytalljim]

Can you clarify- should every task be assigned to a "project" (even if it's a non-project like your "Admin & Accounting")? What's the disadvantage of having "orphan" tasks that are not in a project at all? What's the best practice here?

[@minor-co]

I believe it's best to have them in a project as you'll have more visibility of them. Otherwise they're just in your My Tasks.

[@alexandernunes7943]

Hey Paul, any advice on what type of Asana setup you would use for a quarterly project/initiative? Love the videos!

[@minor-co]

Hi Alexander, if it's one project per quarter, I guess I would just create one project per quarter. I think this would be better than one ongoing project with recurring tasks. You could even use a template to make setting up the next project/quarter even easier.

[@markm417]

If you try to use this product you will find that it's extremely expensive to get it to do what you expect. Free, cheap, and pretty expensive versions do almost nothing at all. Prices are misleading, they are for each person who accesses the product. So real costs, even in a small company, are 10 or 20 times quoted.

[@minor-co]

Sorry to hear Asana didn't work out for you.

[@LifeMax305]

Thank you the videos. Go to setting up our Asana. I want to use this program to track jobsites with multiple permits. Should I set up a Project called Jobsites then set up a task for each individual permit? Then under the permit set up subtasks with the checklists of items pending to obtain each permit? What do you suggest?

[@minor-co]

Yes, that's probably how I would do it 👍

[@bernardzitzer]

Hey @Paul, I really appreciate the in-depth walk-through. I've seen others use "Teams" instead of "Projects "as a major differentiator between Projects. The Feature "Teams" is then used as another meta-category. What's your take on it? Do you make that differentiation as well? When would you advise for or against it? Your help is highly appreciated. Best

[@minor-co]

Absolutely and yes this can work well for some people e.g. where the team represents a client (sort of like a project) and then projects are used to categorise the work.

[@bernardzitzer]

@@minor-co Thanks! It's like moving everything up on step on the ladder. It frees up some resources and creates new possibilities. I appreciate you getting back to me so quickly. New sub here. Cheers!

[@harumianahi]

Hi Paul, love your work, thank you for your videos! I was testing multi level nested portfolio system in Asana but am running into issues with the final reporting piece. Any suggestions?

[@minor-co]

What issues are you having exactly?

[@KingCoCo]

Is the mobile version (iPad) as content rich as the desktop version? Great and helpful video btw thanks 🙏🏾

[@minor-co]

Asana is definitely better on the web but you can still do a lot on the iPad version.

[@AlejandroChavarria-EVG]

do you have any videos highlighting when to use teams vs when to use projects?

[@minor-co]

Not on KZbin but this is something I discuss in our course: minorco.com/consulting/asana-consulting/

[@AlejandroChavarria-EVG]

@@minor-co great, i signed up. thank you

[@farheenkawchali1079]

How to get that underline in subsection , example like planning ?

[@minor-co]

You can create a section using the Tab + N shortcut.

[@iAnguel]

Interesting, would you for example setup "Website" as a team or as a project?

[@minor-co]

Probably a project.

[@HandsOnRealEstate]

If I have multiple businesses, can I make each business a project ?

[@minor-co]

Yes you could. Or it may make more sense to have each business as a separate organisation/workspace.

[@AayushGupta-p1n]

How to track status of multiple projects within a team in one view ?

[@minor-co]

For this, you should use a Portfolio, not a Team.

[@w-r-a-p-t-o-r]

Hello Paul, love your videos they are a great help. I am looking into Asana for my IT Department. I would like to set up different teams in ASANA for each area for example : Application & Development, Cyber Security, Infrastructure etc…. I would like them to run and manage their own projects within those team. I want to have an IT Roadmap with all major projects from each team is there a way we can mark specific projects within those team to create a higher level Roadmap that changes based on the projects in those teams? Thanks Andrew

[@minor-co]

Thanks Andrew. It sounds like you need the Business plan so you can use Portfolios. This lets you create a dashboard showing the status of multiple projects in one view.

[@w-r-a-p-t-o-r]

@@minor-co thanks Paul, that is the plan that we have in place. I have now discovered portfolios this looks like it will do what I am looking for 👍🏻

[@Bontelucci]

Hi Paul, Thank you for the video! I am wondering if a "New Product Launch" should be broken in to different projects under a team? I followed a different video that showed how to implement a scrum style management into Asana (Backlog, Stories, To Do, In Progress etc) but it had all the Tasks in one project. My issue is they aren't organized in to pieces of the project (eg. Dashboard Design or Member Area), rather Tasks are associated with each single "Story", but the stories aren't related to a phase. Looking at your example, where each phase "Planning" "Research" etc is a different board possibly makes more sense to my brain. Any thoughts?

[@minor-co]

There's no right or wrong way to use Asana. Some people use Scrum, others take a different approach. In my mind, if you're working on a big project like a new product launch, it makes sense to use an entire project to manage all the tasks, milestones and different phases of the project (i.e. sections)

[@Bontelucci]

@@minor-co Thank you for the reply. Your input is super appreciated. I’m testing the waters and trying it out splitting it up but does make it a bit hard to track. Thanks so much!!

[@ryanjohnston87]

Hey Paul. I'm a mortgage lender and am looking to use Asana for client management. I currently have my larger projects set up (Leads/Prospects, Pre-Approved Clients, Loans in Process, etc.), Is it possible to move a full section from one project to another? For example, if a Pre-approved client needs to be moved to "Loans in Process", would I be able to do this?

[@minor-co]

Yes, if you hold the shift key and select all tasks in the section, you can bulk move them to a new project.

[@jaimeewilson1249]

Hi Paul, I own a social media agency which manages different monthly deliverables for multiple clients. We use Asana only internally for to-do list management - no clients have access to our asana. Would you recommend setting each client 'to-do list' up as a 'team' or 'project'? Appreciate your advice :)

[@minor-co]

I'd recommend having each client as a project. Unless you have multiple projects per client, in which case I'd use Teams for the client.

[@Maloma12]

Another great video. I did find the dark-mode Asana a little more difficult to see than in your white-mode videos. 🌿M

[@minor-co]

Thanks for the feedback 👍

[@mhss]

How did you get dark mode on asana?

[@minor-co]

In your settings, go to 'Display' and you'll see the option there.