5 things to know before choosing Asana

Here’s what you should know before choosing Asana as a work management tool for your company!

:one: Asana is not industry specific, it is generic. Don’t expect to be able to customize the interface to match your specific industry, like replace the word “task” with “order”. You’ll have to play with the cards given to you.

:two: It is purposefully simple to use. Compared to Wrike or Jira for example, you can’t customize much. But it also means you can use it right away without spending hours doing configuration.

:three:Millions of people are using it, including strong leaders in many industries. We have rarely seen anyone walk away from Asana because it did not fit their company’s needs.

:four: They have an amazing roadmap and make regular improvements. However, they don’t openly share the roadmap, and sometimes seem to go slower than the competition. But they always remain stable and bug-free. They can scale to hundreds of thousands of users in the same company.

:five: Asana was made for teams. You can use it starting with a team of two, but they don’t yet have a solo plan (yet?).

:six: from @Paul_Grobler “Asana is not something you just install and does everything for you. You have to use it to work for you.”

:seven: from @DABaden “The strength of the mobile offerings on tablet and phone which make it even better.”

:eight: from @DABaden “In addition to enhancing internal teams, it also make interaction on tasks and projects with people outside your organization easy and effective.”

:nine: from @Kazimierz_Krol “Asana cannot view tasks from multiple workspaces”

Other Asana experts, anything I should add?

For future Asana users, you can book a demo with me!

:fr: Version Française

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Asana is not something you just install and does everything for you. You have to use it to work for you.

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Bastien, I would add

  1. The strength of the mobile offerings on tablet and phone which make it even better.

  2. In addition to enhancing internal teams, it also make interaction on tasks and projects with people outside your organization easy and effective.

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I agree, that’s a really great point - the fact that I can get to the same task updates instantaneously from my work computer, laptop, iphone or android tablet is such a boon. A lot of people won’t notice that kind of thing, but the people who are spread across lots of devises or need to travel a lot without a consistent base really, really appreciate it.

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I would add that Asana cannot (still after years of requests) view tasks from multiple workspaces. This is important if you work for multiple companies that use Asana, or you would like to have teams/divisions of your company use separate workspaces. In such cases you will not be able to view all your tasks in a single dashboard. You will have to switch between workspaces all the time to see what you need to do.

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Thank you all, I updated the post.

That’s probably because 99% of users have a single workspace. I am part of about 60 workspaces, I know the feeling ^^

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1 and 2 mean: Asana is “one-size cloth, fits everybody or nobody?” Depends…

Could you explain a bit more? :slight_smile:

#4 there’s a bug in ios (phone and ipad), whenever I create a new task, the whole page goes up and I can only view the task when I refresh the page

@Kirsty_Nunez thanks for contributing, the goal of the post was not to list bugs :sweat_smile: but instead “general” things to know.

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It means that lack of customization capabilities (2) , and lack of industry-specific templates (1), make it look like an one-size jacket.
If your needs are simplistic and uni-formal, then it’s OK–> you have an “one-size-fits-everybody” situation.
If not (eg. if you require time-saving user automations, deep 3rd party integrations, trigger real-world processes rather than the childish built-in workflow scenarios) then it’s more like an “one-size-fits-nobody” situation.
I don’t agree that the existence of customization capabilities mean complexity or, vice versa, the lack of them mean start using the app right away (rapid deployment). I always prefer to have the power and the option to choose sensibly, which amount of customization to leverage, case-by-case.

My 2 cents.