A better Dashboard for high level overview

Well I already voted at the top but what’s this “submit feedback” option you’re referring to? Where do I do that?

Submit feedback = create a post here. You’re doing the right thing :slight_smile:

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We need this feature, we are more then a 1000 employ’s who want to use ASANA, if you are able to get the subproject working a lot of people will be very happy!

Thank you,

and don’t forget to focus on your TARGet!

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I would support tagging projects. My consultancy manages several trade associations that are each composed of committees. Until now, committees have each been a project, but that’s getting unwieldy. It would be great to be able to tag different projects as belonging to its appropriate committee and for the project tags to cascade automatically onto all the tasks in the project (maybe have a toggle control on that as it might not always be useful, depending how the project tag was used).

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@Alexis my entire team though we love Asana and we just signed up for a year premium and want to expand is now looking to cut bait and go to Jira. We want to stay on Asana, but the dashboard reporting doesn’t work to present to execs per the requests above in this thread…any updates on customizing dashboards? We can have custom fields in tasks, why can’t we create a dashboard to report on what is important to us by fields?

Also, we are using scrum methodology with sprints. We need to be able to see burn down, not how many uncompleted tasks are left. One idea was to create one sprint board by our two week timeframe and duplicate tasks from projects in that board, but we agreed that was extra work for us to work around the limitations we are running into. Any recommendations or best practices?

Thanks,
C

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@Claude No update yet on customizing dashboards, but our team is aware of the reuqest. And here are a few threads where folks discuss the questions you’ve asked!

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Hey sorry if this is repetitive but has anyone found a way to share the dashboard? I am looking to cast it on a large screen on our shop floor. I am trying to avoid tying up a subscription just for this use.
Thanks

I wholeheartedly agree with the posts on this thread. My team desperately needs:

Auto-dashboards by team would be great. Right now each team member has to KNOW about each new project and then manually add them each week. This isn’t feasible, has too much opportunity for user error, and leads to incomplete dashboards (which is leading to people not using dashboards).

The Ability to Have multiple dashboards would also be useful. As the CEO, I technically want to know EVERY project and be able to glance through them. That said, I also have projects I’m specifically responsible for. To be able to create (and share) dashboards beyond my own personal one would be very useful!

The Ability to see what projects are (or are not) in a dashboard. Right now new projects get created all the time (each time a new client signs up with us). I have no way of knowing when they are created (or that I need to add them). Moreover, sometimes we’re too busy to do so. Hence either adding new projects (or catching up after falling behind) requires a manual compare and audit. With hundreds of projects this gets time consuming and isn’t feasible.

We have literally been trying to figure out ways to script work around solutions for these issues. Not having these features makes dashboards impractical to use for us. Asana, please make this a priority!

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I am using Power BI integrated with Asana to solve this problem.
This will give me a better insight on what project in the team, filtered by assignee. Its task, due date. How many projects/tasks each person has? Were they completed? Which ones are not. How many? And so on.

It’s not perfect yet as I’m not familiar with Power BI. I’m planning to do it in Tableau, instead.

But for quick fix at the moment, using Power BI will do.

Hello, @Alexis !

First, I’m a HUGE Asana fan.

That said, my team wants to find a solution that will work for the following teams:

  • Product Development / Documentation
  • Marketing (ultimately to be run similar to an agency)
  • Software Development (currently considering JIRA)

I’m the guy sort of heading the search for “the perfect tool” for everyone. Our wishlist includes:

  • Flexible Scheduling Tool – Projects should not have to be locked into a specific date. Project schedulers should have the ability to shift dates.
  • Customizable Reports – Reports for Senior Leadership Team (SLT) should be high-level and quickly identify milestones and overall program status. Individuals closer to the program should be able to have access to reporting to more detailed information.
  • Representation of all Business Units – Project Management solution will be used for New Product Introductions (NPI). Project Managers should be able to represent all components including Hardware Dev, Software Dev, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Sales Enablement, Channel Readiness, Sales etc.
  • Integration into Product Management Solutions – Today the Software Development team uses TeamForge to track their Agile Development processes but some discussion has occurred with regards to transitioning to JIRA. Integration is important to avoid duplicated steps.
  • Project Budgeting – Being able to estimate project costs and continue adjustments as project timelines change and deliverables added.
  • Time/Billing Tracking – Required for Professional Services projects.
  • Resource Planning – Planning for resources including employees, equipment, facilities
  • Role Bases Users – Some users should only have rights to view while others should have rights to change.
  • Mobile Access – Users should be able to access remotely from their mobile devices with an optimized view.

Now, I realize that Asana can do many of these things, but it’s mostly at a basic level… if at all. A more robust dashboard that includes more detail beyond just the number of tasks completed vs. incomplete would be huge for us. Also, our team depends heavily on vendors for parts and materials that can cause several delays in our workflow. We currently do not have insight into which vendor is causing delays, how often and what are the implications of the delays. Having the ability to see a target start date vs. an actual start date (as well as end date) would provide us the insight we need into problem areas. I cannot tell you how many times as a marketing project manager that I’ve had to change a product launch date, but we have no record of changes, because the “stories” can easily be deleted. Not to mention that the stories become cluttered over time.

I say all of this, because there are several functionalities of Asana that are head and shoulders better than any other software tool I’ve researched. The task management capability is outstanding. What I want to know is, does Asana plan to build out more of these robust features that have been talked about on this Community, that will make it easier for teams to truly have the insight they need without having to build workarounds or leave Asana? I can tell you I’ve been testing JIRA, Mavenlink, Workzone, Wrike, ProjectPlace, Trello, Podio, etc. and they all are excellent at certain things, but are either too complex for day-to-day uses or not built for all types of departments. Asana is SO easy to use, customize and get things done. I REALLY hope that they have plans to build out more enterprise functionalities that will enable Asana to truly dominate this space.

Phew! That was a data dump… sorry. Just my two cents after frustratingly searching for a tool for my organization for months, watching demo after demo. At the end of the day, I just love Asana and wish my team could too. Sadly, we’ll probably end up with something else.

Thanks for listening,
Dan

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@Dan_Olson welcome to the club!!! :slight_smile:

HAHAHA it’s almost funny at this point to see yet ANOTHER thread requesting/complaining about the same thing that we all want! Hopefully Asana peep’s will take notice that this is a continual problem that affects all kinds of businesses across the world (and here I was just thinking it was me being OCD/picky lol).

Dan, I researched a ton of options and the one I like best that I hope Asana copies a better version of this view made by BetterWorks:

Here’s of video of how they work it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlYKcztWJUE. Is this what you’re getting at specifically? I know it is for me and my company and I can’t wait until Asana makes their version of this!

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@Alexis how do I edit my post? I don’t always spell check when I’m in a rush and/or forget some words lol :wink: The sentence right above the picture I uploaded should say “Dan, I” not “Dan researched” :frowning:

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@Sam_Leahey, thank you for your feedback and suggestion. I’ll have to look into BetterWorks and get back to you. I’m seriously getting ready to throw in the towel on a PM tool search, but my boss told me she would throw it back at me… haha! I guess I have to continue on! :slight_smile:

Just click the pencil on your post.

I don’t have that option it seems. Maybe it’s a member thing? I see it on other people’s but not on mine?

@Dan_Olson lol don’t throw in the towel just yet!!! :slight_smile: We just have to wait for Asana to make moves on this and then you and I will be good to go! :wink:

#StayStrong

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@Sam_Leahey, so BetterWorks is a neat concept. It doesn’t solve our (my organization) problems, but it does provide more insight.

Here’s an example of some features we liked from the demos I’ve experienced:

ProjectPlace - Gantt Chart:

We liked that we could see the task dependencies and the implications of changing dates all on one screen. Another nice feature is that you could edit the task without leaving the Gantt Chart. This is ideal for our product & software development team to be able to see what could happen if delays occur.

ProjectPlace Dashboards:

This is a project dashboard, but my team expressed interest in something similar to this, but for a team/department. Asana could do something similar:

  • Instead of “Conversations”, it could be “Inbox”.
  • “Project Steps” could be a list of projects within that Team.
  • “Ongoing Activities” could be a list of tasks “Due within the next 7 days” for the team (this could also be cool if it could be filtered)
  • “Dashboard” could show how many projects are “On Track (green)”, “In Trouble (yellow)”, “On Hold (red)”.

Obviously, these are rough examples, but could make Asana really useful to Director-level management to get a high level overview for each department.

Workzone - Views:

Our team liked the ability to see the dependencies, start dates/end dates, status and the duration. This way, if they project is delayed, they can quickly see if there are areas that can be cut down.

Again, the biggest issue we’ve had is not having insight into why a project was delayed, trends for causing delays, and the implications of each delay. There are other examples, but I hope this helps give an idea of what we could use for our team.

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@Dan_Olson That was a great post on specifications. Having used collaborative software for more than 10 years, you are hitting a bull eye between Business Intelligence Reporting and day to day execution. I used Workzone for many years. It was a decent package but mixed buy in and little irritants like no re-occurring tasks.

One of the key items is going to be “buy in” and I have found that simplicity rules the day. We all know that Asana needs more management tools such as resource allocation… I looked at Betterworks and it looks like it is in the class of KPI monitoring software along with Rhythm Software and Cascade.

https://www.executestrategy.net/strategy-planning-software/ (Cascade)

Software Pricing (Rhythm Software).

These are great for KPI monitoring but when it comes to day to day workflow they do not seem to do the job that Asana does.

  1. Most of your reporting as you know is going to have to come out of Saved Favorites in Advanced Searches. Hard copy reports are not there yet, albeit see my post Report Writer For Asana-It Can Be Done - #5 by mkoehler. This can also be used for BI reporting.

  2. File management and revision capabilities will need to come through integration with box, dropbox or google drive to be robust.

  3. Many of your specs can be accomplished at least at a basic level, some with custom fields. Not sure robust project cost accounting is available, but have not seen them in others either.

  4. I use the built in Harvest billing software, and I know there is another one. I like Harvest.

  5. Asana has a pretty robust API, and it may be that you would have to build some things using their API. That is why I built Sendana Outlook To Asana - Sendana - #54.
    You would be surprised how easy it is to get somethings built with the API using Upwork programmers.

  6. Based on a public seminar they are working hard to get user defined custom templates out and some form of visualizing resource management.

  7. If you rely on task dependencies a lot, we are begging that Waiting On be searchable in Advanced Searches. They are certainly aware of this.

  8. Some Integrations are actually quite powerful, (most are basic). Have you looked at Instagaant. Instagantt + Asana: Create custom charts • Asana Nicely done.

So the bottom line from my perspective is can you aggregate enough management information, and other integrations that use the API, things like Zapier etc to create what you need. If all of this existed, there would not be the degree of frustration you are feeling in finding the perfect solution. If your organization is large enough to afford some Asana consulting, @Todd_Cavanaugh runs such an organization and is very versed. I believe @paulminors does some also. It might be worth spending some time with them to discuss your needs and how they could be accommodated. I believe @Todd_Cavanaugh has Asana clients all across the country.

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#AWESOME
response @Dan_Olson and @James_Carl!!!

@Dan_Olson Those visuals look great and have some the same task dependencies/alignment features I was loving about the BetterWorks visuals, BUT, you’ve got me thinking I should look into other things besides BW now because I can see how your specific examples would NOT be accomplished by BetterWorks!!! Thanks so much for sharing those!

@James_Carl awesome articulation. You bring up your historical perspective a lot which is cool because I feel like I’m getting a huge granular insight just by reading your posts!!! Keep’em coming for us less experienced peep’s :wink: When you mentioned “BW is in the class of KPI monitoring software” is that a subcategory in your mind of the “Business Intelligence Reporting” group you mentioned above? I’m trying to wrap my mind around the different layers/categories of software needed for business activities and prior to your comment I might be guilty of just lumping all software into only 2 categories - task management (Asana, trello, etc) and organization management (BW, Gantt, etc). Do I have that wrong? Where does the BW, Rhythm, Cascade group you mentioned fit into the categories of “Business Intelligence Reporting” and “Day to Day Execution” you mentioned?

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@James_Carl, thank you very much. This is very helpful. I’ll review the links you provided ASAP. The hard thing for me is that some of our team already tried Asana and have already written it off. If I can convince the team to revisit this (that’s a big if), these links may help us build something that would work.

On a side note, you are absolutely right about the “buy in”. It’s so true.

Thanks again!

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