I 'm completely new to Asana. I just joined a marketing team who has just begun to use it as their main project management tool and as such have no strict procedures, policies, or templates currently in use. In short, we are learning Asana together but as a newbie PM, I’m trying to take a point role in helping the team develop a better workflow. Currently, the process kicks off when a requester fills out a pre-made form. The form becomes a “task” in Asana with a link to the original creative brief. This task is used as a kind of ticketing system for requests so they can be vetted and then assigned to the proper team members. Now here is the issue, we have some assigned team members using the task ticket as their “project” and creating their own sub-tasks there so they can keep track of the steps. This method has been discouraged for a number of reasons but we are currently at a loss for how to “convert” the intake ticket to a project with task steps. If we use the advised method, of opening the ticket and turning it into a project (the dream is to incorporate templated steps here), we are having difficulty tying the intake ticket to the project. Some team members just a need a birds-eye view of the incoming task but other team members need a more detailed list view…and we need both to be easily visible. In addition, we have very high volume of creative briefs coming in constantly so we really need help keeping track of both projects as a whole as well as where individual projects stand in the process (ie in legal review? in need of copy review? etc)
Hi @Suzy_Brunink-dunn, welcome to the Asana Community Forum!
From your message, I understand you are following this process at the moment:
- The process kicks off when a requester fills out a pre-made form
- The form becomes a “task” in Asana with a link to the original creative brief
- This task is used as a kind of ticketing system for requests so they can be vetted and then assigned to the proper team members → Have you considered adding a Rule that automatically add the list of subtasks you need and assign them to the right assignee? This will help you templatize the process and always keep the same subtasks instead of creating a project per request.
As it stands, it’s currently not possible to convert a task to a project and use a Template. You would need to manually convert each task to a project and customize your project. I would recommend keeping all the information in one task.
You can link custom fields from your form to your project to add additional information to the tasks: https://asana.com/guide/help/premium/custom-fields
Lastly, if you need the request to appear in different projects, you can add the task to different projects: https://asana.com/guide/videos/multi-home
We have a tip from @Mike_Tammaro that could be helpful for your workflow. You can have a look here → IT Ticketing Using Forms and Rules
I hope this helps!
@Emily_Roman Thanks for your reply! Your comments are helpful but I’m still having difficulty understanding how we can improve our key issue…which is keeping track of task SUBTASKS. Our form automatically creates a “ticket” or task which is then manually reviewed. We cannot automate this part because we have to review brief specs etc to assure they are correct before assigning to creative.
Now for the important part…before the ticket/task can even be assigned to a creative, it must go through a number of steps, including copy review, legal review, translation, localization etc. It is helpful for PMs to understand where the brief is in the process so we have been relying on subtasks within the main task but that has proven unwieldy. You cannot track subtasks and we have encountered numerous issues and instances where subtasks have fallen thru the cracks.
It is very possible I am not understanding how to set up the workflow properly but could someone lay out the steps for tracking a task as a whole but also all the little steps within the task?
THANK-YOU!
I’m going to reply to my own comment to provide some clarity. I had a bit of an “a-ha” moment while thinking through this workflow.
I think this is where the issue lies: On the portfolio level we have our team, Demand Gen. On the project level we have the ticket type, e.g. banners, video etc. Then on the task level we have each creative brief request. I think the problem lies in our structure.
We should make the portfolio our ticket type and within that we will have each creative brief request which will be a project. With that structure we can create tasks in the project instead of our current method which is creating sub-tasks in our task. WHEW. Confusing until I break it down in my head like this:
Portfolio = the filing cabinet
Project = a folder in the filing cabinet
Task = the individual documents in each folder
Sub-task = the individual comments on each document
Do I have that right?
Hi Suzy! I am in the same boat right now. How did this method work out for you? Was that structure beneficial?
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