Ok got an “Asana architect” question for you. Below is a sample of how we use Board View to track the progress of all our manufacturing jobs. However, since we use “tasks” for our jobs instead of “projects”, we lose out on a few features such as being able to see a Timeline view of each individual job.
So, we’re experimenting with using Projects instead of Tasks. That gives me the lovely ability to look at all the various tasks on a Timeline. And, I can multi-home those tasks into other projects that represent the various departments of design, production, etc.
However, I feel like we’re losing a HUGE advantage that “Tasks-as-jobs” gives us… and it’s this board view. How do I overcome this?
The Board view you see below is an example---- as a job moves through production, the task is moved (by the Production leaders) through the various sections, which gives everyone in the company quick ability to see 1) What stage of production every job is and 2) What’s going on in each section of Production.
There are 4 different Project boards that we use for this (Design, Engineering, Production, Installation) and the job-tasks move through those all the same way, in a linear fashion, through each section within each.
I cannot figure out how to do this by using “jobs as Projects”. Yeah sure, I can move a project from one team to another, but I don’t have the individual “sections”.
How do I do this? How can I use Job-Projects and still get that at-a-glance view of where every Project is within each of the 4 departments?
In essence, (if I understood you correctly) you are trying to have visibility of all the project life cycle through tasks, but also want the visibility of each stage which usually belongs to a different team in the lifecycle of a particular manufacturing project.
If I understood the above correctly, then my suggestion is the following:
revert to having each task being the source of truth when it comes to tracking the progress work.
create a project per team which houses all their respective tasks. So you have one project per stage in your board view
continue to using the multi home function which allow you to place tasks under certain board stages.
If you have access to rules, you can utilise the feature to create system automations that allows you to have a task immediately move from one stage to the next once a certain action is done within that task.
Doing so will give you the visibility of the board you shared int he image which has a timeline of all items between stages, and it will also give you the visibility of each stage on its own with the respective team if you want to drill down. You will therefor benefit from tasks functionalities and project functionalities.
I hope this helps and I am also sure you might get other user cases from the forum.
Hi @Matt5 I would also agree with @Rashad_Issa’s suggestion of reverting back to Tasks so you can achieve the Board view functionality but extensively use multi-home to allow for the project functionality you are looking for in addition. I often times do this on my team with Salesforce tasks where some tasks fit nicely into a particular project centered around a category of work, but I multi-home all of the Salesforce tasks across multiple projects into one master project that I use in a similar fashion to how you use your Board view to track the status of all Salesforce related work across the org. This is giving me the product feedback idea though @Rebecca_McGrath of offering a Board view for Portfolios, since they are intended to be ways to organize projects together.
That’s still unfortunately not an option. If we revert back to using Tasks for our “jobs”, I lose the ability to get an easy, 1-click Timeline view for each “job”, because you cannot get a Timeline view of the subtasks within a single task.
@Matt5 although it’s not ideal, there is a workaround that allows you to view subtasks on a timeline. You can add individual subtasks on a task to the host project directly. As a result, you can see the subtasks in Timeline view. See the screenshot attached.
Another option you could explore is keeping the jobs as projects and using Portfolios with custom fields to designate the stage (assuming you are on a Business or Enterprise subscription). It isn’t a board view and presented as more of a list but it might be a good compromise for you. Essentially you would put all of the Projects into 1 Portfolio with a custom field that designates what Stage each project is at. You can also create custom fields for the Portfolio to designate which team currently owns the job or any other things you would be interested in viewing in a rolled-up list. For more information on Portfolios and how to set them up and use there, here is the Asana Guide Article Hopefully this helps but if you have additional questions on setting up the portfolio or anything else please let us know.
