Hi,
We have just started using geckoboard to display information on our factory floor and have tied that in with screencloud to display a few other things like our instagram feed.
Unfortunately asana has no integrations with either of these and so getting asana to also display on the screen is proving difficult. The only way i can find to do it so far is to log in to asana on chrome and use a tab cycle plug in to move between a screencloud preview window and asana. This isn’t ideal as it looks clunky, take sme out of F11 full screen and screencloud works better just running through its stand alone app.
Does anyone have any creative ideas or case studies of similar problems/solutions?
1 Like
I did some research and it looks like you would have to create a custom solution between screencloud and Asana [which is possible]. I also researched IFTTT and Zapier and neither had an out-of-the-box solution. However, I do think it might be easier than you think. If it was me, I would consult with either @Bastien_Siebman or @Phil_Seeman as they both are experts in this sort of thing.
1 Like
@Bastien_Siebman @Phil_Seeman
Hi Guys, would either of you be able to point me in the right direction?
My solution https://three-dots.io/ could create an always up-to-date version of a project that you can integrate in your board (if they accept webviews?). Maybe @Mark_Hudson has also an idea!
1 Like
Hi Rob,
I just took a quick look as I wasn’t familiar with Geckoboard or Screencloud. It looks to me like what would be needed is to build an integration with Geckoboard; they have integrations with other project managers like Trello, Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker so it certainly seems reasonable to have one for Asana. It could be done as a custom integration for you as they have a developer API, or you could contact Geckoboard and ask them what would be involved in having them build an integration for Asana (given the popularity of Asana, I’m surprised they don’t have one already and I can’t imagine you’d be the first person to ask them about it).
Bastien or I could likely help you with a custom integration if you wanted to go that route, although if I were you I would inquire with Geckoboard first.
2 Likes
Hi both,
Thanks for replying so quickly!
Yes, it is frustrating they dont have an integration with asana already. I have contacted Gecko and screencloud but both sounded like it wouldn’t be anything that would be on their agendas in the near future.
I’ve just tried to use three-dots, as that does sound ideal. But it failed and returned a 502 error, it also has a message at the top saying “For performance reasons, the automatic update of pages is no longer available” - which i am guessing could cause me issues with what i am trying to achieve?
Thanks for the heads up. You are the second one with this issue, and I can’t reproduce 
I disabled automatic updates but I can activate them on a per-account basis… I’ll keep you posted.
1 Like
I might seem sudden but was actually in my head for a while: I am discontinuing three-dots. More info on three-dots.io
@Rob_McGrail @Todd_Heflin @Phil_Seeman The Screenful add-on for Asana was built for this purpose. You can get all sorts of views of your Asana data on a display screen. And it also works with Screencloud (uhh, the screenshots there are pretty outdated but you get the idea…).
2 Likes
Thanks for letting me know @Bastien_Siebman, shame it didn’t quite workout as it does really seem like a useful tool.
@Sami_Linnanvuo Thanks. Yeah i did look at this but it didn’t work very well for me - and is yet another subscription i would need to purchase! It only told me things were “past due” and not when they were actually due. It also wouldn’t load my main project which i track all my orders through the factory on as it was too large for it. It’s certainly the best option I’ve found so far, but still falls a bit short of ideal.
@Rob_McGrail our dashboard can certainly show when tasks are due, not only when they’re past due. Perhaps you just didn’t find this feature?
Regarding the project that was too large - I’m really sorry to hear about that. We need to keep some hard limit on the number of tasks that we pull from the Asana API, otherwise the initial loading of dashboard might take ages. However, we can certainly increase that limit on request. Had you contacted our support this problem would have been solved for you.
@Sami_Linnanvuo I ran out of time on the trial so i guess i didn’t get enough time to play around. I would be interested in another look at it if that is the case.
I think the main problem is our works order tracking project has years of completed tasks as it will never have an end date. each new order is just added. I guess the best solution would be for screenful to not grab any “completed” orders - but i’m not sure if this is possible. Then the size of the project may be manageable? - or is there a way to mass remove any completed orders from an asana project? i have started doing it manually by selecting 30 or 40 at a time and removing - but we will have 1000’s of completed tasks sitting there.
I don’t think it’s a problem even if there are thousands of tasks. They will come out of the API and they can all be included in the analytics. After all, it’s quite normal to have an ongoing project that never ends.
Regarding the due dates, there is a setting in the Team Status view, which allows you to select whether you want to display the timestamp of a last state change, or the due date of a task. You can also sort by due date so that the tasks with the closest due date are shown first.
Okay, i will try and have another play with it this week.
I had it showing items as past due - but they were just that “past due” not the date the actual stated date they became overdue. and from memory the timestamp was very messy and included minutes and seconds etc. Just ended up looking like a string of code that isn’t ideal for display purposes.
@Rob_McGrail just tested it with my Asana board and didn’t see any messy timestamps. Let us know at support@screenful.com if you still see them.
The due date logic works so that if the due date is in the future, we shown the number of days until the due date. If due date is today, we show a green label with the text “Today”. If the due date is in the past we show red label with text “Overdue”. Let me know if you have suggestions for improvements.
