Client database for Asana?

I’m looking for a database that integrates with Asana to hold client data. If you have a solution I’d love to hear it. We’re a distributed team of 20 people so it needs to be a cloud solution.

The Problem:
Where do you store the client’s name, telephone numbers, web address, email address, address, name of key people from the company and their contact information and a host of other information?

Asana custom fields as the solution:
To me, this is like saying that a professional chef should simply use one of the blades on a swiss army knife for cook prep – while it may work you’re sacrificing when you shouldn’t. The simple truth is that Asana’s custom fields aren’t implemented in a way they should be for this use. If you could switch between a form and list (spreadsheet) view, show them all on one page, do complex sorting and filtering, etc. then it would make sense. As they are currently implemented, it’s a kludge at best. Furthermore, you need a one-to-many relationship so that contacts are attached to a company and projects to a company. Right now you have to create a separate project and call is a database of your clients with no way to attach these to your projects.

Background and the issue:
We’ve been using Asana as a project management tool for years and just upgraded to the Premium version but I find the program still lacking some VERY basic features. We started with Basecamp (and still use it for client communication), moved to Trello and finally to Asana but no matter which project management tool we use, they are ALL missing this one basic feature – client data.

Thoughts/Suggestions?
Anyone have a solution they’re using OTHER than Google Sheets, Excel, etc. that doesn’t cost a fortune? I tried Airtable but found it to be terrible. Ideally, a solution which could handle client communication as well would be wonderful. Most CRM applications are focused more on the sales pipe rather than taking care of current clients so the ones I’ve tested have never worked well.

Ideas anyone?

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Hi @Scrumpto

Personally, I’ve created a project named CLIENT CONTACT.

each task is a named "client name | department "where I do have custom fields for POSITION, EMAIL, PHONE, COMPANY NAME…

I do sort this project by client company name and show in the main page all of the fields that I want to filter quickly. For more complicated search , I do use advances search, which is really interesting.

To link my tasks to client contact, I do use “@contactname” in the description or comment sections. As my contact name is a task, Asana create a hyperlink. When you click on it you directly have access to your contact info.

Hope this help!

Regards

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Good morning…I put my client data in the project description box. If you go to the Edit name and description link…Under the project name is Edit Description and that is where I enter the client info. I have taught my staff that if the close the task dialog on the right hand side of the screen that the description field pops up. If you want the client data hidden from staff this won’t work, but if you are okay with that…This is an easy place to store client data within the project.

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Sebastian, that is brilliant! This can be used as a work-around for a few other Asana issues I currently have. Thank you!

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Airtable is your go to.

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One thing we missed from Basecamp Classic was the ability to create a client one time, and organize project under them. Would love if that was brought to Asana (And in BC Classic you could store their contact details etc.)

Nice work around but still is a work around and needs a bunch of other features. One being on how to bring up all open tasks or completed tasks for this “contact” or company with a click. Doing a search will not do the job.

I agree fully with @Scrumpto that having contacts linked to tasks is a basic function being overlooked.

Another feature example, it should also have the ability to send an email to the attached contact and post it in the comments section of the tasks you are working in.

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I had great hopes for Airtable but found it to be terribly lacking for teams anyone with access can accidentally delete the relationship between two tables thus breaking your database.

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We use BaseCamp Classic and yes you can have nested projects. However, there’s still no structured way of storing client data. Put more simply, you cannot pull up a list of clients, sort it, etc. There’s always a workaround in the programs but that’s like saying I have a work around for an iphone – it’s called a telephone, a stack of post it notes, a calendar on my wall, my laptop for email, etc. We need an integrated database for client data, not a kludge.

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I have not heard of AirTable I will have to look into it.

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Airtable is probably okay for one person but I found it terrible for teams (and I have well over 30 years of experience with those types of platforms). Setting up Airtable and playing with it was a waste of time for me.

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You can probably import you contact list as well.

  1. Simply export your current client list from your external application to a csv file.
  2. Open that file in Excel and modify the headings to match your custom fields in Asana.
  3. Save the file as a csv file.
  4. Back up your existing projects by exporting them as csv files. This is just insurance in case you were out partying the night before and you screw something up.
  5. Then import the client list csv file to the Client project in Asana. IMPORTANT This will overwrite existing data in this project. So it is important that you import the file to the correct project (your client project) and that you do not have any existing data in the client project yet. If you already have data in the project the procedure is a bit more complicated but it can be done.
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@Michael_Lawrence1, Your post is very helpful, but I just want to mention that I don’t think importing into a project can ever overwrite any existing tasks; it only creates new tasks. Just fyi…

Thanks,

Larry

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Good to know. Thanks.

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Yes definitely not happening :pray:

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I’ve asked for it years ago and to date it’s still not being considered. I was told it’s out of scope for tool like asana, that it is not on the roadmap. integration of contact management systems, like pipedrive, with asana doesn’t keep the relationship to the client, but it would be great if it was client / contact centric.
Our workaround has been to use name of client and employee / code of the employee inside the task, so when I search, I find them all, completed or incomplete. I can then create searches and save them (under favorites) . But again, it’s super limited. Without doing this, we wouldn’t be able to use Asana going forward, as there’s no linking.
Also, asana search feature has been advanced quite a bit over the years and is super fast, so using certain codes in task names, task description, subtask or notes section allows the search to work and find those items. So we use that whenever it makes sense.

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This was a great suggestion. Thanks so much! I took it a step further and instead of adding their name in the description or comment section (which is not visible in list view), I added the customer as a dependency, that way connecting the two.
Not sure if that works for everyone, but it seems to work for our team …

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As someone who has used multiple CRMs that included everything but the kitchen sink, I decided to cut costs and try out Asana back in March. It’s been very effective with all the different integrations and connections. As for creating customers, I have a “Client Project” where all my clients reside. Also created different vendor projects and cross index the clients so I can keep track of that information (or issues when they arise actually with vendors like Comcast). I created a standard business customer task that I can duplicate when I get a new customer. I attached a screen shot. I just duplicate and I simply fill out the information. The invoice item will become a hyperlink to my invoicing app for that client (along with any other notes I need to make). Everything related to the customer goes below in the sub tasks.

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This is a good idea, always does the trick.

I am new to Asana and highly visual; any chance you can share a sample of what that actually looks like? I’m not following along, but others apparently think its a brilliant solution. Are you saying that the Client Contact folder has multiple tasks and each task is a different client? If so, are the email, phone etc subtasks? Where do you put each of your clients “@contactname” in the description or comment section of the original Client Contact project?