We really do like Asana, however as a marketing agency, it’s becoming harder to justify not having a client-facing interface of your work, so you don’t need to replicate/API/interface/choose-your-poison another layer of integration with another piece of software to show what seems pretty basic business or task information.
With that in mind, does anybody know a workaround to share a live task report without having a user logged in? We are using the trick of assigning “imaginary” client-users so we can track client tasks (approval/need to review/requirements steps/etc.) while not giving access to our entire project conversations and the “sausage making” process so to say.
I now have this great real-time Asana native report generated from our real-time Asana data with no visible way of sharing it externally (please don’t mention the ability to manually export CSV since this would need to be automated to really be useful). We could explore some zapier integration working in Asana, but having some sort of constant updating of the same set of data based on various events is pretty cumbersome to implement.
Is there any sort of 3rd party ways of completing this objective: am I missing something crucial?
In terms of data representation/sharing, the new dashboard feature was a huge letdown and only seem to be nice visual gimmicks without any actionable items for us. We’re toilers and makers of work, we need lists with powerful sorting/filtering abilities including custom fields, not trending & trendy pie charts-and maybe that’s not the target audience for Asana? For example, not seeing the “share link of timeline/dashboard” with external audiences prioritized over the dashboards is kind of a letdown for us…the opposite of what we need.
Alternatives like Monday seem to propose a lot more flexibility and power when it comes down to that aspect-any thoughts?
2 Likes
Hi @steph3, thanks for reaching out to the Asana Community 
I’ve gone ahead and moved your post to the usecases category to make it more visible for users looking to share their suggestions 
I hope you don’t mind!
Thank you Rebecca-although what I’d really like is any sort of ways to make that Report sharing happen! Oh well.
You might be interested in the Asana2GO integration - you can take a look here for more info:
I hope this helps!
1 Like
Can you provide the exact type of data you are looking for in terms of external reporting? Are you looking a way for the Client to interact with the tasks?
1 Like
Hello There @Ashley_Shuler ,
We use subtasks to track clients to-dos such as:
- review URL or mockup,
- approve said URL or mockup,
- provide specs/requirements.,
- provide documents, etc.
This is a very fluid list that keeps changing on a daily basis.
Often–clients ask us: I’m not sure what I owe you, or am I stopping the process? And the point is to provide a “live” report of what’s needed on their side at any point in time-sample included below. Pretty simple in a way, but no way to share this externally and automatically (this is a Search Results by the way)
1 Like
Makes perfect sense. I’m sure you’ve done this already -invite the client to a separate project with just their tasks?
I totally get what you are trying to do and it helps to streamline communication with the client by having the tasks centralized.
1 Like
Dear Rebecca, thank you for the reference and yes, we did check into Asana 2 Go, but no integration nor automation are possible unless I’m missing something?
1 Like
@Ashley_Shuler , I wanted to thank you for your suggestion. You helped us identify a workaround that may well work in our situation…I took your suggestions of adding all the subtasks to an additional project called “Project Client Side”, the trick was to have the clients invited to the client side project different than the assignees, so that we can filter the view while preventing any visibility/access to the comments and discussion on the parent tasks.
We’re essentially using subtasks as single action items, while obstructing any additional information through the restricted permission since invited users are different than assigned users.
I wish this process was more automated since subtasks have to be manually added to the client side project, but it’s an acceptable way to have a client side center with specific action items and no access to additional project information…
1 Like
WHOO HOOO @steph3 ! That is fantastic. This sounds like a great documented process for future clients.
Yes! My only fear is that Asana starts to disallow floating users names with non-confirmed email addresses, and then the all system crumbles… 
@steph3 , Thanks for posting this. This looks like a great workaround. However, we are a little confused about two items. Could you possibly elaborate?
-
Why do you use the fake client emails on subtasks? Is there a reason you don’t use the actual emails of the individuals to whom the subtasks are assigned? Is this done so that your client project manager can parse info for client team and avoid too many emails to said clients? We don’t understand why one would leave out the assignees’ emails as they would not be able to receive notifications for tasks or comments.
-
We don’t follow your description of the bottom set of client subtasks. How or why do you differentiate those tasks with no comments from the others?
Thanks in advance!
Dan
1 Like
