Hello,
I have a specific use case that I am hoping I will be able to get some help configuring:
My team has checklists that are completed daily for each of our clients. There are different checklists that are completed by different team members.
Currently, the way we do this is by created an Excel document each day from a template. Once all tasks on the checklist are complete for that day, it is then emailed to that team member’s manager to approve. Once the manager approves the checklist, it is then sent to an executive. (All managers send the approved checklists to the same person.)
Basically, we have three tiers:
• Account Associate - completes the tasks in the checklist
• Account Manager - approves the tasks once all the tasks are completed
• Account Executive - receives all the approved checklists from the managers
Obviously, this is a very tedious and arduous process. I am working on migrating these checklists to Asana in order to automate and simplify this process.
I have created a team called Daily Checklists where I will be storing all these checklists. I then created a project for each of the checklists. In this project, I replicated the tasks and set them to be due daily on weekdays at 5PM.
At the top of each checklist, I created a task called “Checklist Complete (For Previous Business Day)”. This “Checklist Complete” task is due daily, the weekday day after the other tasks are due.
I then created a custom column titled “Approval Stage” which has the options “Ready for Approval”, “N/A”, and blank. This “Approval Stage” is set to N/A for all tasks other than the “Checklist Complete” task, which is set to blank. I set it so that when the approval stage changes, the manager is notified. The idea is that when the account associate has marked all the tasks for that day as completed, they will then change the approval stage of the “Checklist Complete” task to “Ready for Approval”. This will then notify the manager that the checklist is ready to be reviewed, and once it is reviewed and ready to be approved, the account manager marks the “Checklist Complete” task as complete.
In order to prevent the “Checklist Complete” task from being marked as approved for future days accidentally, I marked the “Checklist Complete” task as dependent on all the other tasks. This is where my first problem arises.
Let’s say, for example, that it is currently Monday, and all the tasks are due at 5PM on today (Monday). This would imply that the “Checklist Complete” task is due tomorrow (Tuesday) so that once the Account Associate marks the task as complete by 5PM on Monday, the manager has until 5PM on Tuesday to approve these tasks. The problem is that when the account associate marks all the Monday tasks as due (which would ideally complete all the dependencies for the “Checklist Complete” task due on Tuesday) the normal tasks that are due on Tuesday at 5PM are automatically added as dependencies to the “Checklist Complete” task due on Tuesday. Therefore, there is no scenario in which all the dependencies for the “Checklist Complete” task are completed, since the next day’s tasks are added on as dependencies.
My second problem is that, after marking the approval stage to “Ready for Approval” on the “Checklist Complete” task, it does not reset to blank after marking the task as complete. Therefore, the approval stage for “Checklist Complete” will always be set to “Ready for Approval”.
Side problem: is there any way to prevent or see if someone tried changing the due date on any tasks? Right now I have setup a rule that sends a message to a Microsoft Teams channel if any due dates are changed but this could easily be turned off by anyone.
Secondary part of my project:
At the end of the month, the executive who has collected all the approved checklists, creates a scorecard of how many checklists were complete each day, and how many days were missed. How would you suggest I go about this in Asana? Is there any way to keep track of tasks that were completed past their due date? Maybe something with the new reporting feature? (Not tasks that are currently overdue, but tasks that were completed late)
I would greatly greatly appreciate any help with setting this up. If there are ways to solve the two problems I am having, that would be fantastic. However, if there is a better way to set this whole thing up, I would be willing to take that advice into account as well.
(Note that I am comfortable with coding if anything more advanced can be done to complete any of this)
I will be sure to answer any replies/suggestions quickly!
Thank you in advance!
