I’m a consultant who needs to record inquiries from potential or existing client. I used Excel then MS Access to manage both my client info and inquiries. Because the relationship between client and inquiries is “one to many”, so it was pretty manageable in these 2 software.
However, after I switched to Asana, obviously because of many fancy features of it, I found it difficult to do the same thing.
The first thing, I’m expecting a way to have a drop down list to include all existing client that I entered in an Excel sheet which is somehow connected to Asana, so when I create a task, as an inquiry, I don’t have to type my client’s name.
Second, I would feel easier if, after I select a name of client, his/her information would pop up in other fields, phone#, address, etc. This way I don’t have to manually enter client info when I’m creating multiple inquiries/tasks for this client.
I’m using Asana for now, as tool for project management. I know there must be a better way to do CRM. The expectation I mentioned should probably be accomplished by integrating a software other than Excel. But I would like to explore if there’s chance to make it happen by what I currently have. Do you have any good advise?
Thanks for bringing this up. I always like to push a platform to do things a bit more than it is intended.
I can think of couple of workarounds - I say workarounds because I believe Asana is not built for such smooth CRM features. However, do let me know what you think.
First thing: I don’t believe there is a feature where if you select something from a drop down menu, other fields get populated (though this should be a cool feature to have). You can though play with rules.
Consider having your clients and their contact details populated and static in one project. The tasks you create would then be housed / multi homed in your ‘to do’ project and the project relevant to that customer.
You could also consider (and this purely depends of the number of clients you are dealing with - if you have to many, then this suggestion is obsolete) if the number is manageable, you can create a rule where by each time you select an option from a drop down menu, a comment is added to the task. These rules can be built and you can customise what each comment is - you can build the comment to include phone, lead, email, etc… of a certain client. As I said? This is a lengthy workaround.
My question would be: what is it you are trying to achieve? Are these simply tasks to do for a client? Or is it something else?
If it is to ensure you get things done for a particular client, then I would opt for creating each client as a project and multi- housing the actions you require to do.
I hope this helps & perhaps other forum members could bring in their user cases too!
