Help with task outside asana

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Hi, I run many projects at the same time.
My problem is centralizing all the task from different software.

1.When I start a new project all the tasks, subtask are going into asana. Everything is fine here
2.My actual work is done in excel,word,onenote etc

When I start my project ,I use asana to I know where to start .

PROBLEM:When I am in ecxel ,word ,onenote I put notes,mini-tasks,follows-up in the file I’m currently in .
Example:When I 'm in onenote and I’m working on manufacturers search and an idea pop-up like"Call Tom and asks about price difference between metal and plastic."
So It is an actual tasks, but I put it inside onenote ,because this way I will know what is this note all about. When I scroll onenote I will find what to do . My onenote file will be called manufacturers.

So it works good,until you switch documnets or projects. By the time you come back to it, it will be one week and I still haven’t called factory about those details.

I really hate to duplicate every single task I put in onenote and then in asana. This would also require going back to asana and mark as complete.

How do you handle your work flow and tasks?

Thank you.

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@john4000 You sound like a perfect candidate for my Send To Asana Outlook add-in. I believe that all Microsoft Products you mentioned allow you to create an email from the product. You then could sent to the project of your choice in Asana and add as new Task and keep as a new Task or drag into an existing task as a sub-task. Having said that I don’t believe that OneNote or Excel lend themselves to being task managers. I used them as such over 15 years ago and it was difficult. Asana on the other hand is very robust for this. If you want to be a beta-tester, just send me an email.

1 Like
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Hi,Jcarl ,

First I wanna say, that I dont use excel or onenote as a task manager .I use it as a work platform.

It’s is true that I could send it with outlook add-in to asana from any MS soft ,but it is alot of work ,as I may have 50 mini-tasks a day.

It will also create duplicates in asana and excel or onenote.
I need to have it in excel and onenote, becasue it makes it easier for me to connect that specific mini-tasks to the reasrch that I’m doing.

Example: I may have 50 pages of structures reasrch about a specific manufacturer.
Every page will have 3-4 minitasks. Example–call Tom about prici diference in metal and plastic . That will be on page 14. As I scroll throu the pages I can easily identify mini-tasks, as they have direferen color, and thouse that are not finished are in RED.

How do other people work on projects?

I cant’ image putting every single minitask, even 2 min task in asana,but on the other hand once I close the documnet,I have dificulty to follow up on the mini-tasks ,as thye are hiddin from the view.

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@john4000 I hope you did not think I was trying to push anything. One other thought I have is along this line. I use Evernote instead of OneNote and Evernote has a unique URL for every note. I use to use OneNote extensively also, and I seem to recall that this has the same feature. Would it make any sense to just copy and past the URL of various pages into an Asana single task? Then when you click the URL, I believe it will open your OneNote page. It does this for me with Evernote. That way you would not have to create extensive subtasks but have a link to your pages. Just a thought.

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Or you could just email right from One Note to X@mail.asana.com

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@john4000

My reason for using Asana is to have a tool which consolidates the tasks of my team. This transition to Asana will only be effective if, and only if, all tasks are in Asana. This means that it should be considered as the central hub of all our processes, a single source of truth. Having a separate tool is disastrous and very inefficient.

This transition is somewhat a journey for us. It didn’t happen overnight. It took us months before our use of Asana stabilized. And honestly, the transition is still on going. A lot of other processes, workflows, and excel checklists are still being integrated in Asana.

Now, I understand that it’s easy to use OneNote and Excel for note taking. They are fully featured (e.g. text formatting, tables, images, graphs, etc.) However, if, in the end, your goal is to track all tasks easily, and you are burdened with the fact that tasks are scattered across different tools, then my advice to you is to slowly convert those documents that you use into Asana tasks/projects. For the other features that you need, perhaps there are other alternatives available. Know that there are so many tools which can be integrated with Asana.

…

One perfect example:
Our team has a review process where we fill up an Excel sheet with a list of review points. For each review point, we mention what needs to be changed/clarified. Sometimes we even add screenshots as a supporting reference. We have these documents stored in SharePoint.

Problem 1:
It is difficult to track the completion of each review point. Either the reviewer asks the reviewee if the task is complete or the reviewee notify the reviewer directly.

Solution 1:
Each review point was converted into a subtask of a Code Review task. The Code Review task is assigned to the reviewer, and the subtasks (review points) are assigned to the reviewee. This way, the reviewee can simply mark the review points as complete, and the reviewer is automatically notified.

Problem 2:
In Excel, you can simply paste an image from the clipboard to the sheet.
In Asana, this is not supported. The image has to be saved as file manually, then uploaded to the task. We’ve been only using the Windows and/or OneNote’s Snipping Tool.

Solution 2:
Use another snipping tool (Greenshot or Screenpresso). Every screenshot is automatically saved as a file, ready to be uploaded. And as a bonus, both tool has their own image editor which makes it easier to annotate. (we had to do it via MS Paint before)

Problem 3:
Since these review documents are stored in Sharepoint, it takes some time to download and reupload (in case of changes).

Solution 3:
No need to download and reupload files. Everything is available for viewing and modification in Asana.

…

Try as much as possible to Stick to a single tool.
If you need to track tasks, stick to Asana. Any other task tracking tool you use will make your life difficult.

And don’t forget that there are so many applications available. Don’t limit yourself with MS apps.