How are you using Asana's boards?

Hi everyone.

I never really used Trello in the past and am not used to the boards method of organising things (I’ve always used Asana and lived in the list view). I’d love to hear your ideas on how to use boards or what kind of projects suit this kind of board view? How are you using boards? Does it suit brainstorming more than project management?

Thanks in advance!
Paul

I have created a board to use for discussion with business owners the short term tasks needed for the setting up of a Inception Workshop before Xmas. It only has Backlog, InProgress & Done. For Business people not used to the full project management approach having a visual board style helps.

The board project tasks are linked to the overall project that I am managing and progressing.

Note that these business owners don’t use Asana so it is just for me to show then what needs to be done, being done and done.

Hope that helps Paul.

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Ah, so essentially this is like a duplicate project with all the same tasks so you can lay things out in a more visual way?

@paulminors Not a duplicate project. The tasks just belongs in Two Projects one being the Board project.
As an example I have a task in the main project called;
Created Stakeholder Map and document.

As it will be an input of the Inception Workshop it is associated with the Board Project:
“Setup Inception Workshop”
And because it is In Progress it has the section “In Progress”.

But also because I need to do this anyway as part of the Project Governance it is also associated with main project;
“Claims OP Model and Process Harmonisation”
And under the Section “Governance”

That way when showing the business owners they can see it is as part of the Visual Board. But also as part of the main project for my own work to ensure that it is completed.

Okay, I’m following along now. Sounds smart (and a nice way to share the info with the right people).

Great idea @Jason_Woods I have not developed that approach yet, but intending to do so and try it out.
My immediate utilisation of it was to create an active Stakeholder register using the custom fields to document relevant stakeholders information.
The register will be active and accessible to all Project managers in the business and they can easily link the stakeholder that relates to their project by multi homing them in their projects.

Thanks @RashadIssa

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One of my IT team’s responsibilities is managing purchasing for the company. Each purchase needs a quote, approval, PO creation, PO submission, etc.

In Teamwork each purchase required a tasklist and each part of the process was a separate task. It was confusing and complicated.

I created an Asana board in just minutes and now each purchase is a single task that flows from column to column.

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@tmorrisxyz nice idea. Make sense if you have tasks moving through stages like this.

How do we hide completed task on board layout?

At this time we aren’t able to hide completed tasks on the board layout. What you might do instead is add a “done” or “completed” column on the far right, as you can see in [this “How to use Boards” video](https://asana.com/guide/resources/videos/boards-chapter “this “How to use Boards” video”) at 2:34. :smiley:

Hi everyone, we run a small architectural practice doing residential work, and as such we would have 10-15 projects that run a similar course.
Boards are ideal for this, since each project can progress from concept design to client approval to Planning etc. So far as good.
What I would like to work out, or request, is a way that a board can be used to move projects rather than tasks from column to column. That way we can use the list view for each project, but it can move along the columns as it makes its way through the normal process.
Does this make sense?
Hannes

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Hi @hdp - it sounds like you’re looking for a Board that acts as a home for all of your projects. A project reference of some kind where you can move projects along a flow as the projects are in progress/completed/etc. Could you elaborate?

Is it or will it be possible to see all tasks of all project in one Board?

Woop woop, guys!

I am just trying to move from Baecamp 3 + JIRA to Asana. Currently it feels like pain, while I am doing my best to organize all our agency stuff in both platforms.

In BC3 we are collection everything, like tasks, discussions, files and the group chat. In JIRA we are planning our sprints by week. But the real pain is planning sprints/weeks for each project.

In most agencies — like our web agency — this is virtually impossible. Just imagine between the boards of 5-10 projects per week. Uff! Same pain in Asana, i guess.

What we definitely need: some kinda global board. Or a home board. A Dashboard board? :smiley:
We could really need the possibility to pick tasks in order to lift the up to a global kanban board.
Each of our users needs their own in order to plan their weeks.

Did you ever discuss something like that so far?
Woop woop!

Hi Alexis, thanks for the response.

Exactly. If I have projects for Annie’s house and Bob’s house, each will have an owner and description etc., as you would expect with a project. There will be tasks assigned to different people in each, and there will be due dates for each. Bob’s project might be in for Planning permission and Annie’s on site, but they each still have all their associated tasks.
What I have tried is to have each project as a task on a board, and then use subtasks for all the tasks associated with the project, but I missed the ability to see at a glance all the information that we normally keep in the project description, like the client contact details and who the engineer is.
In an ideal scenario there would be a board that contains all my projects, and double-clicking on that entry will take me to the list view for the project. I can move each project entry along the predictable path from concept to completion.

Hannes

I see. I would suggest that you create a reference project in which each task contains a link to a project. Almost like an Asana table of contents. That is what we do here at Asana, actually. You could also use your personal Dashboard as a resource. Also, many of our customers like to create reports using advanced search. I highly recommend this option. I think you’ll find this Guide article on creating reports from advanced search helpful.

@Andreas_Walter In order to see all tasks from all projects you’ll need to do an advanced search. At this time we can only view these results in list view and I we don’t have a specific timeline for if or when we’ll make a Boards specific update.

@Andy_Hausmann I’d echo the my above comments for your question. Advanced search is one of my favorite Asana tools!

For future product feedback comments such as these I advise you to visit the product feedback category. Please continue using this thread to share how you’re using Boards. :slight_smile: Glad to see you’re finding value in Boards so far!

Thanks Alexis, the reference project sounds like a good option. Do you have one of your useful tutorials about it or how do I go about setting one up?
Hannes

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I started a Board so my boss and I could stay on the same page across a variety of issues under different headings. The card in each column lets me jot in notes (as comments), set dependencies, dates, etc. He loves it. I find it easy to use and keep updated. It’s really not a to-do list in the way I use Asana generally; and that’s fine because it serves a valuable purpose.

@hdp I created a post about reference projects here Creating a Reference Project in Asana

:slight_smile: