How can I get some help with some questions?

I am not sure who I can go to for support on things this specific but I have some questions about setting up a project in the Asana software

For starters, we are a restaurant company. We open and run upscale restaurants in the Atlanta area. A “Project” would typically be the entire restaurant opening – from start to finish (acquiring the space, build out, design, training staff, serving the food etc etc). So within a very large and long term project like that we do have specific teams or team leaders that are responsible for their area of expertise. Those would be something like Marketing, Ops, IT, Recruiting, Accounting…

So for IT – there are a ton of things that I do that all other team members need to see in relation to progress with the overall project but they don’t need to edit it. So far, I cannot see how to have one large project, with tasks within that are locked to specific people (or teams) , but visible to the rest to see progress alongside the other tasks that are working towards same large goal. I can see that there is the ability to set the IT portion up as a separate “project” but I don’t see how that can overlay with the overall project in a timeline or any other way. In our organization, we look at everyone’s progress in the same timeline – because IT projects are dependent on other things like the front of house being able to schedule training on the systems etc or construction people drilling holes so that equipment can be installed etc.

Anyway – not sure if that makes sense. The short of it is, we’d like to all use ONE project, that has Sections within or tasks that can be assigned (and locked down) to specific people, but visible to everyone. I am not sure if I am overthinking it or missing how this is done.

Also – concerning dependencies – when the task changes deadline, and there is a dependency attached to it, does it not adjust the timeline for anything associated with the dependency as well?

Thanks I appreciate your time! Let me know if I can clarify anything

@Dionne_Ohmstead Welcome to the Forum, there is a way to contact support directly but the Forum is probably the best way to get answers on this type of question.

I can think of a few ways but firstly want type of account with Asana do you have Free, Premium or Business?

If you have Business Portfolio would be the answer.

If Premium then I would suggest using Teams, Multi Project Homing and Key Milestone Tasks.

If Free then this may be a challenge…

Let me know and I can give you more detail of the suggestion for Premium.

@Edda can you move this to tips and tricks…

Jason.

@Dionne_Ohmstead
Oops forgot to include the Support Contact instructions;

If you click on the I am having trouble with.
Then scroll to the bottom.

Jason.

We have Premium. I am not familiar with Multi Project Homing - is that how I can achieve seeing ALL of the tasks related to the one huge project in the same timeline together - but limiting access to which users can comment vs edit certain tasks?

Okay thanks @Dionne_Ohmstead will write something up and get back to you asap.

Jason.

@Dionne_Ohmstead This would be my suggestion.

First off have a read of these help articles as these will probably help.

So what I would do is create a separate project for each of the key components of your Restaurant Opening. eg. One for Staff Recruiting, IT, Marketing, Fitout etc…

The reason for this is then you can allow your Team/Project Lead take ownership and control over the piece that they are responsible for. They can then make it as detailed and specific as they need without overburdening the total Project View with 100’s of tasks.

They can then also use the permissions options as per the help guide to restrict team members on what they can or cant’ do within that project.

I would then have key tasks re phase duration, status, milestones, budget etc that are then "Multi Homed" into the Master Project which has Sections for each of the Detailed Projects which you then can track the Milestones Durations etc. And if needs be you can always view the detailed project for each part to get a clear view of how it is progressing.

You can also then set security on you Mast Project to ensure that only the right people can make changes to that project.

You can then view this combined project via the timeline feature as mentioned above to see it in a more graphical view.

So below are some screenshots showing what I mean.

Your IT Project Plan:

IT Plan Timeline View:

IT Plan - Multi Homed Task
DionITPlan-3-Multi

Master Plan

Master Timeline

Hope this is of assistance…

Regards

Jason.

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Great suggestions, @Jason_Woods!

A few other notes for @Dionne_Ohmstead :

(1)
You weren’t sure about “multi-homing” and the phrase is a bit odd. In Asana, a task can be attached to more than one project. The phrase “multi-homed” means to have a task attached to multiple projects (i.e. it has multiple homes). This link (which Jason already referred to above) explains that process.

(2)

Asana does not do this natively. FYI I’ve created an integration, Flowsana, which does provide this capability.

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@Dionne_Ohmstead First of all @Jason_Woods did an excellent job of illustrating how many set up such multi departmental structures and the powerful use of multi-homing a task. If people break out of the concept that a Team is a department versus just another hiarchy level in Asana it may be possible to treat your “team project” as a Team first and then put projects underneath it. I also find using prefixes helps to identify information in some Asana Advance searches that can leave information off. So for example:

Team: CTA| Courtland Ave Opening
Projects CTA| Accounting Department
CTA| Marketing Department
CTA| Immediate Action Items

I can’t believe you would have thousands of locations and you would introduce another top level that still would have the ability to multi-home tasks throughout the functional departments as well as use an Action Project to only focus on key items. This can also be done with custom fields such as a Yellow-Red custom field. You would retain a Team calendar, have advance search capabilities across the Team and have the upper level. Just a thought

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Ok so basically – if I
wanted ALL of my tasks for each team to roll up into one Master project – I assign all the tasks within each sectioned off project to both the team project and the master project, correct? I do understand your advice on only putting “key”
tasks to the master…

If I change the time/due date for a task on a team project – does it then update the task time/due date on the master project as well?

Thanks for your assistance with all of this – look forward to hearing from you soon

Dionne

@Dionne_Ohmstead

Yes any changes made to the tasks that are “Multi-Homed” will be reflected in both projects.

If would definitely look at using custom fields to assist in managing the piece of work. Especially now that their is notification sent to collaborators of tasks when the value in the custom field is change.

I would definitely suggest using team orientated projects if you and the team are new to Asana. Reason being as other must things it is much easier to manage a small set of tasks. Rather than a single project with hundreds of tasks.

Happy to help out. The Asana Community is very good so I am sure there will lots of people happy to assist.

Jason.

omg glad I found this subject. I am still in demo phase but I have never found it so hard to get answers to simple questions. And not have an email address to send a question to. I submitted the form online so we will see how long it takes to get an answer to a basic question that has me basiclaly shut down. There should be some more expedient support if you are trying to test the program and get up and running. I can usually come up to speed quickly on programs like this but that’s because I can get quick answers when something is not intuitively obvious.

Right now we are trying to figure out how to get My Tasks to display with the sections Today, Upcoming, Later. Not sure why this doesn’t happen automatically based on the task due dates.

Follow up: I emailed myself a task to test that out, and a Today section magically appeared, and that task was in it. But I still can’t move other project tasks into the Today section, even if they are marked as due today.

Hi @Suzette_Mack

Have a read of this guide article
How to Get Started With Asana My Tasks | Product Guide • Asana Product Guide

The Asana guide is a good place to find answers to slot of the queries you may have. There is also access to videos and training as well.

Jason.

Thanks, in another thread I learned that if you sort by Due Date then you can’t have the automatic sections called Today, etc. That is a pretty important tip that was not in that article. I’m baffled as to why you can’t have things in sections AND sorted by due date. Having tasks sorted by due date is a necessity for me to prioritize. I like them visually sorted by timeframe but I can’t figure a work around other than manually moving dozens of tasks so they appear in order within the sections.

Hi Phil

How do I access or test out Flowsana?

Hi @Dionne_Ohmstead,

You can sign up for a free 30-day Flowsana trial here on the Flowsana website.

There’s also a support site here which includes a Knowledge Base of Flowsana documentation, articles, and FAQs.

Lastly, you can email support@flowsana.net to ask any questions you might have.

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Is there not a webinar on Flowsana that I can see before starting a trial? Id like to see HOW to use it, before I dive into trying to figure out how to use it.
Make sense?

@Dionne_Ohmstead,
There are Flowsana instructional videos in the works, but I have an even better offer than a webinar: a personalized demo/training. You can get an explanation of how Flowsana works and then we can discuss how it might fit in your particular restaurant-opening scenario(s). You (or anyone else who wants the same thing BTW) can go here to schedule a session.

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