Hi @Manuel_G! Thanks for reaching out. Our Community will be happy to help. I suggest you take a look around the usecases category for conversations about workflows like this.
As @Todd_Cavanaugh mentions in the following post, it can be helpful to create a Team for each client. Then, you can create each client-related project within the client’s team. For example, you could have an Asana Team for “Client ABC.” Then, create projects like: “Client ABC - Background Info” + “ABC new website 2017” etc.
Please let us know if this would work for you and if you have other questions.
Teams would definitely be the way to go for that kind of organization, but if you want @Manuel_G you can use projects as ‘separators’ - meaning create a dummy project named ‘======CLIENT NAME====’ or whatever, and put all that client’s projects under it. You’d also have to have a convention where the initials, name, or client # are in the project name for searches =\
But if you can’t do teams per client for whatever reason, that would be a workaround.
@Manuel_G how many clients do you typically work with? Depending on this number, if it’s a lot, there can be an advantage to managing clients as tasks (and subtasks) in order to keep your account more concise and organised. Using teams can get a bit overwhelming if you have a lot of clients.
Please let me know if you have any more questions. If you’re interested in improving your use of Asana further or want to discuss team training, please feel free to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to discuss consulting options.
It sounds like this issue is really just a different version/application of the bigger issue - Organizing Projects (Creating a Reference Project in Asana).
Create team “CLIENT JOBS”. The create a project for each client. e.g 1707.051 - ABC & Co - Website
In there are all the tasks that you need to accomplish to complete this project.
Create team “CLIENT ORDER HISTORY”. For each client who has given you work, create a project. e.g ABC & Co.
Link each individual tasks in 1707.051 - ABC & Co - Website to ABC & Co. . Select all the tasks in the client job (click on the first one and shift-click on the last one) and assign to client project ABC & Co.
Finally in client project ABC & Co group by project and you’ll have all the tasks that you did for this client grouped by project. Remember to show ‘All Tasks’.
Example: Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life
Note: I just realised after writing this that with the new View Filter, one cannot sort or group by Project anymore. I hope I’m mistaken… but clicking on ABC & Co gives you a bulk list of all the tasks which is no good. Anyone know what’s going on? Is there another way of grouping by project?
Just to chime in the discussion, we don’t use projects as that will easily lead to +1000 projects. We use one big task for “clients”, then under that each sub-task is a client name, then under that each deal is a sub-sub-task. The task lists gets big quickly and the “view more tasks” button eventually appear. But what we do is we create another layer like “Clients A-E” “Clients F - I” etc., then “Deals 2017”, “Deals 2016”, etc.
It is not ideal but at least the view is not cluttered.
However with this method we have not found a good automation workaround with Zapier etc. Because sub-task is apparently not a usable trigger under Zapier. If anybody has ideas, please share with us. Thanks!
Manuel_G, I’ve got the same challenge that you described in your post. Have you found a satisfactory workaround? Over the years, before Asana, we’ve typically filed our project folders within individual client file folders on our HDD’s Each project contains sub-folders to hold relevant documentation. I’d like to duplicate that same structure in Asana, but I haven’t found an easy way to accomplish that layout. It seems so natural that I’m sure that I’m missing some built-in feature that will allow this type of structure. Anyone got an idea on how to make this happen?
So your available hiarchy is
Team
Projects
Sections
Tasks
Subtasks
Third Party Storage Services
Actually if you use a storage service like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive you technically use folders that may have better document collaboration than loading them from your computer. Your individual accounts could be Teams or Projects depending on the number of them.
Just an update to this post… we now have a team for Prospects instead of a prospect board and each prospect has their own project created from a template that can be moved to our Client Work Team when necessary. We have the separate board and the old “prospect info task” is now the Client Info task within the prospects project. This is multihomed between the project and the [INFO] Current Clients board which lists the stages of our clients from prospect to closed. In this way, the Client Info task remains part of the Prospect when they convert to client and it never leaves the [INFO] Current Client board either. We just move it between the phases
I think this is a better way for creative digital agencies as we use multiple team members from different teams for each client as well as multiple projects for a single client (Eg: Social Media Calendar, Website Design & Development, Marketing Strategies, Online & Offline Marketing Campaigns, Events, etc…) and each of this need specialised team member from all the teams i.e. content writer, designer, developer, customer service, etc…
I’ll try this out and see how it helps and will share my use case soon…,
This is actually very easy… just follow steps below…
Create project called, let’s say, Projects.
Project to be in list view.
Make each customer a new section.
Each new project shall be a task under the customers section.
Create a new project for each new project you have with a customer and task added to Projects project shall also be added to your new project, so this task will have 2 projects it will be in.
Use Fields in the Projects project to enter any customer information needed.
Create a custom text field “Customer”. Put the customer name there.
Create a custom text field “Project”. Put the link to the project there (can be an Asana link or a Notion one).
Don’t use sections for customers names but for managing the projects. Example “New”, “In progress”, “Done”, and so on. In this manner you can use the board view.
Sort by “Customer” for grouping projects.
The project’s tasks can live inside the same project task or in Asana or in another software like Notion.
Your project manager can use sub-tasks for planning the projects, like for onboarding and maintenance.
