How to have fields in a project populate into portfolio view

Hi, I am trialling Asana and really like how a form can populate custom fields/values into a task list. I figured out how to use that task to transition to a new project. But, is there a way for the tasks within a project to populate fields into the Portfolio view?

Right now I created a portfolio for the overview of multiple projects and have created a list of customized fields. However, I am manually entering all the information into these custom fields which makes me feel like this is no better than a google doc that we currently have. It isn’t saving me any time. Have I missed a feature that would help?

Hi.
I am a bit confused, i’ll try to rephrase. Do you want task custom fields to sum themselves (for example) into the project custom fields in portfolio?

Is there a way for the things I put in a project (like the name of a task) to be pulled into the portfolio?

I don’t understand the use case where a task name would end up in a portfolio → where exactly? Can you describe the use case with examples? Thanks

I manage a department who complete team orders for a bathing suit company. Right now I am using a form for inquiries, individual projects to represent each customer for the sales team (and the step by step process we go through with each customer), and a portfolio view for the production team to get a view of every open order. I would like to figure out a way to have everything linked someway.

For example “USA High School” fills out a Team Order Inquiry form. I have that within a Project called “Team Order Inquiries” with rules that automatically assign the right person to handle the sale and connects each customer/task with a list of subtasks. The answers from the form’s questions populate to the right of the Task Name “USA High School” and say things like “sport [i.e. swimming or diving team]” and “logo work [i.e. single color or multicolor].”

I am assigned to “high school” teams so I would then follow up with the customer personally. If they reply, I convert the task “USA High School” from the “Team Orders Inquiries” project into its own project. [Converted to project] Test club appears under the heading of “Reached out to Customer” in Team Orders Inquiries project and becomes an independent project.

I use the project for accountability on all the steps of our process. For example, “Fit Kit” which tracks the process of offering them a fit kit, and assigning the task of sending the fit kit to someone once we receive their fit kit request form. We also have a task called “Logos” which has the information of how many logos, single or multicolor logos, a place to upload the image of the mock-up. Then, Estimate#, Date Paid, Sales Order #, and Item Fulfillment #. This helps the person handling the sale keep track of the process as we go through it with the customer over a week or so.

When we receive payment the salesperson needs to send a transfer order to the warehouse with bathing suits to ship the units to our logo department (item fulfillment #). Once we get to the item fulfillment task, we need to communicate that information to our logo department who physically adds logos to the suits. The Item Fulfillment number is important because we can check netsuite for tracking to see when it arrives with the logo department.

The logo department likes to see a Birdseye view of all open sales orders – a list of all teams waiting for their orders to be completed. They do not need to see any information about the Fit Kit or individual steps the sales team took to land the customer. They would rather see a list of everything they need to complete.

I have created the portfolio “Open Sales Orders” to house all of that information for production. It also helps the sales team give updates to their customer about where the customer’s order is in production.

The portfolio has the name of all of the teams and then I created custom fields that portray the information about “Sales Order #,” “Status,” “IF,” “Date paid,” “Date due,” “logo type (single or multi),” “Number of logos” and then fields for the production team to fill in as they go (logos delivered or not delivered, suits delivered and ready for logos go or not delivered, shipped or not shipped) on the same row as the team.

I hope that helps illustrate how I am currently using Asana. I am open to other suggestions if you can see a better way to do it.

My original question was to ask if there was a way for the Project to automatically input information from their task list like the Sales Order #, Date Paid, Item Fulfillment # into the Portfolio for the production team. Similar to how the form in the inquiry stage knew how to take the answers from each question to pull information into the custom fields to the right of the Team Name. I would like to cut out a step of my sales team having to repeatedly manually type in the information that is important to the overall process.

I hope that helps…

Wow I did not expect so much details :sweat_smile: looks like you might need a consult and not a simple forum answer :confused:

I had a similar question. Another way of asking is - In Portfolio, it seems to automatically pull certain fields from the Project itself.

For example: It’s auto pulling “Task Progress” (there’s some calculation happening that is pulling a % of “Done statuses” from the Project task list).

For example: It’s auto pulling “Status” (the Portfolio is pulling the “Set Status dropdown” from the Project itself to show “on track”, “off track”, etc.

Can you have Portfolio “automatically pull” any other Project fields?

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Welcome, @Faith_Songco,

You can also toggle the Progress column to instead show Milestones culled from those in the project. That and Task Progress are the only built-in fields that cull info from the tasks/milestones of the project; the rest are project-level fields

Open the Customize panel and look at the Fields; those are all the supported fields, in addition to custom fields you create/use.

Larry

I have the same use case in which I want a narrative summary of each project from the PM and then to show those narrative comments at the portfolio view for leadership meetings. Does not appear possible in Asana which is disappointing.

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I have the same scenario where we have 5-6 PMs to provide specific project updates in narrative comments based on templated questions every week and would be great to see in portfolio view for manager to report to leadership

I’m hoping this is somewhat related to this existing thread. Simply put, can I use Asana Form results to populate in the Portfolio view?

Welcome, @anon24935046. For you and @Caren_Opremcak: Portfolios basically contain projects, and form submissions basically create tasks, so the simple answer is no.

The only connections in portfolios to tasks are:

  1. tasks that are milestones appear in the Milestones column of projects in portfolios, so if you manually or via a third-party rule action) mark a task as milestone it would appear in a cell in a portfolio, and
  2. numeric custom fields can be summed to a portfolio-level custom field.

To @Lars_McCarter and @Kal_Mahairhu, your PMs should set the project’s status and the latest one will automatically appear in any portfolio the project is in.

Thanks,

Larry

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