Hello - I’m brand new into Asana. I have not had onboarding yet. I was formally in a different tool and have a certain workflow that I’m trying to figure out in Asana. Primarily, my old tool let me “tag” projects in a certain way that would pull them into a “dashboard” (that was in table form) so that I could speak to them at a Monday round up. These projects were categorized in a certain level and then organized by priority. (The level did not dictate priority). I know I can add a field called “level”, and then I know I can organize by priority. I have created a portfolio that has all current active projects - but this is very manual. Also, it doesn’t let me see where I’m at with those projects. Any help to get me going on this Monday round up would be very welcome!
Welcome, @Aiden_McDaniel,
Asana’s way of handling this is with Portfolios, as you’ve discovered. Have you tried to change the Task progress column from Tasks to Milestones? That’s always much more meaningful to me to see where a project is, because all tasks are not created equal. If the “manual” part is getting projects into the portfolio(s), project templates let you automatically add created projects to one or more portfolios.
If you’re looking for something different, a saved Advanced Search report can be used to report on tasks or project (there’s a tab for each), and having a few of these might give you more fine-grained views that you are looking for.
Larry
Thank you Larry. While I was able to switch my portfolio view to Milestones (instead of tasks), and as a test I created a milestone in one of the projects in the portfolio - it did not show up in my milestone column . . . it says “no milestones”. Also, while I see the reporting button on my navigation - I don’t see how/where to create custom reports - it gives me the opportunity to create a dashboard (but this doesn’t give me specific info). I am still in the Trial version, so maybe these are items that are only available once I buy licenses?
I’ve never seen a milestone fail to show up as you indicate. If you think it’s a bug, please report to support@asana.com.
The Advanced Search I described starts from the Search box at the top of most Asana pages, which is different from Dashboards and Universal Reporting.
You can learn more about all these features at How to use Asana, Asana tutorials, onboarding tips, and team use cases | Product guide • Asana Product Guide if that helps.
Thanks,
Larry
Do these milestones have due dates?
They do (but I have since switched back to task view, as this is more meaningful to me) - I do see progress, but really it doesn’t tell me much. Specifically what I need is to 1. Mark a certain set of projects as “Active”, 2. Priortize those projects by both a LOE category (1, 2, 3), and a priority in which they need to be discussed (either because a task within that project is due, or this is the next project we need to focus on), and 3. I need to easily see which task we are on within the project. Right now, I can add projects to my “Active” portfolio, and I can filter by priority (and view these by priority category), I have also added a field called “Level of Effort - 1, 2, 3”, and this field is visible in my portfolio view. (It’s too bad that I cannot filter by LOE and priority, and also due date). I cannot figure out how to see which task I’m at for each project unless I open up that project to view the details. So - what I’m having to do is spend about an hour before my Monday round up writing separate notes about each project. Because I also have to track comments within these projects to determine if a question needs answered or someone needs something to move forward with the project.
The only way I can think of doing this is using the advanced search function.