You’ve saved me a ton of time with the point about using ‘sections’. I’ve been so curious about it all along but just haven’t had the time to dive in and it turns out from your inputs that i’ve chosen the correct path. Specifically, the inability to search is a deal breaker.
That said, i am actually trying to figure out how to view by task/item** because it helps tremendously in production planning. For e.g., if a Cheese & Olive Sourdough, 400gm, is in the schedule, having a horizontal/vertical view (who are all the customers that have ordered it) and then fulfilling orders based on the production schedule (instead of the delivery schedule) is very useful. In fact, given the lockdown in our city, we’ve been splitting up orders by area (route optimization due to street closures) so that we’re able to fulfill as many orders as possible and that is directly dependent on this particular feature of viewing by item.
At times, there are inconsistencies in how i’ve (manually) created a task/sub-task, for e.g., Cheese Olive Sourdough 400gm or c&o 400g or c&o small, which leads to sorting issues. That brings me to the next question, which you’ve highlighted, about forms . Is there a way i can set up a database of all the different products/skus/customers and then each time an order comes in i just fill that form out and the tasks are created/assigned/tagged/scheduled accordingly in a one go vs going through so many different steps?
The Kanban view that you refer to (and the calendar view) are actually critical for our process. The single biggest limitation of asana i find is the inability to multi-sort . Let’s say i need a view by delivery area (boat club road, for e.g.) and then figure out the timeline of deliveries headed there in the coming week by day of the week. That’s not possible to do. Or, if i look at it from a production standpoint, sort by product (tag: Sourdough as opposed to sku: Cheese & Olive Sourdough 400gm) and then see it by timeline as to which sourdoughs are being made by day of the week. That’s not possible either. This inability has led me to look at other softwares, as simple as google sheets/any.do, to optimize my production/delivery schedule. But that’s yet another program/interface that i need to populate/interact with, which is inefficient and leads to manual errors.
Also, i create tasks on the laptop, production interacts with it on a laptop but operations (packaging and fulfillment) views it on a mobile while on the job of packing, sorting, assembly, loading and updating those very tasks as they go from creation to execution. The mobile interface is critical for the operations team and the current UI, coupled with the existing features of the platform itself, is very limiting in nature. Imagine a FedEx delivery executive having to go back to his laptop to perform his tasks vs having a handheld device to scan/sort/deliver/pickup shipments. I can see why s/he’d go ‘postal’ (pun intended…sorry!!!).
With this in mind, should i be doing anything different? Help?
