Make Gmail Add-on faster to use

English Forum Product Feedback
1

Having to manually search for project and users makes this integration bulky and time consuming as we have to wait for a load every time. I used it for a while, but gave up.

I’ve convinced both companies I’ve worked for to make the switch to Asana, but none of them use the add-on because of this, and we spend many hours inside of gmail. We run multiple restaurants, so every second saved is gold.

Thanks for listening!

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That’s interesting and IMO useful feedback for the Asana folks. Other posts on the forum have asked for specific additional features for this add-in, like the ability to add tags when creating a task, but your focus is more on the efficiency question which I think is a useful topic in itself. As a way to potentially kick off a discussion of how it could be improved, wondering if you have any thoughts on specific things you’d like to see that you think could improve the efficiency of the add-in?

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Sure thing Phil.

  • So when selecting “Create New Task”, I would expect the task name to be highlighted and ready for input. Having a default name is often helpful, but it should be selected and ready for input. As it is right now, I found if I [tab] it will select the task name. (not a problem, just being thorough)
  • I should be able to [tab] to the next section, which is Assignee - which you can, but there is no visual indication that the field is selected.
  • As a manager, I rarely use Asana to manage my own personal email tasks - they’re almost always tasks to delegate. So much like in Asana itself, being able to click “Assignee” needs to have a ‘search-as-you-type’ effect.
  • The due date should respond to typing as well, because every time I take my fingers off of the keyboard is wasted time
  • I find if I start typing in the Due Date field it eventually changes to manual field. (again, not a problem in itself, but could be quicker)
  • “Task could not be created” error if the date is in mm/dd/yyyy format.
  • As with Assignee, the Projects should be a search as you type.

One thing to note - you could get by the Search as you Type by getting the information one time on the load of the add-on, but add a button to the title bar to refresh data manually. I know that would help server load, and be especially helpful to large organizations with thousands of tasks and hundreds of projects being created daily.

Hope this helps!

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This could be so great and there is so much potential to save time and have Tasks interact with emails but unfortunately, it is not very useful at the moment :frowning: When I work with new Asana users, they scratch their head at this Gmail add-on. It is a very outdated implementation. It’s faster and easier to open Asana and have Gmail open next to it and do it all manually.

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Your comment is interesting to me. IMO the big win of the gmail add-on is to keep my inbox clean without losing the things I need to act on. In this case the link back into gmail from asana is crucial.
I agree the add-on is clunky, at best, and is in serious need of attention as this thread mentions. And I too have submitted feedback elsewhere hoping for improvement, but I can’t see how copying and pasting from different parts of an email (URL, sender email, email body) could be faster. Perhaps the users you work with are not interested in the link back into gmail, only the action point?

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I have a little copy script that grabs all the elements from Gmail that I need, including the link back to the email.

The other big drawback of the Asana Gmail add-on is that you cannot keep track of email chains. You’d have to add each new email as a new task in Asana which to me would create more of a mess than be helpful to me.

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I use the Gmail add-in constantly, and would love to see these implementations. For my workflow, an easy change would be to put the “link to gmail” at the top of the task as it appears in Asana, rather than the bottom. I use that link as the work-around to get to the whole email thread, or when the graphic nature of the email doesn’t come through well in Asana.

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I 100% agree that this would make the Gmail add-on significantly more useful. In fact, in many cases I would prefer just including the “link to gmail” without copying over the entire email content. I would love the link to be at the top & a separate checkbox option for the “link to gmail” link.

I also would really appreciate this suggestion:

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+1
Selecting an assignee and project takes way too many clicks and time for the add-on to be useful.

I’ll probably use the Chrome extension for now since assigning a project an assignee is much faster there. I can link to the email using the “link”-button, but I have to copy & paste the email (if needed) which is a drawback.

I hope that Asana will make the Gmail add-on better / faster to use …

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+1, it takes forever just to load and the # of click throughs are laborious.

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Definitely agree that either dropdowns or search as you type are necessities for the Assignee, Project etc. Not having them defeats the purpose of making the user more efficient.

12

There are soooo many opportunities for the Gmail integration to go from hohum functional to amazeballs awesome!

  • Increase the speed of the integration. WAAAAYYYY too slow!

  • Show Recent Projects selected so I don’t have to search every time.

  • Have the cursor ready in the search field so that I don’t have to click it into the field to begin typing.

  • Allow me to hit enter for it to search instead of having to press the search button!

  • Perhaps flip the script and create a viewing pane within Asana for Gmail so I could drag an email straight to a task, or onto a create a task button within a project?

1 Like
14

Has the “link to gmail” been removed?!?