Insights/Support Appreciated: How Asana is Setup at the Enterprise Creative Marketing Level

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Hi Asana community! Apologies in advance for the long question:

I’m looking for advice on how to best structure Asana for an enterprise creative marketing team, specifically around intake, workflow management, and visibility into workload.

Context
We receive a high volume of requests that vary widely in scope:

  • Small, quick-turn deliverables

  • Larger standalone projects

  • Full campaigns that later break into multiple projects

1. Workload visibility & “backlog” problem

One of our biggest challenges is that Asana doesn’t seem to have a true backlog concept.

  • Every task becomes “active” once created

  • Individual task lists become extremely long

  • It’s hard for team members to clearly understand: what’s actually next vs. what’s just sitting there

Question:
How are teams creating a clear source of truth for “what should I work on next?”
Are you using sections, custom fields, separate projects, or something else to simulate a backlog?

2. Multi-step workflows with multiple reviewers/approvers

Our typical workflow looks like:

  1. Intake (PM)

  2. Content creation

  3. Content review

  4. Content approval

  5. Design

  6. Stakeholder review

  7. Revisions

  8. Final handoff

Right now, this involves a lot of manual reassignment, tagging, and status updates.

Questions:

  • How are you structuring multi-step workflows with multiple owners/reviewers?

  • Are you using rules to auto-assign tasks when they move stages?

  • Is there a better approach than constantly reassigning the same task?

  • Has anyone successfully used approvals + rules to streamline this?

3. Task structure: one task vs many

We’re unsure how granular to get:

Option A: Each deliverable = its own task (with its own workflow)
Option B: One task (e.g., “Creative Development”) with everything happening inside

Question:
What’s the recommended approach for scaling across many deliverables and projects while keeping things manageable and visible?

4. What we’ve tried so far

  • Blocking/unblocking tasks to control flow

  • Reassigning tasks at each stage

  • Using projects for campaigns and tasks for deliverables

In summary my vision:

  • A clear intake → execution → delivery workflow

  • A true sense of backlog vs active work

  • Minimal manual reassignment

  • Clear visibility into “what’s next” for each team member

  • Scalable system for high-volume creative work

Would love to hear how other enterprise marketing or creative teams have solved this. Any examples, structures, or screenshots would be super helpful. I’ve watched a bunch of videos, read into the Asana certifications/support videos, but can’t comfortably come to a comparable solution given all of the work.

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Hello @pingu1, and welcome to the Forum!

I feel you. High-volume creative work can get noisy fast. I’ll try my best to provide some suggestions and best practices:

1. Backlog and what is next

  • Create a Kanban-style workflow project with sections: Intake, Triage, Ready, In progress, Blocked, Done
  • Add custom fields: Priority, Effort or Estimated time, Stage, Request type, Due by
  • Treat “Ready” as the true backlog. Only move work into Ready after a quick Triage pass. Keep Intake unprioritized
  • Use Workload or My Tasks rules so assignees only pull from Ready. Example: when the Stage becomes In progress, add to the assignee’s My Tasks and set the Due date or add a “Today” tag
  • Use the Timer custom field to provide a clear timeline of the SLAs

2. Multi step workflow and handoffs

  • Use one task per deliverable that moves through stages. Avoid constant manual reassignment
  • Add a single “Stage” single select field that maps to your steps: Intake, Content, Content review, Approval, Design, Stakeholder review, Revisions, Final
  • Add rules. Examples:
    • When the “Stage” custom field changes to “Content”, assign it to the Content owner and set a 3-day due date
    • When the “Stage” changes to “Content review”, add an Approver and convert the next subtask to Approval
    • When an Approval is approved, set the “Stage” field to Design and assign the Design owner
    • When an Approval is rejected, set “Stage” to Revisions and reassign to the previous owner
  • Use Approvals for checkpoints so you get clear approval/request changes without extra status comments

3. Task structure at scale

  • Default: Each deliverable is one task
    • Use a short checklist of subtasks for the repeating steps you listed
    • Use custom fields to track the state rather than splitting into many tasks
  • For large campaigns:
    • Create a campaign project for planning and cross-functional dates
    • Multi-home each deliverable task into both the campaign project and the team’s workflow project
    • Use a Portfolio to roll up multiple campaign projects for capacity and status

4. Intake that routes cleanly

  • Form submits to the workflow project and sets fields automatically: Request type, channel, due by
  • Auto-create a template of subtasks for the deliverable and set Stage to Triage
  • Optional: Auto-create a campaign project when a request type equals Campaign and multi-home the first deliverables

Daily flow for “what should I work on next”

  1. PMs keep the Intake tidy and move only prioritised items to Ready

  2. Creators work from a saved view filtered to My tasks, where Stage is In progress or Ready, sorted by Priority, then Due date

  3. Workload: use Estimated time or Effort with capacity per person to keep pulls sustainable

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