Introducing Portfolios: The mission control center for everything you need to track in your business

#42

I would like also to add my voice to this. Doubling price for small companies is not fair especially for long paying customers !
Having the Upgrade button on the top of Asana is annoying me a lot too. Once I work, I don’t wanna be reminded every minutes that I have to upgrade. Please take it away

#43

I am a heavy asana user for many years now. I was disappointed with how asana chose to launch this feature because you can’t try before you buy. All they have is a 45 second video selling the concept. Our usage of asana would likely change to implement this feature like it has to implement timelines so a try before you buy is necessary for us to make that determination.

#44

I’m really surprised Asana is attempting to make their margin from small/medium premium customers, rather than Enterprise businesses: long term I would have believed that keeping SME’s happier and embedding the tool in at every stage would make long term sense. For instance: slack is fairly essential in our field of work - but the end user functions of the client are identical to those on Enterprise. I think the reason the portfolio change feels so ill thought out is that it is a functional downgrade for every customer - it directly reduces the value of the tool.

I wouldn’t begrudge Asana for charging more if they were adding value - but the Portfolio’s are fairly half baked atm, and for all the talk about depreciating the tech behind dashboards - the actual function - that of requesting status updates and seeing those displayed in a list, does not feel like it adds value.

On the blanket upgrade charge It certainly doesn’t add value to every employee in our business: it’s only really necessary for managers, project leaders and senior management - having to cough up for every employee feels like a mistake.

Last: the workflow management software Asana is actively trailing feels like it would be worth the extra cash and I may end up upgrading for that - but I’m holding off until we can see that in action.

#45

Hi Taylan,

I appreciate that you’re so passionate about using Asana and have taken the time to send us feedback, but I do want to remind you of our Community Guidelines: Asana Community Forum Guidelines. While Community members are welcome to express frustration, give us constructive criticism, and share their honest views in this forum, we ask all members to frame their communication in terms of friendship instead of antagonism. Your post was flagged by a member of the Asana Community because of its tone. I reviewed the post and determined that I did not need to be removed from this forum so you’ll see that it’s been made visible again.

I do understand why you’re frustrated about this change and feel like it was unfair. We do have solutions that can help with this transition and would encourage you to reach out to our support team. These issues are usually best resolved in a direct conversation with someone on our team, so we can talk about your plan and figure out the best way to help ease some of the pain this change is causing your team.

I understand that you may still be frustrated with Asana after this response and do apologize for that. Our Community team will collect and analyze this feedback to share directly with our product teams. Sharing this feedback does give them an understanding of how our customers are reacting to changes made in the product and help guide their decisions as they continue to work on Portfolios and the rest of the Asana product.

#46

Existing customers who have been excited about your new feature-set should be grandfathered into the business level at the same price we have been paying at the premium level. This is what other companies do and is the right thing to do. I upgraded to premium partially to use the dashboards. Please rethink your decision to remove functionality from your loyal customers. #badbusiness #productfeedback #terribledecision

#47

Just googled “Frustrated with new Asana Pricing” and found this thread. Pretty much sums up our team’s feelings. We’re a bootstrapped startup, and the upgrade is just not reasonable – asking for over 100% price increase for what used to be standard features? We’ve been researching alternatives to Asana all morning, which is nuts to me cause we’ve always been SUCH big advocates of the brand.

#48

I’m a long time Asana user that leads a team of a small nonprofit with less than 6 staff. I want to offer that I am Thrilled about the new portfolio feature. We’ve actually relied on Google Dashboards, consider Trello, used Weekdone, and adopted various other applications trying to align our work. We are both willing and excited to be using portfolio and would really appreciate just a bit more instruction on how to get the best out of the program from the product team.

Thanks product team for such an essential tool for folks who have been using your product for more than 5+ years and I would also suggest based on these comments to give folks the opportunity to turn portfolios off/on in settings vs. the “new” tab which actually is very distracting if you don’t like the feature.

An off topic comment would be releasing product improvements following a consistent process or a monthly feature blog as releases in the past have been extremely difficult to either find or integrate across the org.

Thanks again for the portfolio feature!

#49

The new feature looks very promising and exciting for managing several of our processes at our company. I have been an Asana evangelist at our company since proposing that we use the program several months ago. I will add my voice to the thread here, however, and say that it was already a bit of an uphill battle to sell the Premium version of Asana to our leadership. To now have to come back to them and try to sell this additional cost (which may, in the end, prove cost prohibitive for our company) is a big pill to swallow, to say the least. I will take Asana up on their offer to discuss this and will be reaching out to Asana to find out if we can reach a mutually beneficial solution.

#50

Howdy @Marie, in that other guy above’s defense. The way people talk, or “tone”, in NYC/Philly/Boston might be very different than the way people talk in SF/LA or in another country all together. You can’t tell people what “tone of voice” to talk in because that’s somewhat prejudice and a bias projection of your personality onto others, which is wrong. Sounds like what you mean to say is something like if you’re going to be on this forum you can’t use swear words XYZ. . . (but even that’s a philosophical relativity). Maybe some people do communicate with their friends in an antagonistic way so it seems like an arbitrary thing to mandate people “communicate in terms of friendship instead of antagonism” lol??

I don’t know, just reading that response reminds me of “group think” and these whack practices where “the voice of the people” are shut out because it doesn’t match another groups chosen ideals/morality. Certainly a grey area and awesome to see you allowed that guys voice to heard after further thought :slight_smile:

Btw, I paid full price for the upgrade and love the portfolio feature and can’t wait for all the other exciting features coming out in 2019!!! #ItJustKeepsGettingBetter

#51

I’ve been reading every comment made so far and these are my amalgamated thoughts. Right away I remembered Asana’s shared mission and values because as a customer and evangelist I fear that incidents like these and how they are managed are slowly eroding them.

We stay connected through our shared mission and values
“Be real with yourself and others”
“We take our commitments to each other seriously. We admit when we’re wrong. We treat ourselves as whole people at work. We feel our feelings all the way through and we’re not afraid to give constructive feedback or disagree. We embrace reality.”

How do the current changes fit with theDesign Principles (published by Asana)?
The very first point states “Allow users to focus on their work without interference.” And sub-point 3 clearly states that “If we choose to distract, we should allow the notification or item to be turned off.” which is not possible with the colorful “Upgrade” button as mentioned by Alex_Hassel, Marquis_Murray & Salah_Taoufik or as Adrienne_McCue1, Mozart_Guerrier & Salah_Taoufik pointed out with the portfolio menu that is not available to many users. I would also say this takes away from focusing on the content and hence goes against sub-point 4 “Our visual design should allow focus on content, not chrome.” It is hard to focus on content when users are constantly seeing irrelevant chrome items that are mentally distracting and unnecessarily occupying visual real estate.

Trust, is the real fundamental problem where all of this boils down to. I, personally, have trusted Asana with both their service but also on following through the vision and principles that Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz have outlined early on. It is very disheartening to be able to identify with comments like “compromised integrity” as @Dwayne_Nienaber called it or the disappointment and anger expressed by others like Matthew_Lambert & Sasa_Bart.

In no small part, I would attribute this to the Bait & Switch impressions we are left with as @Taylan pointed out with his flagged post. Removing an existing feature, making some changes, renaming it, and reintroducing it under a higher tiered plan leaves many of us very concerned as Jess_Walker, Rick_Maffett, Micha_Kuchler, Kenny_Lemon, and many others have voiced.

Loyal Customers are the ones hurt the most as we don’t feel valued and this has been expressed in this thread by many of us like Troy_Flowers, Christian_Hammond, Gary_Meyer, & Andrew_Childs. For small teams and non-profit organization it often comes down to cost and the difference in price is stark as @Leonarce pointed out and for many not worth it as @Adam_Seawright expressed. Founding a few non-profit organizations myself, I really feel the pain here and I extend my hurt-heart-felt feelings to others like @Crystal_Alifanow, @Ruth_Newnham & @Cindy_Bernard in similar situations.

Trust is hard to build and easy to lose and when trust is being compromised, apologizing is an initial crucial first step in making amends but if it is not backed by trustworthy actions it simply is another breach of trust. And this is where Asana has the opportunity to speak with their actions and rebuild the trust that has been shaken. For now, I remain hopeful and while I am waiting to see how the Asana team responds, I am drawing on the reserves of good-will that I have seen from them in the past to weather the current storm.

Many Solutions are possible here and as @Andy_Keller pointed out, a tried and tested one, used by many companies, is to grandfather in existing customers. This is what Asana did when they deprecated the advanced search function for new free Workspaces and it would be simple to do the same with the Portfolio functionality as @Jonathan_Windridge mentioned. Other additional solutions can be:

  • Christian_Hammond suggested a capped number of Portfolios as we had with Dashboards.
  • Reversing course on increasingly more tiered feature sets as Cindy_Bernard suggested.
  • Communicate planned changes prior to implementing them along the lines of what Google Suite administrators get.

Let’s have an open conversation about this without fragmenting this important issue into individual customer support conversations as @TimTieu had suggested to Alex_Hassel. You can talk to us all, right here. We are here because we care, we are concerned, and we are listening.

#52

wonderfully put @Hans_Rippel

#53

Grandfathering us all in would be a HUGE step in the right direction! Good stuff @Hans_Rippel

#54

Great input @Hans_Rippel. Asana management team is making a huge mistake. This is fully unprofessional and risky game regarding future of asana. We are small company and this is Real problem for us. As a consultant, I will not recommend asana any more to my clients if this will not be solved properly. And please, talk to us all…don’t avoid confrontation by sending us to contact support…

#55

Buying into a tier based on possible future features is probably not the best idea…

And “Premium” was originally advertised as the “Business” tier when we signed on. Now Asana have gone and thrown a new tier on top (and as other users have quite rightly mentioned, without grandfathering existing paying users) this is hardly good business practice…

The amount of disgruntled users in this thread to me points to the start of a breakdown with the existing Asana community (and I’m not just talking forums); so I hope the Asana team have a well thought out long term plan, because continuing down this path will likely mean that many existing users jump ship to something with better value for money (like Asana once was).

#56

Some further thoughts from me, but Asana “Premium” now feels more like a “Personal” paid plan and should be priced as such without the 5 user minimum. Else why even differentiate between “Premium” and “Business”? I’m failing to understand the logic behind this pricing structure…

#57

I totally agree with most people here. Asana should grandfather existing paying users to plan with portfolios, or leave dashboards in premium plan

#58

Agreed and also adding my - rather unhappy frustrated voice too. Looking elsewhere this minute for alternatives (even though I’ll be loosing several months of a paid annual premium subscription in doing so) - simply see no reason to wait.

#59

Absolutely gutted to see this useful feature only available when you pay double while you already have a complete paying plan for the entire team.
Even though useful for Product Owners, not everyone from our team needs the features in business.
@TimTieu Isn’t it possible to upgrade some users to business, but not all of them?

#60

I agree too. So disappointing that Asana have gone down this route, I even spent the weekend researching alternative tools.

#61

The major issue for me that exists with the current portfolio functionality is that the custom fields are not exported to the google sheet overview.

We have standard information that our executives require for our weekly project and product updates that will have to be manually input - a huge time loss!! If I add a custom field I need that information to show up on the google sheets export for my high-level overview and reporting. Please update this function ASAP!