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

Agreed … Feels like Asana has jumped on board with other subscription based software models where it’s free to start, you get hooked, spend a lot of time, energy and resources in adopting and implementing processes to fit and then when you’re totally committed, the price goes up… and up etc. Loyalty to long time users, paid users in particular, should be paramount and it would be come back ten fold. I was promoting this product to clients whenever the opportunity arose, I will re-think that now, although I still love using Asana. Just feeling a little jaded.

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Had the nice free plan. Recently decided to start paying for premium features and was excited to see the email on portfolios. oops, wait a sec… bait and switch and now I have buyer’s regret. Asana, I already view your app/service as a necessary evil – reinforcing that view was not in your best interest.

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I believe everything is already said here, so just one more count to disappointed customer base :frowning:

New business license at x2 cost may provide value for money (although sincerely doubt that) and I would stay it open as it is Asana business. What I don’t see as a good business practice that they do so by removing features of existing premium customers.

Result in our case, downgrading from 15 to 10 licences and thinking about switching to another platform.

I hope that the voice of community will be somehow heard :expressionless:

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I’m just really disappointed Asana. It’s like young love… you love something, you tell everyone about it, there is lots of love. Then one day that thing you love cheats on you. You’re angry, but you don’t immediately end things because you need that thing for a little while longer, for whatever unhealthy reason.

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@Cody, This is kind of a “poor man’s” (person’s) Portfolio! Perhaps it qualifies as an alternative for you:

Larry Berger
Asana2Go & Asana Certified Pro consultant at Trilogi

Agreed 100%. I was skeptical but hopeful when Asana announced that they were deprecating Dashboards but announcing something to replace them. However, I’m quite frustrated and disappointed that to use the new feature we have to upgrade to the next level. I understand you have to have enticements towards your higher plans (I mean, I guess you have to), but as a small business, I can’t see paying for something we used to have. It feels deceptive and dishonest.

Just incredibly bummed, Asana.

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Also I’m adding my voice to the idea of being able to upgrade only certain users to a higher tier. If only two or three users are going to use a summary view, it makes no sense for us to pay for the whole organization.

This really just took a lot of wind out of my sails trying to get everyone in my company on Asana. I’m also doubly let down that all the Asana employee posts here are directing people to sales.

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Thank you, I’ll check it out

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Yep. I was contacted and had a one to one sessione to explore my issue. And the only thing I was proposed is upsale.

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Anyone who has reached out to support heard back from them? Wanted to know if upgrading one user to a business plan is at all a possibility, as right now my team is stuck in limbo.

@asana team, your core users and brand evangelists are being lost because a clear lack of foresight. I don’t care if the solution is ready now, I want to know if I can expect a solution in the next little while, or if I should be spending my time preparing for the massive migration over to another system.

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Obviously, this change is very badly handled by Asana.

Besides a way better communication, the solution itself should be quite simple imho: if you have to deprecate dashboards, replace them with just one Portfolio (for many projects) for all Premium users. It would maintain the features of Dashboards and of the premium tier itself and at the same time the business tier would still make sense (various portfolios plus e.g. upcoming OKR features)

However, I also agree that the price increase for business seems too steep to us.

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I think that the epic fail is not only having removed a feature and then readded as a premium feature disappointing already paying customers. I think it’s the creation of the corporate account itself. Users, even small teams, are asking for better project management features from years, and they are not listened. Now it’s clear that any future important feature of Asana will be added to the higher tier, leaving other users behind or pushing them to spend a doubled price. In my opinion this is the real issue.

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This is the second topic I’ve seen with a large amount of unhappy users (the first is moving the project name to the bottom of the task) where the response from Asana seems a little tone deaf. We have been using Asana since 2014 and have been premium users for a few years now, but frankly the changes the company has been making and the responses to what amounts to major interruptions to their paid users’ workflow have been pretty disappointing.

I was actually exploring the dashboard feature through Asana academy last month, only to find out it was being deprecated.

I wrote Asana about it:

OCT 19, 2018 | 08:26AM PDT
Original message

Category I have a different question
Subject Google Sheets and Dashboard

Description Hello,

I was just learning about using Google Sheets in Dashboard in Asana Academy, only to navigate to Dashboard to see it’s going away. Will there be another way to use the Google sheets reporting from the Home page, or is that ability going away with Dashboard?\

Seems like the Google Sheets reporting gave some really valuable information in an easy to access way.

Thanks

Kelly

This was the response I received:

OCT 19, 2018 | 09:30AM PDT

Hi Kelly,

Thanks for reaching out; my apologies for any confusion or frustration about this change!

As you noted, we will be retiring our current Dashboards feature (and with it, Dashboard reporting in Google Sheets) on December 1st, but I’m excited to share that we’ll also be introducing our new Portfolios feature next month. Portfolios will have similar functionalities to Dashboard (including Google Sheets reporting options) but will have even more features to help you monitor and manage your team’s Projects. We’ll be releasing Portfolios well before Dashboards are retired, so you’ll have time to transition without fear of losing the work that you’ve already put into setting up your Dashboard.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions or if there is anything else I can do for you. Have a great day!

Cheers!

There is no mention of having to upgrade to Business. Then suddenly Portfolio is released and there is an upcharge that would double our subscription cost.

I sent my feedback on this and then received an upsell response that said, sorry for the confusion, yes it is paid, and I can set you up with a sales team.

I would like to add my voice to those saying it’s not great for brand loyalty to take a feature away and make you pay double the subscription rate to basically get it back. And I also agree that there may be two people on my 20 person team that actually need that functionality, so it’s kind of unreasonable to mandate an entire team’s subscription cost be doubled in order for those two people to get the functionality. And honestly, long-time, paid users should be grandfathered in anyway. Up until this year I have loved Asana, but reading the feedback here from Asana to users who are experiencing real frustration with their workflows and/or cannot afford to pay for a feature for a whole team that for most orgs, only a few users need, is really disappointing.

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We were all advocate of Asana in the past and we sure had a role in the Asana growth. Now it’s time to un-advocate it. It’s going to cost a lot of work to migrate to another platform, but I will not be hostage of a company that behaves this way.

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I’m in this boat. I understand everyone being annoyed about loosing access to the feature, but I’m more annoyed I have to add yet another uBlock rule in a continued attempt to declutter the application named after a yoga posture.

Yoga is relaxing, Asana is anything but.

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I specifically paid a subscription for the dashboard feature, as one of the enticements. It was literally the feature I need, as someone who doesn’t just use ASANA but spreads and teaches others to implement.

The dashboard was part of my organisational tools to give oversight, and now its simply gone.

How is this in any way good business practice. Portfolios as displayed is not the same as the dashboard so even upgrading is not a fix.

ASANA, listen to your experienced user base and don’t go down this route.

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I must be just about the only person who really likes the new Portfolios feature.

timmy-alone

Portfolios is not a rebadge of Dashboard to a new payment plan. It’s a whole new data model and feature set that has real potential.

A Portfolio is a “super project” that contains other projects. The ability to add custom fields at the project level is a game changer that opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Ok. Portfolio sharing is a little weak, and the integration of Portfolio links into the general UI is a bit haphazard but I’m assuming these will be ironed out in the coming weeks.

For example, we need at least:

  • a link from the Project to the Portfolio(s) it belongs to
  • the option to update custom properties on the Project outside of the Status dialogue
  • the ability to add a status update from the project view

ASANA has failed to communicate just how significant a change Portfolios represents. Given the overlap with the old Dashboard feature I can see why they’ve looked to transition to this way better model.


If I might make a suggestion…

Allow Premium users the concept of a Dashboard, and give them a taste of how the full Portfolio feature works by:

  • granting access to a single Portfolio
  • put a cap on the number of projects that can be added to the Portfolio
  • restrict project level custom fields to Business only
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I don’t think most people are arguing they don’t like the Portfolio feature. They are arguing the fact that it was poorly communicated and premium users are losing an existing feature.

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My boss accepted that I upgraded from free to Premium because we needed the Dashboard feature. Now the cost doubled to get it. How do I get Dashboards at Premium price?

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