Originally submitted to Ambassador Community lead; encouraged to submit in the Forum—expanded from focus on ambassadors to include Asana Partners and anyone assisting with rolling adoption and evaluation of new product features
Situation: Asana ambassadors/partners/adoption liaisons (“liaisons” for the rest of this post) own the responsibility to digest releases/updates to the Asana platform and disseminate changes to their teams and clients. We subscribe to forum topics and set reminders for ourselves to go to the forum to review recent Asana Release Notes, Product Launches, and Product Updates. We copy and paste information back into other places (Asana for me) to position organizational decision-makers to understand what has already rolled out that needs to be announced to our teams, which items present new opportunities for evaluation, etc.
Proposed Solution: I have an idea that would require a small extra lift from an internal Asana person (either Ambassador Community team, the team(s) that write Asana Release Notes, Product Launches, and Product Updates, or combo effort). I envision a deliverable of one .csv file shared out with liaisons at the end of each month (or timing that aligns best with these monthly). The file could be generated by an export of an Asana project used by the internal collaborators before the deliverable is published. Each task is titled with the a) short name of the feature used in the Asana Release Note or b) the forum post title, and uses the post or release note date as the due date. A custom field categorizes the task as Release Note, Product Launch, or Product Update. The description holds a brief summary (the short note already used in release note lists and the TL;DR of other forum posts) and holds a clickable link to the related forum post url in the description.
New Future: Effort across all liaisons is reduced. We are able to import the .csv file into existing Asana projects and can move forward with our focus on further internal categorization and discussion with our decision makers and clients. We’re increasing and modeling use of Asana in the process, engaging those people in comments and prioritization right within our own workspaces. We can use all that Asana has available to manage the work of integrating, building, and evolving our instances collaboratively. We would understand the export is a snapshot in time and that sometimes Asana makes slight changes/clarifications to the wording of the titles or TL;DR after items are posted. We would take it from there with no further expectation of maintenance from Asana.
Companion inspiration notes for liaison
Not included in original idea—adding this example space where the .csv could be imported and carried forward since this idea is now visible to a broader audience:
Liaisons would all have different paths forward in designing spaces to collaborate internally after importing the monthly .csv file. I’m sharing just one idea.
- Translate due date to a custom date field “Release,” freeing up due date to be used in this space for features being adopted
- Sections:
- To Review
- Evaluating (collaborators in project pull ideas to evaluating to serve periodic meetings)
- Planning/Design (new features actively being researched further for improvements to existing processes or new systems)
- Team Roll-Out (required design and now rolling out to team)
- FYI: Inform Team (non-negotiable already-live features the team should be informed of)
- Archive for Reference (some non-applicable features go straight here… integrations/features not in use, above subscription tier, etc.)
- Custom fields:
- Interest (liaison indicates initial interest level)
- Priority (evaluating collaborators weigh in with priority)
- Benefits (liaison tags relevant current processes that would benefit from feature)
- Justification (liaison tags relevant business justifications that would be obtained by new feature)
- Area of Asana (liaison tags main area(s) of Asana impacted by feature, allowing for filtering/grouping over time)
- People Custom Field (“[Org] Team Member” in my screenshot; liaison tags the business collaborators who will be most interested in reviewing the feature; this empowers a custom filtered “My Review” tab that allows collaborators to focus in on features most relevant to them)
- Reference Custom Field (link to associated tasks or projects when features require larger planning, preserving a cross-reference to the design or adoption work, announcements, etc.)
- Rhythm:
- Monthly: Liaison imports .csv file and spends 20-30 minutes categorizing at a high level with custom fields, and providing initial notes within descriptions to steer others reviewing the features
- Monthly? business decision makers periodically review new features in “To Review” section, adding priority, moving to Evaluating if desired, and using comments to ask questions
- Quarterly? Liaison hosts meeting with business decision makers to determine which features in Evaluating will be prioritized for design/adoption in the coming quarter and to report on features already in Team Roll-Out or FYI: Inform Team
