Nonlinear Newsletter article production workflow

We have a Newsletter with submitted articles that go through a repeatable, nonlinear editorial process. (e.g. Web Page, PDF and Media creation occurs simultaneously.)

We thought it would be helpful to create a series of workflow Task hierarchies (Subtasks), and custom fields for each article’s primary task, e.g. Date Submitted, Author Name, Responsible Editor, Decision, Priority, Status, etc.

However, the custom fields show up for each Subtask or Sub Subtask in the hierarchy, which is confusing for users, not wanted or necessary.

We would prefer to keep all articles as individual Tasks under a “Newsletter” Project, so we can see where every article is at in process, and move them through Project Sections (e.g. Review, Production, Published.) There can be up to 20 articles or more under review and at different stages of production at the same time, with hundreds to thousands of articles being developed over time.

What would be the best way to create a repeating, nonlinear article editorial workflow for these types of Tasks in Asana?

Should each article be a separate Project and organized in a Portfolio for “Newsletter”? This seems like it would clutter the number of Projects unnecessarily.

Note: The tasks and subtasks are not linear, so converting Tasks to Sections and moving a single Article as a Task across Sections would not work.

Welcome, @acctdev,

I think your approach is likely a good one–articles are tasks, workflow is in subtasks, and stage is in sections, all in one project. (You’ll just have to ignore the custom fields for subtasks and value them only for the parent tasks.)

For a confirmation, or just a generic way to look at this question, consider my workshop video:

Instead of sections, you could consider custom task types to represent your stages, then group the project, by default, into these stages.

Thanks,

Larry