Wanted to get thoughts from the community on a challenge we are trying to solve and see if this can be achieved within Asana or if there is another alternative solution to achieve the result.
We have some consistent processes that we perform each month for every one of our clients(300+). This involves updating data, running reports, performing analytics, etc. We are wanting to streamline this process in order to have more control and visibility over the progress of the tasks than what a shared spreadsheet provides. In addition, since the same process is performed every single month for each customer, we need to have an easy method to re-create the tasks from a defined template.
One of the challenges we are running into is how best to organize the portfolio/projects/tasks so that it is easy to navigate and see what is being worked on and/or needs to be worked on.
Below is a diagram that shows the hierarchy of how the process works each month for each company. This is a basic diagram showing an example of a structure for a single company, but the concept is the same for all others. We have about 300+ companies that we perform these processes for each month. Each company may have between 1 and 5 “vendors” and under each vendor, they may have 1 or more accounts (generally less than 5). Under the Accounts is where the tasks are defined and the tasks are broken out by the team that needs to perform the task. There are about 4 different teams/groups that perform various tasks under the vendor accounts.
I’m not sure the best way to approach this within Asana (using portfolios or projects with tasks/subtasks). From a portfolio perspective, I would envision the Company level being the portfolio. From a project perspective, the project is defined more from the Period level than the Company level, because there will always be a start and end date for each Period, but the Company level may always remain open.
Not to add another wrench in this, but another key component to this has to do with task dependencies and task durations. Since these are consistently repeated tasks each month, there is an expected time duration for when each task should be completed based on when the project starts. However, rather than manually setting the Start Date and Due Date for every single task in the project each month, we want to see if there is a way to define the number of days that the task should take, or set the number of days after the project start date that the task will be due. For example, if Task #1 is due 2 days after the project start date, then instead of setting an actual due date for Task #1, we would just configure a setting that the task is due 2 days after whatever the defined Start Date for the project is. In turn, all due dates in the template would update accordingly based on that Start Date.
I am open to any suggestions on solutions or alternatives that the community can offer. Thank you in advance.
