Hi all,
This is Part 2 of my post.
Now as a refresh part 1 is here;
The Tools that make up my system are;
The Tools that make up this system;
- Asana – Premium Version
- Flowsana – Automation within Asana using rules type approach.
- Zapier (Easily to configure app integrator)
- Integromat (A bit hard to use but more powerful app integrator)
- Saasu (Australian Based Accountancy Package)
- Google Forms
- MS Word & Dropbox
The key objectives that this part of the System achieves are;
The Objective of the system
- Manage the collection of initial Prospect Details through to becoming a Client.
Streamline the Invoicing and Accountancy aspects.- Provide a single view of all the Bookings for each of the Clients.
- Automate and Simplify.
- Have associated Processes to enable this to be passed on VA or Assistant.
Step 1: - Initial Inquiry Comes in via a variety of ways, walk-ins, SMS, messenger, Facebook, website inquiry etc.
My wife has a set of standard questions that she asks, whilst there does exist a Google Form to assist here my wife in the end normally just writes it down. Then she will go into Asana and create a New Task in the 
pH7 project
Flowsana Automation will set the custom field “Workflow Status” to Inquiry. This enables easy filtering and organising the project.
Utilising the custom fields in the project as much additional data as possible from the inquiry is entered. The Description field is used to capture non specific details about the Inquiry.
A decision is then made if this inquiry is determined as a Prospect needing further action or not. If not then a Custom Field “Category” is manually set to “No Action”.
As a future change I am thinking of potentially automatically moving these Tasks to a separate Archive project if pH7 project gets to cluttered.
If this person is a likely Prospect, then a standard email is then sent to them and this includes a link to the Google Inquiry/Booking form for them to complete.
This is where one of challenges arise and I haven’t got the full process/solution sorted for this. I want the email sent to the prospect to be added as a SubTask under their Task, now the Asana Gmail addin doesn’t support this, so it has been a bit of a challenge. After watching the Future of Asana video the other week I am very interested in seeing the combined inbox function…
Once the email is attached the Category field is then set to “Prospect” this then triggers;
Flowsana Automation adds a standard set of SubTasks to this Prospect Task, for follow up, trial booking etc.
Step 2: - Incoming Form is received. The Prospect is sent a link to the Google Form that they complete which provide details on how they want to use the space and when etc. Once they complete the form it is automatically sent to Asana and into the 
Incoming Forms Project.
Flowsana Automation will then assign this new Task to my Wife to process the form.
Using the form she will determine which Prospect ie task in the pH7 project this belongs to, then reviews the details and confirms space availability etc. The Incoming form is then renamed to include date of response and made a SubTask of the Prospect.
Step 3: - They are a client now. So now my wife updates the Workflow Status field to being “Update Client Details” this now triggers multiple Flowsana Automations.
Flowsana Automation to add this task to the DetailedClientInformation project which enables multiple custom fields which are then updated.
Flowsana Automation creates a new Project using a specific Template Project and uses the Task Name to provide the name for this Project which will be the now Clients Name, in the pH7 Clients team.
Now as an enhancement I hope @Phil_Seeman might be working on is a way to also add the task used to create the project into the Project as well…
Flowsana Automation now sets the Category Custom Field to “Client”
Step 4: - Schedule and Terms & Conditions. Once all the Client Details are updated then next step is to prepare the Schedule and T&C’s this is triggered by update the Workflow Status field to “Prepare Schedule” and once again another set of automations are triggered.
Flowsana Automation adds two Tags to the task “CreateSchedule” & “CreateSassuContact”
Zapier Integration detects the task with the tag “CreateSaasuContact” it then uses the custom fields in the “DetailedClientInformation” project to create a new Contact in Saasu and also populate the Tasks Id into a custom field in Saasu. Using this automation means that there is no double keying in the Accountancy package when needed to create an Invoice to be sent to the Client.
Zapier Integration detects that a new Contact has been created in Saasu and the using the TaskId in the custom field in Saasu, identifies the correct Task in Asana and adds the tag “SaasuContactCreated” to the task. So that my wife can easily confirm that the Accountancy Package has been updated.
Flowsana Automation now detects that the tag “SaasuContactCreated” has been used it then removes the tag “CreateSaasuContact” from the task.
Integromat Automation is triggered by the “CreateSchedule” tag a 10 step automation process using Asana, Dropbox and Word is started. In summary it does the following;
- Remove the “CreateSchedule” tag
- Using a Standard Word Template in Dropbox it populates specific fields with the relevant details that are captured in Asana.
- This document is then saved back to the correct directory in Dropbox for update if needed.
- A tasks is then created in the pH7 Client Schedules & Invoices project for this Schedule and assigned to my wife for processing.
- Now at present I don’t add the document to the task because I couldn’t work out a way to add the document as a dropbox linked document. I could add it as a direct attachment but that meant if via dropbox this document was update it wouldn’t reflect in Asana.
- The task is then added to the correct Clients individual project in the relevant section.
Step 5 – Time to pay. So, the next step is to invoice the client. Utilising the information already pushed to Saasu the accountancy package in Step 4 an Invoice is now created for the Client, this is done in Saasu and the resulting PDF Invoice is stored in the relevant directory in Dropbox.
Zapier Integration detects that a new Invoice has been created in Saasu. It creates a Tasks in the pH7 Client Schedules & Invoices project and populates the relevant Custom Fields, and assigns it to my wife for processing and adding to the Clients dedicated Project in the relevant section.
I can’t automatically assign it the specific Client Project which is why my wife has to manually assign it to the correct project and section.
And that is it for my Asana System…
Why do I use both Zapier and Integromat as app integrators?
- Zapier has an inbuilt integration to Sassu, Integromat doesn’t.
- Integromat has better Asana integration aspects than Zapier.
- I can do multi step process in Integromat using the free Account.
- Both the Zapier & Integromat are free accounts.
- I went with OTB integrations because I couldn’t spend the time to learn how to do it via API’s.
What does the wife/client think.
- The Automation parts are great, schedule creation, client already in Saasu saves her lots of time.
- Just ensuring that the right process steps are followed, is where there is some issues because it is not a daily task to run through all of the above.
- I need to firm up the Process/Instructions Documents associated with all of the above to ensure she can get the most out of it and understand what is happening.
So what next for this Asana system…
The objective of “Have associated Processes to enable this to be passed on VA or Assistant.”
Is where I want to next focus, using CAWEMO to document the process, so they have a defined process to follow. Looking at GURU to provide wiki type documentation for both VA and My Wife to understand all of the components in this System.
I am also wanting to look at using the concept of the guest accounts CFO, Invisible Man (The coolest Asana rules 😎) to how we can better alert and manage Invoicing Payment, Renewal of the T&C etc.
I hope that some of you have got ideas or inspiration from both of these posts and are able to see opportunities to expand how you are utilising Asana and other tools.
Jason…
pH7 project when that has the Category change to Client it creates a New Project based on a Specific template. What I would like is that the Task form the