What do new users who are the first to sign up from their team need to learn to be successful in their first 30 days in Asana? Tell us what you think.
I’m Maggie from Asana’s Customer Education team, and we need your help! We want to make sure our training content is optimized to help you and your teammates onboard quickly to Asana so that you can start spending more time on the work that matters. Take a few minutes to share your thoughts in this survey: https://forms.gle/W2cwHjLA1ZaME6mYA. By submitting your feedback, you will be entered for the chance to win some awesome Asana swag!
I was so excited after my first look! On a PC, I created a team, a project for the team, sections, and tasks under those sections. I could assign. I could invite. I could elaborate beneath the tasks. I could discuss tasks beneath them. I could create conversations not linked to tasks. All so perfect!!!
Then I found out I could ONLY create top-level tasks on my phone and iPad. No Creation of sections. No creation of tasks below existing sections.
My team is on the go and so am I… creating the task as a team and on the fly seems so basic, how could it be left off of mobile devices???
Please, this is SO CLOSE to the first platform I might actually be able to use. We can’t use it if we can’t add in sections and tasks under sections when they come up away from our desks.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your feedback with us! The ability to create Sections via Mobile (both Android and iOS) has been removed temporarily but we’re hoping to re-implement it as soon as possible (you can learn more about it in the following post: Create Section feature is missing from our mobile app - #29)
With that said, you should be able to create tasks in iOS and nest them under existing sections; here are the steps to follow:
Access your project
Click on the “+” button at the bottom of your screen
Add a title, a description (and assignee + due date if you need to)
Click on “Create”
This should create a task at the very top of your project
Using drag ad drop, you can then move your task from the top of the project under the section you wish to!
Hope this helps Patrick; and again, apologies for the fact that you can’t create sections via mobile at the moment; we’re working as hard as we can to re-implement it asap!
And of course, if you have any follow-up question, or if there is anything I can help you with, please let me know!
Thank you for the quick reply and workaround. I have created a few extra sections titled “unused” when setting up a list. Not ideal, but keeps Asana usable.
One more drawback; I have not checked on the desktop version yet but it seems I can’t edit or delete a conversation from my iPad. I can edit and delete my replies within a conversation, but not the conversation as a whole and no editing of the initial post created when the conversation was created. I could instruct the team to leave that initial post description blank when creating a new conversation and use a reply for their first post as a workaround. Not ideal and strange to not be able to delete a conversation entirely while on a mobile. Assigning collaborators for a conversation is tedious, too… would be nice to select the team as a whole or at least be able to select several members at a time. Maybe that is better on the pc.
Please note, I almost believe there is a universal law requiring all apps and interfaces to choose a handful of basic functions to withhold. Asana makes me want to cry because it is so close to a usable solution to get my team off Facebook. Your app is way better for collaborating than Facebook, yet what it does is so simple. It is beautiful in its entirety as it is through the desktop, and just has a couple things withheld on mobile devices. Those things must be put in place to get people away from the momentum Facebook has.
Skip new features, polish the mobile interface, and stop there!
Another question came up… I realized that I created conversations within a project that were actually team topics rather than project-specific topics. On a PC, I deleted the conversations from the project, then recreated them directly to the team. Logical. But I can’t find out how to see team conversations on a mobile device. I could create a “project” called “general team stuff” and use that. Not good to have the ability to reach out to the team from a feature on the desktop version with the assumption the team can see it wherever they are, yet the team can’t get to the conversation in the field. Thoughts?
We recently implemented (both on web and mobile) the ability to edit comments in conversations (see You can now edit comments on Conversations!), however, you’re correct, it is not possible yet to edit the conversation itself. I’m sure this is something we will consider implementing in the near future and on my end, I’ll make sure to keep you posted as soon as I have some info.
Just so you are clear, there are two things not possible; inability to delete a conversation on mobile device; inability to edit the “start conversation” text after the conversation is created.
If a person screws up their initial text in the “start conversation “ field available when creating the conversation, they cannot edit it and cannot delete the conversation. My suggestion is to implement deletion of conversations on mobile devices and DO AWAY with the start conversation field. You have already implemented editing comments posted after creation, and the user can always post a comment as the conversation starter instead of using a special field that currently could get them in trouble. I will inform my team NOT to use this field, but it is a training issue… either the field should be editable after creation or it should go away because it is not a necessary field.
There is no arrow next to my team name on my iPhone. My workaround for the team is to search for the team name. It only takes typing “ho” before it comes up, so only an unintuitive training issue and not too tedious of a workaround.
Very basic things that are reasonable: create a direct link to the team home page at the bottom of mobile (plenty of room for one more icon); allow deletion of conversations on mobile; either do away with the redundant, unnecessary “start conversation “ text field or allow editing after creation.
Asana is a team platform; the reason for its value is the challenges teams face. Training the team on workarounds and warnings just to use the platform is a burden worth avoiding!
