Katie, could you give us some indication how these features have been received and are they used much by customers. Also would like to know how much the community uses them.
I have been utilizing them more recently; I think it’s important to be able to take a convo to the team>project>and even task level;
The conversations were always an underutilzed function when I was using Asana in the past-- but with people jumping on the Slack bandwagon… I often wonder why they don’t just utilize the conversation feature built internally in Asana already; I know Slack does a lot of other things, but I don’t see a need for me to integrate with slack just for the sake of group discussion since I can already have group discussions within Asana.
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I find the conversations at the task level way more useful than the team and project level conversations.
@JCarl I can add a little color here and I’m sure @Kaitie will have some thoughts about other customers.
First, so we’re all on the same page, @FATBOY and @paulminors I assume when you say “conversations at the task level” you mean comments on tasks.
Here’s the guide article on this. 
For guidance on how to best utilize conversations, you can think about conversations on the team and project levels as more strategic, whereas comments on tasks are more granular. For instance:
- A team conversation might discuss “how we as a group want to respond to questions about x.”
- A project conversation might discuss, “the key road block each of us is seeing now that we’re two weeks into the project.”
- And a comment might be, “Thanks for attaching this document. Ted, could you explain your logic for xyz on this? Once we’re clear on that I think we’ll be set for the meeting!” Then Ted would reply within the same task.
This is how I have been using conversations and comments on tasks and projects with my team and it seems to be working well.
Regarding Slack vs. conversations and comments in Asana: I think of Slack as a real-time chat option for more urgent questions, whereas conversations and comments in Asana can happen overtime. For instance, I use Slack when I want to ask a member of our support team a question that is necessary for me to complete whatever I’m working on at that moment. Alternatively, I’ll use a comment to ask a question about a task or give feedback on something that I’ll be finalizing tomorrow or later in the week.
Other thoughts, folks?
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so my issue is with Slack vs skype vs Asana-- do u get rid of Skype if u use Slack then? But then I find you can’t really get rid of Skype bc Slack is not a perfect replacement for Skype… meh
Yeah I’m on the same page @Alexis (and yes, I meant comment). I think it’s best to prioritise communication as:
- Task comment for conversations about specific tasks.
- Project conversations for project discussions.
- Team conversations for team level discussion and updates.
- Slack for quick and casual questions.
- Skype for calling (not IM-ing).
We have a team called COMPANY that everybody is added to and then use conversations in there to broadcast things that everybody should see in their inbox.
We try to minimize slack use and I’ve mostly muted all channels in slack unless my name is mentioned. Slack has become more of a water cooler and meme sharing noise generator so the real work is in Asana (where it should be).
I would like to leverage PROJECT UPDATES and the conversations related to that more as we take our team from being 90% local to being able to be 100% remote if needed.
Great points @darrencrawford . We do a similar thing: we have a team called Staff - Casual and we use Staff - Casual conversations for more relaxed, general announcements like celebrations or welcome messages about new employees.
I can also attest to the benefits of Project Updates for remote teams. For example, one of my CS colleagues is working from our Dublin office and she sends weekly updates to keep us all informed. In fact, everyone on the CS team sends weekly updates
the biggest drawback I have from inviting the client into my account is when they see how little we are on the same page-- because we use Asana to get on the same page;
so the workaround is to create a private project within each team where we then use this private project to discuss the client;
however I still think that better privacy controls within the conversation function is a better long-term solution for the need to have private (not even 1-on-1) but just private period.
Hello there. Because the conversations in Asana are restrict as to the audience they reach (Team members ou Project members) I end up looking for other ways of contacting people to talk about our projects or a gorup of tasks for exemple. Slack, Whatsapp, Skype or whatever.
It sure would be a lot easier to be able to create a conversation and to be able to choose who the conversation participants would be, but sitll have it related to that project ou team. Would be a awsome way to keep another important part of the work in the same place.