🧭 The Asana admin compass

[Bastien_Siebman]

Hi,

When I am helping clients, I always emphasize the importance of having an Asana admin. The admin is the person that knows the tool very well, is able to answer questions, trains the team, and makes sure the org stays clean and organized!

(the French translation is available 🧭 Le compas de l’administrateur Asana)

I thought it would be interesting to have an “Asana admin compass” as a list of tasks to undergo on a regular basis as an admin. FYI I am promoting my own tools because I created it for exactly that purpose: help users go further with Asana.

Mission 1: keep the org clean and nice

• review the list of tags, remove duplicates, challenge colors (using Tags explorer)

• review custom fields, challenge color and text, make sure the drop down are alpha sorted, remove duplicates (using Custom Fields Explorer)

• encourage everyone to have an avatar, a full name and role

• clean subtasks by completing the ones in completed tasks (using Subtasks Cleaner)

• suggest emojis, we never have enough of emojis (some inspiration in The best emojis for business and work in general)

• make sure templates are all in a public team (if applicable)

Mission 2: prevent overwhelming feeling in the team

• review everyone’s My Tasks views and encourage cleaning
• review overdue tasks using a report
• encourage Inbox use
• challenge projects & templates existence and encourage owners to archive
• audit collaborators on tasks in templates

Mission 3: watch out for data leak

• audit guest access (using Guest Inspector)

• remove “outdated” guests from the org (using the admin console)

• audit teams and projects privacy settings (public, private, on request) and membership list

• audit task collaborators (if applicable, on some sensitive tasks)

Mission 4: keep the cost under control

• export usage (using the admin console) and remove inactive users to free up seats and downgrade

Mission 5: be the helper they need

• provide a place for Q&A (in the form of a project and/or a form)

• keep a record and share previous questions and answers

• use the Organization export to identify new users (without a proper training)

• use the Organization export to detect decrease in usage (in department, location…) and investigate

Mission 6: automate as much as possible

• keep an eye out for new rules and get inspiration from The coolest Asana rules 😎

Mission 7: define and watch for best practices

For example:

• authorized level of subtasks deepness (hint: should be 1 )

• project name structure

• a color system and workflows around colors (using 🎨 If Van Gogh used Asana: a study about colors on Asana for example)

Mission 8: design the Asana systems
Using A framework to evaluate Asana systems

• find the right balance between teams, projects, tasks and subtasks

• use custom fields or tags when appropriate

• design workflows adapted to each need

• …

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Thanks @lpb @LEGGO @Julien_RENAUD for your help. The detailed list now includes more than 50 points of control, reach out to me to get it.

[Bastien_Siebman]

@Julien_RENAUD I am curious to have your feedback on this, since you’ve had this role for a while!

[Phil_Seeman]

Bravo, @Bastien_Siebman, excellent post - really valuable suggestions.

[Emily_Roman]

This is just amazing @Bastien_Siebman! great content! thanks for organizing all this useful information in one thread. It’s very clear and well organized. THANK YOU

[Paul_Grobler]

Thank @Bastien_Siebman. This is a great idea and thanks for creating this collection.

[LEGGO]

@Bastien_Siebman you are the king of posts, man! Thanks for being such an awesome contributor!!! You definitely raise the bar, my friend.

[Julien_RENAUD]

Great post Bastien, one more

One thing I regularly check: Team privacy, to warn people who created a public team instead of a private one.
And as you mentioned I use a lot the export to clear unused accounts, but I also use this file to detect new users, more particularly new users in location where I have not yet trained an expert. The idea is to accompany them as soon as possible

[Julien_RENAUD]

Another thing again with the export file: I use it to have the login rate of each team, each location of the company, so that I can see the evolution and contact them if the rate decreases to understand what’s wrong. This export file is so useful

[lpb]

Great post, @Bastien_Siebman!

I agree with many of the bullets but not all (of course!).

Missing, I think, are:

• Verify Team and project access (privacy) settings (Julien only mentioned Team)
• Prune Team and project membership lists
• Prune Task collaborator lists
• Encourage Asana Inbox use and managment

Thanks,

Larry

[LEGGO]

@Bastien_Siebman another name for this would be a “Preventative Maintenance Checklist”. I plan to take what you have built and design a project with recurring tasks that that helps me (and others), as the custodians of Asana for our business, maintain a clear and constructive environment.

What about management of Project Templates? Ensuring they live in a dedicated public project for all to see. Also, I have found it is important to ensure who has joined the template or are collaborators within tasks. Depending on who uses the template, those users may not want to be notified of the creation and activity associated with a project built from a template.

You mentioned users having an avatar and name. I’d suggest also a common title. This can be very useful when you need to filter a workflow by job function or role.

[Bastien_Siebman]

Thanks to all, I am updating right now.

@lpb

but not all

Could you point out which ones you don’t agree with?

@LEGGO

“Preventative Maintenance Checklist”

I went with a more “marketable” name so I and other can find it again easily (compass for the win)

[lpb]

@Bastien_Siebman

Could you point out which ones you don’t agree with?

I definitely appreciate this overall; in addition to the four bullets to add in my earlier reply (thanks for incorporating those already), those I feel differently about are:

• The name “Asana Admin” may be a negative to some companies, particularly smaller ones; “Asana Expert” is more of a positive–who wouldn’t want that role, and management might be less about a new “admin” effort to fund. Sometimes I use “Trainer” (where I train the Trainer), talk about needing someone to shepherd projects, or “Ambassador” if appropriate.
• My Tasks: Often needs a fast, wholesale cleaning using multi-select
• Tags: Often not used enough to warrant cleaning
• Smaller and more static orgs may not require the three bullets related to the admin console export file auditing
• Emoji: Most mortals may prefer to use 90% fewer emoji than you require Happy World Emoji Day

But these are nitpicks–great job!

Larry

[LEGGO]

Yep! I agree, great name as is. Just offering perspective.

[Bastien_Siebman]

@lpb

The name “Asana Admin” may be a negative to some companies, particularly smaller ones; “Asana Expert” is more of a positive–who wouldn’t want that role, and management might be less about a new “admin” effort to fund. Sometimes I use “Trainer” (where I train the Trainer), talk about needing someone to shepherd projects, or “Ambassador” if appropriate.

Asana Maestro Cheatsheet?

@lpb

• My Tasks: Often needs a fast, wholesale cleaning using multi-select
• Tags: Often not used enough to warrant cleaning
• Smaller and more static orgs may not require the three bullets related to the admin console export file auditing

I did not really want the post to be filled with “if applicable” “optional” or “that depends”

@lpb

Emoji: Most mortals may prefer to use 90% fewer emoji than you require Happy World Emoji Day

They are wrong =)

[Adrienne_McCue]

Love everything you stated here! Doing a lot of that! Good idea on having a Q&A project! Duh to me!

[Bastien_Siebman]

We kept improving the list with @Julien_RENAUD after working with several clients, and we now have more than 50 items to check both at setup and on a regular basis. If you are interested in getting access, you can contact me in a private message.

[Denis_Sooma]

Hey @Bastien_Siebman !
Just got to read this post. Very nice and instructive!

Congrats!

[Kemoy_Liburd-Chow]

Excellent compass

[Stephanie_Chiquette]

@Bastien_Siebman this is a fabulous list! I am wondering if you or any other Asana Super Admins have an updated list for a large enterprise instance of Asana. How are you managing your instance with over 7000 users? Anyone out there with over 10K users on a global level? Let me hear from you and your tips, tricks, best practices, pain points, wish list and lets up vote some solutions to our Asana product team as we all continue to grow and our needs expand.