Hi everyone, we are a 
Technology Partner (IT Support back in the day) using Asana since April 2020. We loved Asana from the start, most companies in our industry use tools that look like they are from the 90s and make you feel like you are stuck in an episode of The Office. We naively thought that we could craft Asana to our will and use it to create dynamic process architectures, share our work visually with our clients, and use it to run not only projects but, most of our day-to-day work and even use it to replace our inventory and documentation tools. If we are being honest, the image we had in our minds and what we delivered up until recently was not even close. However, the stars are aligning and we have radically improved how we use Asana to manage our processes and workflows and wanted to share them with you.
Processes & Workflows 1.0 (2020-July 2024)
Like many of you, we rely on processes to onboard/offboard users and clients, and any number of repetitive tasks, some of which can be quite complex. We experimented with Task Templates, created a Process Library to house our Task Templates, and created systems to allow everyone to make the processes better, we got excited when we explored the idea of more automation inspired by the excellent video by @Sonja_Gusenbauer (Profile - Sonja_Gusenbauer - Asana Forum) 🏗️ Advanced Project Architectures: The Funnel on funnel projects. The result was that we had processes which although good enough were essentially glorified Checklists with a few rules and documented steps within the subtasks.
Issues Solved
Clients submitting customised forms via Asana for common process requests.
Task templates customised for each of our clients.
Issues Not Solved
Update in one place, updated everywhere.
Processes are not dynamically built, instead they are sequential checklists and unable to cope with non-sequential workflows.
We cannot find a smart way for submitted form tasks to be the start of a process.
Our engineers still have to do a lot of manual work - creating a task from a task template, and cross-referencing form fields with tasks that need to be carried out.
Our Head of Automation is going blind and out of their mind with manually updating subtasks, rules, fields and views across a lot of projects.
Clients cannot easily see the progress of complex processes e.g. user onboarding that requires a new computer to be delivered to them.
Processes & Workflows 2024 (The year of the Bundle)
The good news is that we have solved, at least partially, all these issues and have the joy of feeling that we are using Asana in a way that’s making everyone’s life easier. What changed? It’s not all to do with Asana (see below), but in a word, Bundles (thank you @Jan-Rienk for your work on Streamline work using Bundles). I can see no other way that you can implement complex processes and workflows without the ability to make updates to Task Templates, Rules, Sections, and Fields across projects. However, Bundles were the catalyst for reviewing everything we did around Processes and Workflows.
Issues Solved
Update in one place, updated everywhere. We used Bundles and thought long and hard about what tasks/subtasks need to be shared across which projects.
Processes are not dynamically built, instead they are sequential checklists and unable to cope with non-sequential workflows. Bundles again, but also we did visualisations in Lucidchart, we have been using it for years and like Asana it has taken a big leap forward recently and we have made this the starting point of any complex processes that we want to map, as building directly in Asana means other people have no way of visualising the work, spotting problems or finding better ways to work.
We cannot find a smart way for submitted form tasks to be the start of a process. A combination of a rule change to allow new tasks added by a particular form to trigger actions, and the pivot to dynamic creation of subtasks for processes and workflows. Previously, the form would create a task, we would then create a task template and make the form task a subtask of that task.
Our engineers still have to do a lot of manual work - creating a task from a task template, and cross-referencing form fields with tasks that need to be carried out. Similar to the above with the the pivot to dynamic creation of subtasks for processes and workflows.
Our Head of Automation is going blind and out of their mind with manually updating subtasks, rules, fields and views across a lot of projects. They spend more time on visualisations and then plan the implementation in Asana deciding on what needs to be in a Bundle or not. Not perfect, but less blind and less crazy.
Clients cannot easily see the progress of complex processes e.g. user onboarding that requires a new computer to be delivered to them. With the Timeline feature, commentator and viewer only access to projects we now create subtasks in each process so the client can see where we are, it is not perfect but it is something we will continue to work on so that clients get off of email and start using Asana as their single source of truth.
Learnings
Processes vs. Workflows - I used to use these terms interchangeably, and certainly have in this post! We found the following definitions when creating visualisations and deciding if something should be a Task Template (It is a workflow for us) or Dynamic Subtasks (each rule that triggers the creation of sub-tasks is a workflow for us and the main task is a process) e.g. setting up and licensing Office365 is a workflow that has tasks dynamically created in a rule which is part of the User Onboarding Process.
Process: A process encompasses a broader set of actions aimed at achieving a specific organizational goal or result. It includes multiple workflows and often involves various departments or teams.
Workflow: A workflow is a specific sequence of tasks that are carried out to complete a single component of a process. It is more about the execution and the specific steps taken to achieve part of the larger goal.
Task Templates vs. Dynamic Subtasks Based on Bundled Fields - For repetitive tasks that do not have many variables e.g Installing/Setting Up an Application on a specific computer we use Task Templates, but for anything where a form is required, we build the process dynamically (first we create the Lucidchart!) by creating different subtasks when different values of Bundled fields are selected, this way instead of having a task with many subtasks not used it will only create the ones required for that particular one.
Everything you may need to fire a rule from should probably have a Bundled field.
Map your Processes and Workflows in a Visualisation Tool (we like Lucidchart) - at present it is too complicated and prone to user error to build them directly in Asana.
Local vs Bundles Rules - At this moment I cannot see why anyone would not put all Sections, Fields, and Task Templates in Bundles, but there is still a need to have some Rules local to the project. For instance, the rule for when a task is added by a particular form is only available via a Local Rule. To minimise the local rules, we tend to have a rule that assigns a value to a Field that is in a Bundle, that way you can build rules in the bundle around that field. For instance, when Client X submits a User Onboarding form a local rule ‘When user Onboarding form has been completed…’ is run it will know it is from that form and assign a Bundled Field ‘
Onboarding Status’ with a value.
Not Resolved/Not Given Enough Thought So Far
- How and should we track changes that are made to a Bundles or rules. forms, fields, sections attached to a project/Template?
- Do we really want a process around updating for small items like correcting a typo or adding a screenshot in a sub-task?
- Should everyone have the ability to make changes or if not, who can make changes?
- How do we cope with variations per client to processes and workflows, I do not want to end up with 50 rules per project even if they are all in a Bundle.
The Wishlist (I will create these in Product Feedback)
- Further expansion of the rules’ capabilities to do more things dynamically, particularly around dependencies, dates and calling add-ons.
- Give Project Templates the ability to store views so that all our lovely emojis, filters and column headings take a long time to replicate across all projects.
Maybe Bundles can have Views added to Rules, Task Templates, Fields and Sections?
The Bottom Line
If you are serious about streamlining your or your client’s business, upgrade to Enterprise and start using Bundles to push your use of Asana to the next level. Visualizations + Bundles + Dynamic Subtask Creation = Processes fit for 2024!
Thank you for your time reading this long post, we welcome all feedback.
as I might have some ideas about answering those questions, some of which can be found in 