Hi there.
I have been using ASANA for almost two years and find it to be a great tool. I have been patiently waiting for robust project management functionality. In the interim i have subscribed to Flowsana which best meets our needs.
We have projects with 100+ dependent tasks. The problem is that the response times from ASANA/Flowsana is making the tool useless. Can anyone assist in resolving this issue or provide any advice.
Hi there Phil.
I have been using ASANA for almost two years and find it to be a great tool. I have been patiently waiting for robust project management functionality. In the interim i have subscribed to Flowsana which best meets our needs on the 30 day free trial.
We have projects with 100+ dependent tasks. The problem is that the response times from ASANA/Flowsana is making the tool useless. It takes 15 seconds per item to update and as a result has negated all the benefits that we believed were going to be achieved.
Can you assist in resolving this issue or provide any advice. We have a 100mbs fibre internet line.
cc @Phil_Seeman 
Hi @briank,
I actually just replied to Deborah from your organization who had written into our support system. If youād like to send me a private message here with your email address, Iād be happy to add you to that thread.
Flowsanaās performance is bounded by several factors, including that it has to work through Asanaās API which has rate limits on the throughput at which it can access your Asana data. Additionally, itās important to understand that with a complex project with 100 or more dependencies, and potentially multiple dependencies across multiple paths to take into account, the algorithms required to properly compute dependent task dates are pretty involved. All of this being said, I am committed to continuing to increase and optimize the performance of Flowsana in any way I can!
One of the things Deborah and I started discussing is the idea of āpausing Flowsana updatesā so that you could make a batch of changes and then turn Flowsana loose on those. Iāve thought about this idea; itās interesting, but one concern I have is that while updates are paused, youāll make changes which conflict with the updates which would have been occurring, so that then when you resume updates, Flowsana will make changes which are not what you expect. Does this make sense? Iām open to your (or anyone else reading this post!) thoughts on this.
Same issue here. It takes too long to be really useful. One thing that might help is if thereās anyway to indicate Flowsana is re-calculating due dates. Thereās such a lag between moving something and then seeing its effect, that often times Iāll move one thing and then move something else before the first flow is finished calculating. It creates overlapping workflows and then things get a little out of whack. Love the idea behind Flowsana and would keep if it were snappier, but at this point it causes more trouble than good.
I would love to be able to have Flowsana do this, but (a) Asana doesnāt provide a way for third party applications to modify its user interface, and (b) when Flowsana is recalculating, itās doing that based on receiving data in the āback endā from Asanaās database, and so thereās really no way for Flowsana to equate a change in the data to one or more browser screens that might currently be displaying that particular project where the changed data resides. (I hope that explanation made sense!)
Regarding the overall speed, Iām always looking at ways to speed up Flowsana and will definitely continue to do so. That being said, it will never be the instant change that you might expect or hope to see, as it has to wait to receive notification of the changed data from Asana, then do its own processing and recalculating, then send the changed data back to Asana for it to update its data and then display the change.
Makes sense. Iāll give it one more shot, I was a little impatient the first time. Thank you!
Sounds great, thanks. Also donāt hesitate to email support@flowsana.net if you want any personalized advice or help on your specific usage scenarios.
@Phil_Seeman, Just thinking out loud hereā¦Would it be possible for you to have a really lightweight, companion Flowsana Chrome Extension that just showed a working indicator via its icon in the toolbar changing appearance?
Might that be enough to address @Andrew_Andersonās request (somewhat)? Even though Flowsana may not know exactly what in the UI is being worked on, the user probably does!
Just a thought,
Larry
Not so easy, unfortunately. Iāll send you a DM to explain in more detail since itās more Flowsana-specific than Asana-related.
I went back and gave it another shot and hereās what I found. For larger and more complex projects, itās really nice if youāre making a small change (e.g. a stage of the project gets extended for two days). All you have to do is stretch that portion out, go grab a sandwich, hit the gym, etc. and then when you come back almost everything is updated nicely. Especially if you have a lot of subtasks which arenāt shown on the your timeline, this can be a huge time saver, you just have to wait it out.
One other change request aside from the indicator would be a way to pause the connection from Flowsana to the project in Asana. Iām finding there are always a few small āmanualā changes that need to be made after Flowsana runs: I might need to do an adjustment for weekends, or holidays, or it seems to always miss a few milestones. I usually just want to tweak these a little, without impacting all the dependent tasks, so Iāll go in to Flowsana, remove the connection, go to Asana and make my adjustments, then go back into Flowsana, refresh all the data and reconnect the project. Not a huge deal, but a Pause/Active option might be nice.
Net though I think weāll keep our subscription for now. Thanks!
Thanks for the update, Andrew - and happy to hear you find it worth subscribing to Flowsana!
Having a visual indicator and the ability to pause Flowsana are both on the product road map. Canāt promise exactly when for these enhancements, but I would like to be able to implement them going forward.
Hi there Phil.
Since my original post on the very slow response times we have been actively managing projects: In Excel!
More seriously though we feel that we have now exhausted the benefits that we thought we would derive from using Flowsana. This next statement might prove controversial but the reality is that from an efficiency perspective and user experience Asana need to incorporate the Flowsana capability into the single app. Is there any of this discussion on the horizon because unfortunately both products are now not operating optimally for us as an organisation.
Hi @briank,
Iāve sent you a private message as Iād like to connect with you to discuss further.