Great content so far! I finished modules 1 & 2 and came back to refine my structure and workflow. I have a small company with an evergreen Accounts Payable project with 20-25 monthly bills to download. What is the best way to structure the sections and tasks? A different section for each month, a new project every year? I want to keep things as simple as possible so my assistant knows exactly what she has to do this month without getting confused or overwhelmed by past or future tasks.
Hi Paul, thanks for this video. Some really great ideas and has me rethinking the setup we currently have. A question: do you have any examples of how other property management groups have set up their Asana or best practices you have seen when it comes to these types of businesses?
Hi David, we've seen property management firms set up Asana one of two ways 1) using a project per property 2) using a task per property. Depending on how much work is involved in each property and if you prefer a more consolidated view or not. Happy to share more on a group call if you can join today.
Why are some users able to see a project, but their status is "comment only" in the tasks in the project? Does this have to do with the project's public/private setting? These projects appear in a team that includes all members.
It's to do with their permissions. Click on 'Share' at the top of the project and you can edit each users permissions. Comment only means they can't edit tasks that aren't assigned to them.
Asana doesn't have this feature. I use an app called MindNode on the Mac. I'm afraid a project can only be in one team at a time, hence why it's so important to plan the structure properly from the beginning.
Hi Paul. This is Anne Blackmon from Flightline. I was on the group call today (5/22). Planning to talk to my co-workers tomorrow re: our structure/mind map. We are on Asana Business, so we have the option of using Portfolios. For planning purposes, would you place Teams above Portfolios in the Asana hierarchy? Thanks!
Hi Anne, I wouldn't consider a Team or Portfolio to be higher/lower than one another. Teams are simply a group of users that have access to projects. Whereas a Portfolio is a like a dashboard for seeing the status of projects that you put into it (the project may live in the same or multiple different teams)
Hi Paul. We are one team encompassing Finance/Accounting, Admin, HR, Payroll, so it's almost all evergreen projects. I am mapping it out as each one of those is a project with sections. I'm concerned it will be a very long list of tasks.
Sounds like a good starting point. If you're concerned about the amount of tasks, is there a way to group things together? e.g. maybe some weekly admin tasks can all be grouped under one parent task with subtasks.
Great video! I really like the idea of visually mapping it out before implementing. I have already started rolling out Asana to the team, so there will probably be some rework needed here :)
I have a few questions (maybe these will be answered later in the course, if so - feel free to just refer me to that module/section of the course)! Just some background info about me first; I run a small accounting firm in Stockholm, Sweden, with a team of 6 people and around 100 clients (small consultant companies mostly).
For now, we use only one Team in Asana. Would you suggest adopting the multiple Teams approach now already, or 1-2 years down the line when we are more than 10-15 people in the company?
For now, our clients are on Task level, i.e. every client lives within a Task. Do you think this is a good approach, or should a client be a Project instead - as mentioned in the example in your video? I like the simpleness of having the clients as tasks, however I struggle a bit with the overall visibility with this setup (Portfolio, Workload, Timeline etc). Our work is mainly evergreen, i.e. the work we do for clients reoccur weekly/ monthly/quarterly/yearly. We do have some "one-off" projects as well though.
What is you take on inviting clients to Asana? I was thinking it could be a good idea to simplify and clarify the work and routines between us and the clients, so we don't need to send email reminders to the clients (to remind them to approve invoices, upload documents for the bookkeeping etc.) and to double check if the client has done their part before we can start working on our part.
Let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance!
It depends, if you need the teams to manage the users into different departments or if you plan on using teams as 'folders' for different types of project.
Clients as tasks is fine (I actually do the same thing). It works well if the client engagement is quite simple and you don't need all the features of a project. But it does mean Portfolios and Workload are less useful as these features are better if the client is set up as a project not a task.
I've seen mixed results. Ultimately it's something you'll need to test with one or two clients to see if it's worth it or not for you and to see if they can adopt it. Hope this helps!
You recommend having one team for smaller companies... Given that, what is your recommendation for handling privacy of some projects? Would you have a convention that certain projects be made private and by invitation only within the team? And, is that a setting that can be made the default so it is not overlooked?
Hi Karla, If you have one team, you can invite people at the project level to control access. So if someone is added to a project but not the team, they'll only see that one project. Doing this you don't even need to make the project itself private. The other option is to invite them to the team but make the projects private (like you suggest) and add people on a project by project basis. Hope this helps. Paul
The only difference is that a Company lets you create teams. With a Workspace you can only have one team. So I'd recommend you choose Company. It makes no difference to billing.
What about using different teams to manage permissions? I'd like to be able for example to manage accounting tasks that don't need to be viewable to the organization as a whole. Or, should/could this be accomplished in a different way - perhaps at the task level?
In the video I'm using MindNode which comes as part of a Setapp subscription (awesome tool if you're on a Mac to get access to a lot of great apps for $10/mo: https://paulm.in/3a6hjc8). Besides that, I believe LucidChart has a free plan you can get started with.
how to i log the same project in 2 differnt teams
I'm afraid a project can only be in one team at a time, hence why it's so important to plan the structure properly from the beginning.
Great video! I really like the idea of visually mapping it out before implementing. I have already started rolling out Asana to the team, so there will probably be some rework needed here :)
I have a few questions (maybe these will be answered later in the course, if so - feel free to just refer me to that module/section of the course)! Just some background info about me first; I run a small accounting firm in Stockholm, Sweden, with a team of 6 people and around 100 clients (small consultant companies mostly).
- For now, we use only one Team in Asana. Would you suggest adopting the multiple Teams approach now already, or 1-2 years down the line when we are more than 10-15 people in the company?
- For now, our clients are on Task level, i.e. every client lives within a Task. Do you think this is a good approach, or should a client be a Project instead - as mentioned in the example in your video? I like the simpleness of having the clients as tasks, however I struggle a bit with the overall visibility with this setup (Portfolio, Workload, Timeline etc). Our work is mainly evergreen, i.e. the work we do for clients reoccur weekly/ monthly/quarterly/yearly. We do have some "one-off" projects as well though.
- What is you take on inviting clients to Asana? I was thinking it could be a good idea to simplify and clarify the work and routines between us and the clients, so we don't need to send email reminders to the clients (to remind them to approve invoices, upload documents for the bookkeeping etc.) and to double check if the client has done their part before we can start working on our part.
Let me know your thoughts on this. Thanks in advance!Cheers!
Tintti
Hope this helps!
You recommend having one team for smaller companies... Given that, what is your recommendation for handling privacy of some projects? Would you have a convention that certain projects be made private and by invitation only within the team? And, is that a setting that can be made the default so it is not overlooked?
Thanks, Karla
If you have one team, you can invite people at the project level to control access. So if someone is added to a project but not the team, they'll only see that one project. Doing this you don't even need to make the project itself private.
The other option is to invite them to the team but make the projects private (like you suggest) and add people on a project by project basis.
Hope this helps.
Paul