VIDEO: Asana Project Management Demo

Welcome, today we’ll be looking at Asana, a web and mobile application designed to enable teamwork without email. This review video is brought to you by TechnologyAdvice. Our mission is to educate, advise and connect buyers of business technology and one of the ways we do so is by providing unbiased reviews of software. This video review is for Asana and its goal to put conversations & tasks together, so you can get more done with less effort. It was founded by a Facebook co-founder and ex-engineer, who both worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook.

The Web dashboard is divided into three areas: the left side which features your projects and workspaces; the center window that changes based on what you select from the left; and a right information box with more specific information from the main window. The software is cenetered around four main concepts to help you focus less on email: tasks, projects, comments, and inbox. Tasks: instead of sending an email users can create tasks for work they plan to do or need a teammate to do.

Teammates can find out about these updates by checking their tasks list. The Calendar and Attachments tabs also contain helpful information for users to determine the current status of various tasks. The view icon also has the ability to sort data based on projects, due date, and percent complete. By clicking all tasks, users can see who has been assigned to what. To see what it looks like for a teammate, let’s go into Jenna’s inbox. Although the name Inbox seems counter-intuitive for software trying to get you out of email, plot twist, it actually has nothing to do with email.

It’s goal is to help you never read a status email again and get automatic updates about tasks that matter to you. Here in Jenna’s inbox, we can see all of her assignments in the order they have been and are to be completed. If she has a question about a specific assignment, she can comment and then I will get a notification in my inbox. Commenting is the third pillar of Asana. It helps keep conversations within tasks, instead of scattered across email.

Commenting is very common throughout as users have the ability to leave notes on tasks, projects, attachments, and more. Lastly, Projects are organized into several lists and function and are in many ways like tags. They allow you to organize your tasks into shared projects for your initiatives, meetings & lists. In the marketing campaigns project, you can see more information about what tasks are upcoming and when they are due. Made for small to medium sized companies, Asana is available with a free edition and a premium edition.

A limitation for Asana is it can seem a tad backwards trying to get out of email when companies outside of your office and clients aren’t using Asana since you most likely will still have to check your email anyway. The applications also lacks offline capability and a chat feature. In summary, Asana provides: 1) The ability to break free from email within your office 2) Easy access to tasks and projects that matter most 3) The ability to comment and communicate simply To find out more about Asana or other project management software, check out our website where we can help you find software that will fit the needs of your work. Thanks for watching!