Asana, what is it?
Like Trello or Microsoft Planner, project management, and remains in Asana’s DNA. Like its competitors, the application allows a project to be broken down into tasks that are assigned to a team.
Asana claims 89,000 paying customers (including the French Air France KLM, Danone, Saint-Gobain and Schneider Electric), and a total of 1.3 million users. True platform, Asana is equipped with a graph. We recognise here the influence of Dustin Moskovitz, one of the two creators of Asana who is also a co-founder of Facebook.
He and his teams were inspired by the Facebook Graph which, let us remember, weaves relationships between members of the social network and the content circulating there: photos, places, companies, posts, videos … Asana’s Work Graph combines tasks, projects and portfolios.
Where does Asana come from?
As mentioned above, one of the two initiators of Asana is Dustin Moskovitz, billionaire and co-founder of Facebook. It was in 2008 that he left the social network to design the project management application of the same name.
His partner Justin Rosenstein began his career at Google where he participated, among other things, in the development of Gmail Chat, since renamed Google Chat. Then moved to Facebook, he helped launch the Like button. It was there that he met his future accomplice.
After raising $ 213 million since its inception in 2009, Asana entered the New York Stock Exchange direct in September 2020. Upon opening, its share appreciated 28% above its price of. benchmark, propelling its valuation to $ 4.2 billion.
In the process, the company initiates a change of strategic dimension. The challenge ? Transform what was initially an improved task management tool into a corporate governance platform.
How to use Asana?
Asana is most intuitive. It allows you to create a project with a series of tasks that are assigned to the members of a team. These tasks are associated with a description, attachments (specifications, screenshots, etc.), comments and of course a deadline.
The participants then follow the progress of the site within a common space that can take different forms: shared calendar, list of tasks to be carried out with their degree of priority, their deadline, the persons responsible, list of current projects , or a kanban board dividing the tasks of a given project in the form of cards by columns according to their state of progress (To do, In progress, Ready for review …), like Trello.
To complete the edifice, Asana launched what he calls the Goals. A feature tailored to manage organisational, team and individual objectives. Their integration into the Work Graph allows each actor in the company, from the junior employee to the member of management, to identify, via a status dashboard, where their work fits into the organisation, and what are the overall goals to which it contributes.
In the line of sight: clarifying the roles of each person, their responsibilities and the rationale for the deliverables, with a view ultimately to boosting the motivation of the project teams.
How to take advantage of the Gantt chart in Asana?
Asana makes it possible to forge links within projects to manage dependencies that may exist between tasks. This canvas is displayed in a dynamic timeline that is directly inspired by a Gantt chart (see the capture below).
The advantage? To be able to immediately visualise the overlaps between two tasks, but also to better control the addition of unscheduled tasks. What to benefit from a dashboard adapted to the management of a complex project.
How many apps does Asana’s app store contain?
On its app store, Asana has more than 200 applications that integrate with its platform. Among the most popular are Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Salesforce, Tableau, Zapier. But also Gmail and Outlook messaging. Or, in another area, Miro and his digital whiteboard.
Through this, Asana intends to bring together all the content useful for task and project management. In parallel, the publisher has developed an automation workflow environment (Workflow Builder) designed to create and execute business request or approval processes, or to automate the adjustment of dependencies within a project in the event of deadlines, for example.
To make it easier to get started, Asana has opened a Workflow Store of some 120 pre-configured workflow models.
Is Asana available in French?
Offered in English when it was launched, Asana was so successful around the world that its publisher decided to make it available in multiple languages. In 2017, French and German made their appearance in the languages of Asana software, a few months before Spanish and Portuguese.
In Europe, Asana has opened offices in Dublin, London and Munich, but not in Paris. France could nevertheless figure among the next countries where the company will set up an office.
At the time of writing, his website displays two job offers that will be based in Paris. One concerns a marketing manager for France, the other an enterprise account manager.
What is the price of Asana?
Asana offers a free entry-level offer (Asana Basic), which allows an unlimited number of teams but a volume of tasks capped at 1000 for each of them. A formula that Asana does not communicate the number of users.
To benefit from timelines or monitoring dashboards, you will need to upgrade to paid versions: Asana Premium, Asana Business or Asana Enterprise.
A significant portion of Asana’s use cases are focused on marketing: testing and launching products, planning and monitoring campaigns, managing sales teams.
also makes it possible to pilot operational management or the on-boarding of new employees. The platform is used in business as well as in administration or education. Some organisations can have hundreds of teams.
How do I download the Asana app?
Asana is available as a web app and mobile apps. On smartphones, the Asana app is available on iOS and Android. It allows, among other things, to plan your day and receive information on the progress of your team when you are on the move.
What are the alternatives to Asana?
Asana faces many competitors to successfully enter the project management software industry. Among the most commonly used alternatives, we can mention Trello (see below), Jira, Microsoft Planner, ProofHub or Workzone.
Asana vs Trello
Asana and Trello are two project management software that are meant to be as easy to use as each other. The main difference between the two is in the exclusive operation of Trello according to the agile method of Kanban boards whereas, in
Asana, the user has the choice between three main modes of project management: the kanban board, the calendar or the timeline.
Slack and Asana
Asana now works in perfect harmony with Slack. With the Asana integration for Slack, you no longer have to navigate between the two tools to be able to enjoy the functionality of the team messaging tool and Asana at the same time.
The application is also compatible with Teams, the collaborative messaging competitor of Slack launched by Microsoft.
