Asana Team Management: How to Use Asana as a Team

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Here's how you can use Asana to work together seamlessly as a team 🙌

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Asana Tutorial Transcription:

If you are working with a team, then using a project management system is an absolute must. It is going to allow you to be so much more organized, and you can ensure that all of your tasks get done and that your entire team is on the same page. It's going to allow you to streamline workflows and so much more, which will really help you achieve your business goals and move forward. My favorite project management system is Asana. 🙌 So in today's Asana tutorial video, I'm going to show you exactly what it looks like to work with a team. 

First things first: what do you use Asana for? Asana is actually going to house all of your company to-dos. It will be the company-wide to-do list and where all of your projects live, and then it will break down even further and it will become the to-do list for each individual team member. And not just this, it is also is going to be where a lot of your team communication happens as well. In my company, we do not email each other internally at all! ⛔️📧⛔️ There's no emails happening, which I absolutely love! ❤️

Task Communication

In today’s Asana tutorial, we are looking at the main page, and it's really a digital to-do list. Right now I have all of the individual tasks assigned to myself. If I was working with a team, I could also assign tasks to them instead. I'm going to add a new task. For example, let’s say I need someone to edit our ad copy. I’m going to type that, then go over to the assignee tab and assign it to them and give them a due date. So rather than tasks being communicated through email (or through meetings), you have a documented place where all of your tasks are written down and assigned to the right person. 

It's little things like this that make a massive difference in the way that your company runs. In the case of our Asana tutorial, I've assigned this task to Niamh. She is going to see that on her end and be able to get to work. 🏋️‍♀️ Not only is the task documented here, but if you hover over it and click details, you'll see that you have a full description area. Here is where I could give Niamh all of the information that she needs to successfully complete this task. 

I could write in text instructions, or I could send her a video explaining exactly what I want her to do. 📽 in order to do that, all you need to do is click the record icon ⌾ under Text Instructions. That is going to open up the Vimeo and Asana integration, which acts just like Loom. It is a screen recording that you can talk over and you can give them step-by-step instructions. 

Screen Record Your Instructions

That is one of the best productivity hacks ever is! 😎 Rather than trying to explain it all in text, simply record a video and explain it that way. 

For this, I would just click on record, choose whether I wanted to do Screen, Camera or Both. In this Asana tutorial, I'll just do Screen. Then, I'll choose my microphone and then hit start recording. Next, you can do either your entire screen or a window. I'm just gonna use my entire screen to keep this simple. Then I could record, and tell her exactly where to find whatever information she needed. If I needed to explain some examples (maybe of ad copy that I loved), I could go ahead and do that once I'm done recording. Finally, I’ll just click this stop icon 🔴 in the bottom-left corner. Then I'm going to click add video, and this is going to add the video directly to the task. That will really speed up your work. 🏃‍♀️💨 

Task-Specific Feedback 🧘‍♀️

We've spoken about providing all the details that your team member needs to successfully accomplish that task, but you can also use Asana to communicate about your tasks as well. When it is a task or project that we've already determined we are going to move ahead on, then we will communicate internally within Asana. If you need more of a back-and-forth conversation, then we will use the tool Slack. On the other hand, if it requires a face to face chat where we get on and actually talk things out, then we will use the tool Zoom. After finishing this Asana tutorial, click here to check out ALL of the tools that I use to run my business, including Zoom, Slack, and so many more. 🧰

Let's say that Niamh has completed this task, and now she's asking me for feedback. I can come into the task itself and provide my feedback in the chat box at the bottom. We can tag each other within comments and tasks, as well. You can just hit the ＠ symbol and then start typing in their name to tag them. In our example, I'm going to hit comment and that will live right here under the actual task, which keeps things so much more organized. No longer are you going to lose feedback through different email threads, because now it’s actually going to live within that specific task. You can comment back and forth and chat about your specific task. 

Spreading the Love ❤️

Back to our Asana tutorial example, and Niamh has just completed her task. She's marked it as complete. ✅ I'm like, “awesome!” 🙌 I'm going to see that she's marked it as complete. Then I can come in here down to the comment section, go to this star icon ⍟ on the right, and all of these adorable little GIFs are going to appear. You can just share one of those to show your appreciation! 🤗 It's going to show up as “Louise has showed their appreciation” and the cute little icon. That is something I actually use a lot, and it's just a quick and easy way for you as a team to acknowledge what has been done and show your thanks. 

Here’s another way to show your team that you appreciate and trust them. As the company owner or the manager, you don’t have to be the only one assigning tasks. We actually allow all of our team members assign tasks. Just as I assign this task over here to Niamh, she can also assign tasks to me or to Taylor. And it all works nicely together. 

Inboxing 🥊

As you start using Asana more, you will start to use the inbox tab more. You can see all the latest happenings within your space and anything that you are a part of. For any task that you've been assigned to (or that you are commenting on), you'll receive updates there. In this Asana tutorial, Taylor has commented and let me know that this looks great. I could like 👍 that, or if I wanted, I could comment back to her or leave an appreciation. Every single day you will go through your inbox tab, and once you have dealt with that particular task, you can just archive it and clear out of your inbox. 

Blocking and Unblocking

Now I'm going to show you a few other ways you can take your Asana organization to a whole new level. Say I have a test which has multiple subtasks. You can assign them all to the right team member. Then, you can actually set these up as dependencies. Back to our Asana tutorial, Niamh can't actually edit the first draft until I have written the first draft. I'll go in here into the task labelled “write first draft”, and then I'm going to add a dependency. Now, this is a Premium feature, but it is totally worth it. Once you upgrade to Premium, you can determine whether something is blocking that task from being done or not. This is exactly what it will look like: it will say that it is blocked by a specific task. 

When your team member checks it off, the person that is next in line and is waiting on that task to be complete will receive a notification in their inbox that it is now unblocked and they can start working on it. This is a feature that I love and I would recommend adding. To use it, just go ahead and click add dependencies (three dots in top right corner), then say whether this task is being blocked by, or it is currently blocking. In our example, I can set a task that is blocking Niamh from emailing something out. I can choose the task, and that is going to link those tasks together. 

Hot Links 🔥

The next thing you can do within an Asana task is ensure that your team members have the right links or files that they need, so that they're not constantly searching for the right information. I just place that in the description area! To add an attachment, all you need to do is go up here to this paperclip icon 📎 in the top right, and click on it. You can attach a file from your computer, Google drive, Dropbox, whatever you need. I'll click my computer and add a little image that I have (from my previous video where we were showing you guys that you can do this). But enough cats. 🐈🙀

That is how you attach files and then any links that you need, you can simply paste there. I am all about optimizing and making things easily accessible and not wasting time searching for email or files. We're cutting down on that completely.

Rules, Rules, Rules 

Another thing you can do is utilize rules, which are basically automations. For this, you're going to click customize, and then you will see rules. This is something you will want to upgrade to Business for, but again: definitely worth it. Back in my, Asana (which is on business), I'm going to go to rules. I'm going to click on that. Now you'll see all these different rules that you can add in. In our Asana tutorial example, we’ll go ahead and create a custom rule. What you can do is you can choose a trigger (like once a task is added to a particular section). Let's say, once it's added to our Revenue section, you can assign it to a teammate. 

-Next, you're gonna click choose an action. 

-Then you just click the assignee button and you can choose an option where every time a task is moved to that section, a team member is assigned that task. For example, I'm going to choose Taylor here and create that rule. And this is automatically going to happen every time a task is moved to that specific section. 

Keeping Tabs

And finally for this Asana tutorial, the last thing that I love about working with a team in Asana is that you can see what everyone is working on at all times. 👀 For this, all you need to do is go over to where you can see their profile pictures. You're going to click on their profile picture and that will pull up all tasks that have been assigned to that team member and that they are working on. When this all gets filled out, you'll be able to see exactly what they're working on on what day and what is actually coming up for them. 

This is a really great way of keeping your finger on the pulse of what is happening company-wide and ensuring that no one is being totally overwhelmed with work. 

Wrap Up

That is just a few of the things that you can do with Asana. Don't forget to sign up for my free workshop for more on using Asana for business. I hope that you enjoyed getting some insight into how to work with a team within Asana!

If you really want to Uplevel your business this year, getting set up in a project management system is one of the top ways that you can do it. Want more Asana tutorials for your online business? Click here and sign up for my free workshop. If you have any questions at all, let me know in the comments down below. If you like this Asana tutorial, let me know by giving it a thumbs up. 👍 Don't forget to hit subscribe if you haven’t for more videos about productivity, Asana and the online business. I'll see you real soon with another video! 👋