What is asana

Asana has a wide range of features available to help companies and the teams within them find a system to get things done as efficiently as possible. These features include:. Asana's main feature is its project and task management tools.

You can create lists or boards to host certain projects as a whole — these will detail all the initiatives, meetings, and programs involved in said projects. From there, you can break these projects into tasks and subtasks to make them more manageable, and list the steps to complete them. You can also:. Of course, one of the most important — and difficult — parts of teamwork is communication.

Asana has tools to streamline this as well. Your Inbox tracks all your messages and their associated tasks. Here you can attach tasks to messages and use project conversations to have ongoing discussions. You can also proof images and PDFs, and any comments can even be turned into tasks so the team knows what corrections need to be made. Because Asana is made to adapt to your workforce. As such, it offers several ways to view your projects and tasks:.

If you're in charge of an organization, Asana's reporting tools make it easy to keep project updates organized and send update reminders when necessary.

You can use Asana to set "Goals" to keep everyone on the same page, and "Milestones" to reward and encourage hard work. You can also craft status updates for projects and portfolios to send messages to your team quickly, and check your Dashboard to see the status of all ongoing projects and tasks at once, and identify problem areas if necessary. Creating Teams lets you group people together to collaborate on projects.

The Team page includes an Overview tab to track projects, a Messages tab for group conversations and announcements, and a shared Calendar tab. You can add teammates as followers on tasks not assigned to them, to keep them updated and alert them if there are problems they can help with.

Google Calendar For time management. Add your Asana tasks to your calendar to see deadlines. Harvest For time tracking. Track time to record billable hours and create invoices in Asana. Dropbox For file sharing. Attach files from Dropbox to Asana tasks from the Asana task pane. Slack For communication. Add, assign, even comment on Asana tasks and more in Slack. Google Drive For file sharing. Attach files from Google Drive to Asana tasks from the task pane.

Jira Cloud For coordination. Create Jira issues and track work without leaving Asana. Salesforce For coordination. Collaborate on Asana tasks for pre-sales needs in Salesforce. Gmail For coordination. Turn email into tasks in Asana right from your Gmail inbox. OneDrive For file sharing.

Attach Microsoft files to your Asana tasks from the Asana task pane. Zapier For connecting apps. Tableau For reporting. Pull data from Asana into Tableau to create custom dashboards. Sharepoint For file sharing. Attach files from Sharepoint to Asana tasks from the Asana task pane. Outlook For coordination.

Turn emails into tasks in Asana right from your Outlook inbox. Office For communication. Stay up to date on work in Asana without leaving Microsoft groups. Box For file sharing. The free tier supports up to 15 team members, with access to limited dashboards and search functions, as well as unlimited task projects and conversations. The Enterprise plan offers more advanced admin controls, custom branding and same-day support.

There are also added security and data protection features, including data deletion and cross-regional backups. Prices, depending on which features are included, are available upon request. Asana has already launched its first integrations with third-party software providers and now links into productivity tools including Google Drive, Jira, OneDrive, Dropbox and Slack.

Google recently announced that Asana will be accessible directly from Gmail. Asana users can access the app through a web browser or on mobile devices, with Android and iOS apps available for download. In , it announced plans to bolster its staff and improve customer support.

More frecently, it has added new features such as custom fields and pre-made workflow templates. The company this year announced senior staff appointments, with Oliver joining from Dropbox as head of sales, and Tim Wan as head of global finance.

Wan had previously been chief financial officer for Apigee, leading the company through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Google. The company is also eyeing ways to become more enterprise-friendly.