Speaker 1: For those who work with or are currently searching for project management tools, the name Asana might sound familiar. Asana has long been considered one of the best in project management software in recent years. But does it deserve the title? Let's find out. Hey project managers, I'm Meredith and in this video we'll be covering Asana, a project management software that allows users to track tasks, view stats, manage workflow, and check milestones. Asana was founded back in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and engineer Justin Rosenstein. The first beta was released in November 2011 with a commercial edition made available later in 2012. Today the platform is worth over $5 billion and serves over 126,000 paying customers. Now I actually covered a demo of Asana on this channel back in February 2021, which included a lot of useful tools, but I didn't have access to all the features. Now I do. For this review I'm going to be using the web browser version, but if you have experience with the other versions tell me about it in the comments section below. Let's dive in and see what Asana offers now. First off, Asana is pretty versatile in terms of device accessibility. It's available via web browser, desktop application, or as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices. I created an account with Asana's free plan, which can operate with teams of up to 15 members. It has file storage of up to 100 megabytes per user and includes a majority of features found in the paid plans. After I completed the initial registration process, all of Asana's features were available right off the bat, such as task tracking, workload management, calendar settings, integration options, and more. However, there is quite a learning curve with all of these tools and that can cost someone a lot of time to master everything, especially if they're beginners with project management platforms. Now let's focus on one of the most essential features in Asana, project building. You have the option to go about this two ways. One, build the project from scratch by adding rows and columns as needed. Easy enough to do and you have the added benefit of formatting things to better suit your data. Or two, users have the option to import project data through a CSV file, email, or Wufoo. You can even import data from other apps like Google Sheets, Monday.com, and Trello. I imported one of my CSV files and the data seemed to be a decent reflection of the original. It wasn't perfect and it failed to copy a few columns, which means that I had to reformat the board manually to get it close to a perfect match. To help apply changes to boards, there is a shortcut button in the top right corner labeled customize. When selected, an in-view window opens to the right-hand side with controls for column data, rules, applications, forms, and task templates. While customizing, I noticed that options for checkboxes and formulas aren't available unlike other project management tools, which can be a bummer. I like having the option to perfect data through formulas and having visibly noticeable status changes to my tasks. I also ran into some trouble with assigning tasks. To avoid confusion on responsibility, Asana allows only one assigned user per task. However, that becomes frustrating if that person is unavailable or if tasks include multiple people. There are workarounds available to help keep moving things forward, but it was still an obstacle. Asana offers a handful of project visualizations to utilize and interact with. Along with that, every member in a team can choose a preferred visual board without having to commit to one type. So if you're the only one in your team who prefers working in list views unlike the rest who prefer Kanban, you can still work in that view without affecting the others. And any changes made in one view will be applied to all other views in real time. Speaking of views, all of them are quite useful. The timeline view in particular was solid because that perspective clarifies how long it takes to achieve tasks across an entire year, seasonal quarters, months, and more. Unfortunately, the most underwhelming view was the calendar view. Now don't get me wrong, it's still a useful tool that allows one to quickly see which tasks are currently assigned to specific dates. However, there's no option to import an existing calendar or export the project calendar to a preferred calendar application. That's a lot of data to input manually if you're switching data between platforms. Along with views, there's also an option to create forms. Forms allow users to support all kinds of work requests, both with internal co-workers and external customers. They're easy to set up and help keep priorities organized. There are quite a few custom features that you can add to better track and update your projects. After going through most of them, pretty much everything worked smoothly for me, such as integrations and converting data formats. Automations in particular were really useful because there's a wide array of popular industry applications that are available for automation alerts, including Zendesk, BitScout, and JotForm. Even with all the automation options, there is no built-in time tracking feature. In order to track time, users will need to use third-party integrations, which can cause issues, especially if projects involve timely tasks such as billing clients, internal budgets, and publishing deadlines. As for integrations, Asana houses over 100 applications to choose from to help project management easier, including messaging, file storage, reporting, security, and other services. It also allows integrations with popular tools, such as Microsoft and Google products. There's also the RESTful API, which provides users a program interface to alter data in Asana's system. Overall, Asana has great features on its platform, especially with its robust free plan version. Yeah, I ran into a few hiccups and wished it included certain functions, but none of those cons tarnished my view of this platform. Asana is indeed one of the best choices for every project manager. Large corporations and smaller teams can't go wrong with giving it a try. Click the link in the description below to go download Asana for a 30-day free trial and see if it's the right project management tool for you.