Speaker 1: So I'm here to talk about Asana. It brands itself as work management software. So it's basically software for managing everything from your work, your projects, individual tasks, your to-do list, even your team, and your time. I've used a bunch of different of these types of platforms, and I found that Asana is by far, in my opinion, the best one out there. So what's the problem? Before, you know, talking about some of the features of Asana, I want to quickly set up why do we need software like Asana to manage our work? So Asana has found that teams spend more time on their work about work than doing their actual work. They cited a study that was done in 2012, where they found that knowledge workers who use these types of platforms typically spend only about 39% of their time on doing their actual work, whereas the other 61% of their time was focused on the work about work, right? Whether that's internal communication, like messaging in meetings, tracking down information internally, and answering emails. And they also found that as our work becomes increasingly virtual or digital, our need for collaboration is also increasing, but there's a big gap between the amount of productivity we have and the amount of collaboration that actually gets done. So there's a gap between the two. So they found that coordination is the missing link as we collaborate. And we already naturally collaborate, and we use other online tools to do that, such as we have content file sharing platforms like Google Box, Dropbox, Google Drive. We also have communication apps like Gmail, Slack, Gchat, right? But for a lot of purposes in collaboration, the coordination piece is the missing link, right? So the ability to plan, to figure out what the purpose of certain projects are, or who is responsible for what. So the solution, of course, in my opinion, is Asana. Again, the software for tracking all of your team's work. So Asana allows you to plan, track, and manage your projects and processes across your teams and organizations. So it really helps increase the amount of accountability you have on your team, the amount of communication, clarity around goals, and it helps you meet your team deadlines. So now I'll talk a little bit about some of the features of Asana. And because I only have five minutes or so, I'm going to really speed through this. So of course, I can share these slides afterwards as well if folks need them. Okay, so first is the structure of Asana. So this starts off with the organization, then there are individual teams within that organization, then within each team there are projects, and within each project there are tasks, and then within each task there are subtasks and comments. So this is what the user interface looks like. This is an actual project for the Dupree Center. And you see here on the left sidebar that you have your team. So for us, we have our operations team, we have a content team, we have a marketing team, and you can see all the individuals who are on each team. Within each team there are the projects here. So we have finances, we have accounts payable receivable team project, we have a website request project. Here is what are called sections. So sections allow you to divide and organize the tasks in your projects. And then here are individual tasks right here. And then this is like the sidebar that pops out once you click into a task. So you can see here build new fiscal year 22 budget. This is the actual task. In each task you can have an assignee, you can set a due date, a start date, a time, it could be a recurring date as well. You could add it to a project, it could be in multiple projects too. There are custom fields such as like putting a priority or a progress. There's a description where you could add notes, you could put in URLs, you could also add attachments to individual tasks. And then here are the subtasks. The subtasks have all the same features as individual tasks. And then down here you could have conversations as well. So that's kind of a high level overview of what the Asana user interface looks like. A couple other features to point out right here. If you click here there's what's called my tasks. This is basically your personal to-do list. So any task that is assigned to you will automatically appear in this section called my tasks. And my tasks is broken up into a couple different sections. So you could have a today view for everything you're working on today. And then you have an upcoming view right here which is for everything that you're working on this coming week. And there's also a later section for everything that's postmarked for eight or more days. Let's see. And then we also have a feature called inbox right here. So this is basically it's a second inbox. But instead of email it's for all the things, all the notifications in Asana. So anytime you are tagged on a specific project or task, anytime someone comments to you, like you can do at and then type a person's name right here and then it'll automatically comment to you. So this is really a second area where all your notifications regarding all these individual tasks come in. So for the Dupree Center team, we've actually begun shifting away from email and into Asana to use for all of our internal team communication. And it works really well. We primarily, or at least for myself, I primarily use email for external communication with like vendors, donors, you know, content creators, things of that nature. But all internal communication we use Asana for. Okay. So here are some test cases for how the Dupree Center uses Asana. So up here in each individual project, you could view the project in different ways. So there's what's called a list view, a board view, a timeline view, a calendar view. So there are four different ways to view information. So this is what the list view looks like. It basically looks like a big checklist, right? Like a piece of paper. This is our content master list. So all the pieces of content that the Dupree Center creates, whether it's webinars, podcast episodes, articles, devotional guides, whatever it is, we list it here. And then here we have the URL for it. Here we have a promotion deadline, like if there's a specific date we have to promote it by. And then these are all the different marketing channels that we have. So it allows us to see like this webinar we're doing, what different marketing channels have we promoted it in, right? And it's just a cool visual way to see all that information. So this is a list view. The board view looks like this. It's also called a Kanban view. It visually depicts work at various stages of a process using these cards. So you can move it from like open to submitted to following up to done. And so for us, this is our accounts payable receivable. So we track all of our check requests, all of our deposits, any financial transaction going into OFA, we track it here so that we can know what is the status of each. And then this one right here, following up if any issues are found, like they need additional signatures, things of that nature. And then we could also list like, is this person a customer or a vendor? What's the amount of the deposit? What's the due date? Is there contract paperwork received? Are there invoices? What's the invoice number? This is a timeline view. So up here, it shows the dates. And then over here, it shows for us, this is our marketing master calendar. So it shows the dates. And then these are all of our different marketing channels. So this is a good way for us to visually depict like which types of content are being promoted in which section as and then to also see what is being promote like to see if there's any crossover between our different marketing channels. And then the final view is a calendar view. So this is the same project marketing master calendar, but instead of the timeline view, it's just depicted on a calendar. We also use Asana to track a couple other things. So we do all of our meeting agendas in Asana now. So these are our staff meetings, you can have different sections like meeting agenda topics, to do's, any to do's that come about from the actual discussion, future discussion items. And then we have a archive of all of our meeting notes down here. We also attract track things like our grant deliverables. So one of our grants, you know, we could show like the progress, we could show the due date. And then this is a cool feature that we have the fiscal year when it's due. And I've filtered this particular grant by fiscal year 21. So anything that's due this coming fiscal year will appear here. But anything due in fiscal year 22 or 23 will not appear and it'll, it'll, you know, you have to unfilter it here. And then we also track things like sales goals. So we have a bunch of stuff on the platform store. So we could see like our sales goals, our sales to date, the revenue, we've, we've, what the goal is, and then how much revenue we have. So it's a, it's kind of like a big spreadsheet in this way, but it's a good way to have all the information in one platform as well. And then we also have what's called a knowledge base. So this is all the information that our staff will need to know on a regular basis, right? So we have like document templates of a person ever needs to find our letterhead or Google doc templates, Word doc templates, invoices, right? They could just go here and find the link. We have certain protocols or manuals, like how to upload a post to our website, right? How to, what is the size dimensions for images on our website? And then also resources, like what is our design style guide? What are the fonts we use, the sizes, the colors, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's, and then if you need more info, this is a helpful link, asana.com slash guide. There's a lot of tutorials there. And of course, if, because I've been using Asana for a couple of years now, I'm always available. If you ever want to set up a meeting or something, I'd be very happy to chat about that. So that's all I have. Awesome. Thank you,

Speaker 2: Paul. I think Len's question is a great one that's in chat. What's been the learning curve

Speaker 1: on Asana for your staff? Yeah, I can, I can talk about it from my perspective as the one who introduced it. And maybe since Mark and Michaela are also on the call, I think team adoption was probably one of the biggest challenges. Cause we all have our unique styles and methods of working. And like some of us already used other software. And so just getting us all on the same page and what really helped was create in each individual projects that we have, we have certain rules, what's called a playbook, playbook, so to speak of like, you know, in this project, like the accounts payable and receivable, when I showed you, this is how you use the project, right? You have to upload a task. Then you have to Mark, like, what is the amount of the check requests is, you know, what's the link for the invoice, right. And include all that information so that people, cause if you don't include those rules, people, it's just like the wild west, people just do whatever they want and it becomes unwieldy and unruly after a little bit. So definitely having some of those rules in place and then also like having constant check-ins with your staff to make sure people are using it. And then also having buy-in from the leadership. So Mark and Michaela had buy-in and so kind of like push the rest of our staff to jump on board too.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Let me, let me add a couple of things. First of all, Paul, that was awesome. You make us look like really awesome. I want to be clear. I probably use 10% of Asana, what it can do, but that's all I need to do because I got Paul, right? So, so much of what he explained to you, he's a master of, and therefore I don't have to be, I can use it in a rudimentary way and Paul can help me when I'm in trouble. So if this felt overwhelming, you do need somebody on your team who knows quite a bit, but not everybody needs to be the master of Asana. That's one thing. The other thing I'd say, just in case you're worried, Paul mentioned that we've gone substantially to communicating in Asana, not through email. You can, if you wish, and you're kind of like an old dog, like me, you can have everything that gets communicated in Asana turn into an email for you, if that's your comfort level. So that just to say, you don't have to give up email. I haven't, but I think others have for internal communication.

Speaker 2: Is that why sometimes emails from you and Michaela have like different formatting? I wonder if that's why. I don't know, but that's really possible. I'll forward it to you sometime, but I noticed that. Paul, why go with Asana over, say, Redbooth, which I think is a little bit more common and has a lot of the same features? Yeah, I used Redbooth for a little bit and they had

Speaker 1: some features that weren't as helpful, like subtasks, you cannot assign to individual people, and I just found that Asana is one of those up-and-coming companies. I think the founder was Dustin Moskowitz. He was one of the original founders of Facebook or something, but they have a lot of staff support and so they're not going to die anytime soon. So it's kind of like you use it because you see the long-term trajectory of it. So that's also a reason why I've seen Asana to be better than some of my competitors out there.

Speaker 3: For me, let me just say it's also been super helpful that my team could actually put things on my to-do list. I can have private to-do's, of course, but so that I'm not always responsible for going from a meeting to have to get all my notes and then create my own to-do's. They just get done and that has been a huge help to me. That's great. Jared asked a question earlier in chat,

Speaker 2: how have you handled projects that include a lot of external partners, which is sometimes true with

Speaker 1: the platform? Yeah, we don't really use Asana with external partners. It's even part-time, the part-time people on our staff, we've had a harder time getting them to adopt it. So for those individuals, we usually just invite them to one particular project that they're working on rather than the entire system that we've set up so that they don't get overwhelmed and then they know they can just enter that one project and do their work there. But yeah, we haven't really utilized that feature as much as we'd like. So that's probably a work in progress.