Asana has all the time been about serving to groups coordinate initiatives, however for probably the most half all through the historical past of the corporate that has concerned offering particular person groups with the instruments to handle a selected set of duties to completion. Right now, the corporate introduced Asana Circulation, a brand new set of workflow instruments that assist transfer work in an automatic method inside and throughout groups.
Not like venture planning instruments, which outline the steps to finish a venture, workflow instruments assist transfer work in a logical method. So as an alternative of merely assigning duties, a venture supervisor can create a reusable workflow that features all the steps, knowledge and instruments to finish and approve a venture, defined Alex Hood, chief product officer at Asana.
Hood says that at its core Asana is a venture administration instrument, and in a method, a workflow is a venture that’s been placed on repeat. With the brand new product, nevertheless, they’re making an attempt to increase that functionality to automate the motion of labor because it flows via a venture.
“What we’re saying is a bespoke workflow performance that isn’t simply operating initiatives on repeat. It’s truly a UI the place you may plan the workflow handoffs throughout your staff, involving all of the integrations that numerous people use [along with] all of the handoffs throughout cross-functional groups,” he defined.
Workflow Builder UI Picture Credit: Asana
The brand new Workflow Builder lets folks in command of initiatives create workflows with drag and drop elements and construct a set of automated processes that move throughout groups. It additionally lets customers outline the info and handoff factors throughout the workflow to have work transfer extra easily and cut back the discussions associated to work about work, letting it occur in an automatic trend.
The workflow can embrace elements to work together with widespread instruments like Salesforce, Slack, PowerBI and Zoom and content material sources like Dropbox and Adobe Artistic Cloud. It additionally consists of the flexibility to create customized apps as wanted to maneuver work via inside techniques or customized instruments that will not be a part of the usual integrations.
The corporate has created a library of widespread workflow templates to get you began, which you’ll construct off of, however you may as well create a template of any workflow and add it to the library for anybody within the firm to make use of. Over time, Asana might also permit corporations to share these templates exterior the group.
As work strikes via the workflow, it’s assigned to particular person staff who’ve to hold out the duties, and the corporate has created a web page for every worker to see the duties which are in progress, accomplished and even late that require their consideration. “The house display screen helps you determine what’s each pressing and necessary based mostly on the targets of the corporate, and in addition the urgency of the workflows that you just’re concerned in,” Hood stated.
The brand new workflow instruments are the following logical extension of the work knowledge graph the corporate has been constructed upon, enabling folks to grasp and make the most of the connections throughout the group, whether or not folks, knowledge, work or work elements like assembly notes and paperwork.
