Harnessing the Power of Templates in Asana
Mastering Asana Templates for Efficient Workflow Management and fewer mistakes.
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Introduction
Boost efficiency and streamline your team's workflow with Asana Templates. Templates in Asana are powerful tools for replicating your established processes and workflows, ensuring consistency and reducing manual efforts as your business evolves. You can update these at any time for new nomenclature, stakeholder review, and more. If you aren't using Asana templates, you're doing it wrong.
Understanding How to Asana's Templates
Asana offers some standard templates for a sandbox with simple, ready-to-go templates. Keep in mind these Asana templates can be edited and customized later. Additionally, you can create your custom templates. At the end of this post, we'll demonstrate an easy way to save completed Asana projects into templates.
Exploring Project Templates in Asana
Project Templates in Asana are designed to mirror complete workflows. They incorporate essential elements like custom fields, Asana Rules, Roles, and Task Templates to maintain organization, clear communication, and high levels of project automation. They are ideal for repeated types of projects, simplifying the setup process significantly.
Crafting Effective Project Templates
Key components of an impactful template include:
- Sections: Clearly defined work categories or process stages.
- Subtasks: These nested micro tasks facilitate larger task coordination and completion, often starting with action-oriented verbs.
- Custom Fields: Ensure uniformity across your workspace while enabling robust reporting and analytics.
- Rules: Automate project organization and progress, minimizing manual intervention.
Project Templates: Realistic Expectations
Aim for the 80/20 rule in template creation — applicable and precise for about 80% of scenarios, with room for unexpected complexities.
Steps for Creating a Project Template
- Prepare: Refine your project with team input.
- Clean: Create a clean version of your project for the template.
- Convert: Transform the cleaned-up project into a template.
- Refine: Review and adjust the template within its team.
Features of Project Templates
- Task Due Dates: Set dates based on project start or end dates.
- Project Roles: Define team roles for task assignments.
- Project Members: Add essential project members.
Utilizing Your Project Template
Easily create new projects using your template, customize it for each specific project, and then save new additions at the end of the project or program. Set Quarterly Business Reviews or other review schedules to see what bottlenecks or issues other stakeholders are facing and update your templates for the next quarter or project.
Embracing Asana Templates
Templates in Asana are specific to projects, allowing for pre-defined task types. They are helpful for consistent task creation in repetitive projects.
Elements of an Efficient Template
- Consistent naming conventions.
- Pre-set custom field states.
- Organized subtasks with explicit dependencies.
- Relative due dates and default task descriptions.
- Task Templates can be created from any task and are adaptable across multiple projects.
- They integrate seamlessly with project rules for consistent task management.
Best Practices for Task Templates
- Utilize subtask sections for organization.
- Convert subtasks to approvals for enhanced management.
Advanced Task Template Strategies
- Define task dependencies for streamlined workflow management.
- Incorporate essential links and resources in task descriptions for quick reference.
- Assign the same team member to save time once your project is created.
- Place links to other apps like SharePoint or other re-used links.
Leveraging Templates for Different Project Types
Discuss how templates can be customized for various types of projects, such as marketing campaigns, software development sprints, and event planning. Asana can be used across your entire org.
Template Customization and Flexibility
Explore the flexibility of Asana templates, allowing them to be tailored to the unique needs of each project or team. Discuss how to adjust templates for different scales of projects. Be sure not to make you templates too this can make things overengineered and cause lots of confusion among stakeholders.
Save an Existing Project as a Template
You don't have to start from scratch whenever you need a new template or update. Take your most updated project and follow the steps outlined below.
Explore the flexibility of Asana templates, allowing them to be tailored to the unique needs of each project or team. Discuss how to adjust templates for different scales of projects.
Conclusion: Maximizing Asana Templates
Regularly review and update your Asana Project and Task Templates to ensure they remain effective. Star or favorite them for quick access and updates.Let your team know where they can find templates for your org.
