Asana is an online project management software for teams. It is a popular and effective business tool that enables users to manage and deliver projects successfully. As companies become more project-centric in their strategies and processes, the PM software provides innovative features that help in work tracking and team collaboration.
As a work management platform, Asana lets users create goals, projects, and daily tasks that are accessible and visible for the whole team. Instead of going through different folders and files just to know what we’re supposed to do by when, we just log in and go to specific projects, tasks, uploaded files, or team conversations. It’s all organized, updated, and available for us to view, review and update. Now, we can focus on our real work.
The Business of Reporting
Business reports are essential tools that document the activities, processes, and progress of a company. Without them, everyone is flying blind, no matter who is in the cockpit. In the same manner, project reports provide the picture of whether the project is moving on track, standing still, or getting nowhere fast. It can show the big picture at 50,000 feet, as well as the nitty-gritty details at 50 feet.
We read and write project status reports usually on a weekly basis. The week is long enough for a number of tasks to be completed, but also short enough to effectively monitor the progress of the project. We create them for several groups of people, such as senior management, project sponsors, clients, and other stakeholders. In fact, project reports showing quality, accuracy, and regularity are not only useful indicators of project health but crucial enablers of project success as well.
Reporting in Asana
Various teams and companies use Asana to be more efficient in tracking their work and managing their projects. With the PM software, all the information that used to be scattered across their documents, email, chat, and meetings can now be found in a central place. The more people in the company use it, the easier for anyone to search for information and create reports.
Users in Asana can choose from several tools and techniques to make work searchable. When creating tasks, they can give them more descriptive and actionable names. When tasks are given due dates, the dates can be used as search criteria. Also, custom fields allow teams to track tasks in a more specific way.
Asana Reports and their Limitations
To search for certain information in Asana, we can type for a word or phrase at the top search bar. The result will be a list of corresponding tasks, projects, and conversations that contain the search term.
For a refined search, we can use the Advanced Search that not only contains specific terms but where we can also specify the assignee, project, followers, whether with attachments or none, whether completed or incomplete and for a specific due date or range of date. We can also add a filter that can include a custom field. These searches can be saved and be reused.
The results of these searches will appear in the main pane. More often than not, we need to refine our search, because the quality of results depends on how tasks and conversations meet the search parameters. We can also sort the result, or click on it to view details. However, these reporting features are limited and may not be enough. Furthermore, features like advanced search, custom fields, and custom templates are available only starting at the Premium plan for an additional $12 per user, per month.
Bridge24 Solution
Bridge24 is a simple but powerful application that enhances the reporting and exporting capabilities of Asana. It connects dynamically to Asana, in two-way, real-time sync with the PM platform. Therefore, anything update on Asana will show up in Bridge24, and any changes made in Bridge24 will update the data in Asana.
The reporting features of this application are beneficial to managers, who need more details, analytics, and control of their data. Bridge24 is valuable to project teams who need to work on a more informational and flexible interface like a spreadsheet. Also, it is preferred by users who need to export clean-looking reports easily in a variety of formats, for meeting or presentation purposes.
Advanced Reports and Interactive Charts
Bridge24 includes several views. The default Power Grid view is very flexible and customizable. It can include more information than any view available in Asana. The application also has its own Calendar and Board view. But what really fills in the gaps are its Advanced Reports.
Users can create reports with 2-level groupings. By grouping twice, one level after another, they can create a report grouped by projects, then group it by assignee, and show that in one report. They can group by custom fields easily from a drop-down menu. Bridge24 offers an unlimited number of fields that can be added in reports, and re-order them for a variety of perspectives. Users can indent subtasks 5 levels down. It has “wide” fields especially for Descriptions and Comments, and subtasks can be displayed below.
Bridge24 allows users to create interactive charts in a few clicks. Charts are powerful visual representations of data, and project managers can easily show information for presentations and meetings. Several chart types, such as pie, doughnut, polar, vertical bar and horizontal bar, are available. Users can stack charts and display 2 variables in one chart. Clicking on the interactive chart will show details of the selected segment. And it is easy to open details in the Grid view.
More Features
Aside from Advanced Reports and Interactive Charts, Bridge24 uses a powerful exporting tool that can easily export filtered reports and visual charts in a variety of formats. Reports that include subtasks, custom fields, and comments can be exported to CSV or Excel format. Charts and its associated task lists can be exported in PDF files. Users have more options when exporting, including the ability to specify date ranges and specific users.
Conclusion
Bridge24 for Asana is the perfect tool to make reporting easier in Asana. Without having to migrate data to another tool, users can continue to use their primary PM software whenever they want to. In addition, they can now have more tools that allow them to write more comprehensive and visually appealing reports in a simple way. They can even update and track from Bridge24, and export their data easily.
