If you're an Asana user, you're probably familiar with the board's view or at the very least you've tried out the board's view within Asana.
Now, this look and feel of Asana has been available for a little while now, and when it was first released, it was really a direct response to Trello and the popularity of the Kanban style of moving things through a list or moving things through a variety of vertical columns.
But one of the most requested features to Asana is the ability to convert a board into a list or vice versa, a typical Asana project into a board. However, that is not yet possible, and when you go to create a new project in Asana, you have to make that distinction.
Is it going to be a traditional list, or are you going to use a board?
Well, today I want to show you two ways in which you can use your boards with your lists. One, which I think is the ideal way to get the most out of boards here in Asana, and then number two, I want to show you a workaround, so if you'd like to view your tasks in both a board view and a list view, I'm going to show you how to do that as well.
Now, I think the real strength of the real power in boards is getting that high-level view, and you can see in the example board that I have here, I'm actually using the columns as months of the year.
So, in this case, I'm wanting to plan things out for the first part of next year. So, you know, I've added some images just to make it a little more visually appealing for myself and my team, and you know I like getting this high-level view when I'm looking at my projects or my big goals.
You know, maybe that new office manager I need that person sooner than I think, so I'm going to drag that over here. But how does this incorporate with my other projects, with my other lists?
Well, what I like to do is that often I will take a task in here, and here's my big project: "Develop new online course," and I may have attachments, I may have some detailed notes, and so forth.
But one other thing that I've done here is that I've copied the link to this actual Asana project and I've put it right here in the description field. So when I click this link, I'm actually going directly to my Asana project, which is titled "Online Course."
So none of these tasks are actually connected to that board in any way, but as I'm browsing, as I'm looking at this board view, I can quickly go because many of us, of course, have a lot more projects than maybe just the ten or so that you see here.
Instead of trying to sift through or using the search feature, I can quickly go to that project. Let's say if I'm in the conference proposal, I can select that link and just go directly to that project.
So how do you find that URL if you are wanting to do the same thing? Well, go to any of your Asana list projects, click on the drop-down arrow in the title, and you can say "Copy project URL," and then when you create a task here in the board's view, you can simply just paste that into the description field.
Now you've got a link right back to that project. Again, I think a lot of applications like Trello or anything Kanban-based like the board's view here in Asana are very helpful for high-level planning, but perhaps when you come into the actual details of your list or your project, you may still want to prefer the traditional list view here in Asana.
So secondly, what I want to take a look at is how can we replicate this project or replicate all of these tasks in a board view? What if I want a board view here?
So here I've got my traditional list. I've titled it "Online Course," and I've actually added a second one down below here. And what you may notice is that I actually have the exact same items here as I do on this project here.
So how did I do that? How can I have both a board view, where I have this to-do, in-progress, complete, and how do I have this traditional view here as well?
Well, of course, in Asana, your tasks can be assigned to more than just one project. That's one of the great features of Asana is that not only can this be assigned to the online course, it can be assigned to multiple areas as well.
So if I click on this, you will notice that it is actually assigned to everything here as well. So if you want to do that, you can do this with any project that you like.
Create a board, and in this case, I've just given it the exact same name, but in parentheses, I've labeled it as the board view so I know the difference between the two.
And then, when it comes to all of your tasks in your list, simply select the first task, hold down the shift key on your keyboard, and select the last one. And in that case, you are able to assign all of those tasks to the same board.
Now, I've already done so in this particular example, but what I do want to show is that the different columns that we see here in the board view are still available to us in the list view.
So, for example, let's say I've got this "Review customer feedback survey." It's in the to-do list, but maybe it's in progress now. So I'm going to drag it over here to in progress.
Now, if I go back to the list view, maybe this is my more preferred view, let's take a look at that particular task. You will see that it's actually telling me where it is; it's in the in-progress state.
And if I want to change that, I can do that from this view as well. Maybe I'm working away and I've completed this particular task, I can say "complete," and now when I go back to my board view, it's exactly where I want it to be; it's in the complete list.
So here you can see I've got this linkage between the two. Yes, they are technically two separate projects, but everything within them is exactly the same. These are not copies of those tasks; this is not just a duplicate. This is the actual same task that we see here in the list view.
Now, the one caveat of this method is that, yes, I don't have the section headers in this list view. You will see that I don't have things like "to-do" or "in progress" or "complete." I don't have that in this view here. I could add those section headers if I want, but they will not relate to that board view at all.
But if I am working with this task, "Call support team," you know what, maybe that wasn't actually completed. Maybe we need to go back and select "in progress," and now when I go to my board view, there it is; it's made that change.
It is equated to the exact same list.
So if you are wanting to get the best of both worlds, both the list view in Asana but also the board view, the Kanban style of managing your projects, you can do so. Just create a duplicate of your project, start with creating a blank board without any tasks, and then go to that desired task and you can select all of them and then also add it to that board.
Now, of course, when you are adding new tasks, you're going to want to remember to add that board as well if you want it to appear in both places.
But because of all the other information that you're probably already adding to that task, that's probably not too much to ask, is to add that and making sure that it's added to that board as well.
I hope you found this video helpful, and if you enjoyed today's tutorial, I would encourage you to give this video a like, leave me a comment in the description below, and be sure to subscribe right here to Simpletivity.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
