Post Published on July 13, 2012.
Last Updated on April 23, 2016 by davemackey.

[Important: I’ve written two more recent articles on this topic: Asana: Yes, I’m Still Using It and Further Down the Road with Asana.]

I wrote about Asana, a task management applications to end all task management applications a few months ago. I’d like to update everyone with my latest thoughts on the application – which I still use frequently. I’d particularly like to highlight what I feel are the missing features from Asana.

Low Importance:

• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Facebook Connect – Having Google SSO is great, but Astrid and Wunderlist and Producteev offer Facebook as well…and that would be better.
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Add a Link – Allow us to add links just as we can attach files to tasks.
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Send Reminders – Yes, yes, I know Asana sends daily email reminders – but I mean like Google Calendar that makes my phone go berserk fifteen minutes before meetings and sends me an email and a modal pop-up on my calendar page, and so on. Don’t let me forget what I need to do when I need to do it! (Perhaps integration with something like Android Tasker would work for this…)
  • Additionally, it would be great to be able to send these reminders to others. Right now I am using Boomerang for Gmail to accomplish this, but it’d be great to be able to do SMS as well.

High Importance:

• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Remove from Main Workspace – If you create a task in the main workspace and then associate it with a project it remains in the main workspace as well. If you create it in a project initially it doesn’t show up in the main workspace. There should be an option whether you want it to show up in the main workspace or not.
• [Partially Unavailable: 6/12/13] Move Between Workspaces – It should be possible to move tasks between workspaces and preferably to even share them between workspaces (e.g. this is something I want to be in my work workspace but also something I want to be reminded about in my personal workspace.
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Friendly Project Names – Right now you can submit to specific projects via email but only by using the unique numeric string that stands for a project id. Yuck. That isn’t very friendly. Asana needs a better way to handle this. Perhaps [email protected]? Where uniquename is a name the user chooses and myaccount is their account username?
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Mark Project Days – When I look at Asana I see a lot of tasks – but it is a Saturday and many of these tasks can’t be completed except on weekdays. It would be nice to set what days tasks can be accomplished and to filter out tasks which cannot be accomplished on specific days (e.g. calling the bank, talking to the boss, etc.).

Critical Importance:

• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Offline Support – Just as Google as finally given us offline Docs, so Asana needs to give us offline Asana. Swapping between workspaces is painfully slow, as is moving between projects. Give us offline support and everything will work faster and better and changes/updates can be made in an asynchronous manner.
  • This is also an issue in the new mobile app. It seems like they always pull a fresh copy of task data down, rather than having the data and only syncing down changes.
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Open Inbox – Right now you can email new tasks into your inbox and so can others who are part of your workspace – but what about those outside of your workspace? Asana has the potential to be a full help desk solution – but only if it allows anonymous users to submit tickets (by anonymous, I mean to Asana, not anonymous in the truest sense). They need to be able to send a ticket to [email protected] and for a few ticket to be created in the inbox.
• Native Mobile Apps – Asana is getting its butt kicked on the mobile front. Where are my native apps for Asana? Ohh, they don’t exist – at least not for Android.
• [Still Unavailable: 6/12/13] Astrid-like pop-up on missed phone calls asking if you want to make it into a task and when it should be due.

What features do you think Asana is missing currently? Are you using Asana? Which of the features listed above are most important to you?