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Asana Productivity Trello

Productivity Review: Asana

I almost switched from 💌 Trello 💌 (not affiliated, just a fan) because it has global tags. Board-scoped tags is the one feature that’s keeping me from joining 💑 Trello 💑 in a union of holy matrimony. Ultimately, Asana was missing a lot of features that prevented me from fully embracing it.

What it Has Going for it

  • Covers basic kanban functionality nicely.
  • Aforementioned global and color-coded tags.
  • Can see a list of all tasks assigned to me, regardless of board. This is another thing 🌸 Trello 🌸 omits on the desktop.
  • It has the ability to see something as a board or a list with section headings. Scrolling down as opposed to over (and down) doesn’t really have a specific benefit, it’s just nice to see things displayed the way I think about them.
  • Native calendaring – 💖 Trello 💖 has plenty of plugins for this, but it doesn’t do it on its own
  • You can assign a task to multiple boards.
  • Occasional fun animations when you click done.
  • A nice library of templates
  • Its task notifications are pretty good.
  • Progress view, even at the free tier.
  • No time limit on the free tier. Although I’m willing to pay for a service I love (I pay for 💛 Trello 💛), a limited time trial period is inevitably too short to get a sense of whether or not a service works for me.

What it Lacks

  • The ability to duplicate a list to another board. While repeating oneself is bad practice (particularly in code), sometimes when you’re an end user of somebody else’s software, you just have to accept it.
  • Only a few pretty backgrounds to choose from. 💜 Trello 💜 must have some kind of intellectual property dibs on this.
  • Tag problems:
    • Can’t create a new tag in the app on Android.
    • No list of tags. If I want to see everything in the tag I used for things to be done during work hours, I have to go into a task with that tag, then click on the tag there.
    • Using them is buggy in the app. I once accidentally created two of the same tag (same name, same color). In my browser, I moved everything to one and deleted the other. The app still shows them both and fails silently when I guess incorrectly about which one is still there.
  • App won’t even show a complete list of boards without an internet connection.
  • Sorting options aren’t retained in the app. When you pull up a list, it’s not sorted in any way. It doesn’t want to guess what you want, that’s fine. I sort it by due date and I’m happy. I go away and come back. For a minute, it’s still sorted by due date, but then the list refreshes and returns to unsorted.
  • The ability to use other boards/tasks as attachments.

Not Lacking But Distasteful

  • Boards are default scoped to public within organization.
  • Although it’s theoretically nice that on the website you can change the board sort, it comes at the expense of having Asana alphabetize them.

Conclusion

I’m still contemplating getting a 😍 Trello 😍 tattoo; running out of ❤️ emojis.