Asana adds workflow automation, voice transcription

Work management vendor Asana has introduced new automation capabilities for its software, including a rules builder that lets users automate repeatable steps.
Asana, founded by Facebook co-creator Dustin Moskovitz and software engineer Justin Rosenstein, is a collaborative work management app that lets users track and manage tasks on an individual, team or organization-wide basis. It has around 70,000 paying customers.
The company has been building out a range of features in recent months, including the addition of Asana’s Workload tool this past summer and Proofing in April. The latter lets users give feedback on images.
A new rules engine lets users automate manual steps involving task routing and workflows.
As part of the launch of its Asana Automation features features, a custom rules engine has been added that lets users automate manual steps involving task routing and workflows; they can use one of 75 pre-built steps or try a “fill-in-the-blank” editor to create their own set of triggers.
It is possible, for instance, to automatically assign tasks to team members based on a change in their work status, adjust due dates as new tasks are created, or add “followers” to a task when the progress status of a task changes.
Avoiding ‘steps’ can boost productivity
Doing so can save time and avoid “busy work,” according to Asana’s chief product officer, Alex Hood. He said that beta testing showed the rules builder saved users hundreds of steps each week.
“We measure success by steps saved per week and our beta customers are saving about 400 steps per week individually,” said Hood. “It is pretty easy. You don’t need to be an engineer, you can actually create those efficiencies from a very simple and powerful UI.”
Wayne Kurtzman, a research director at IDC, said the new feature can help all types of workers set up automated workflows. “Those automation capabilities will not compete with robust solutions their workflow partners provide, but [they] will allow the average user to accelerate portions of…
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