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.

Asana

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.