Asana.com is the window into everything possible with the product. You can learn about everything from how teams run their Marketing campaigns to planning a wedding (Event planning). Unfortunately the guidance and inspiration stop once you purchase a license. You might be an expert at project management, but setting up an Asana workflow to support your team, can be a real challenge. Within the product there's no way to segue from learning about how these use-cases are supported to actually getting one set up.

We introduced the Workflow Library to bridge that gap. If your journey begins on the marketing site, getting started is as simple as the click of a button. Ushering you into the product through tailored on-boarding that enables you to learn the mechanics of Asana, specific to your needs. All of the content you see, and all of the features you set up, are tailored to the nuances of the work you do.

Asana projects are comprised of a few key elements: 'Views' – the way work is visualized, 'Fields' – the categorical attributes of work, 'Automations' – the rules that move work through a process, and 'Inputs' – the various ways people contribute work to a project (e.g. forms, app integrations, manually). Each Asana project is a complex amalgamation of variations of these elements. The success of a team adopting Asana relies on someone getting it just right. This means learning the ins and outs of Asana and adapting it to your team's workflow, can be a steep learning curve.

In order to lower the bar, we re-imagined project templates. These ready-made projects are the recommended starting point for all use-cases you can find on the marketing site. Instead of being 'complete' they require human input. You tailor them to meet the needs of your team. Additionally we introduced workflow packages, that give users access to the same pre-configured features, when starting from a blank canvas. This approach is a fundamental change from the Asana users have come to know. It provides guidance and structure to a complex tool that enables any imaginable outcome.

The single hardest thing to get right, was helping users – both new and advanced – make connections between the elements of a project. e.g. When a Field value is set via the Intake form, a separate Field value will be set via an Automation. These strings of dependencies are what make Asana powerful and useful beyond a simple spreadsheet. One way we approached helping people understand this is through interactive Demo experiences. These are projects complete with phony information, that allow users to run hypothetical work through the establish processes. In doing so, they can begin to imagine their own work unfolding this way.

Another key solution from this work was the re-framing of existing features, around a specific use-case, through content changes. Instead of inviting 'Teammates' they might be expecting to add 'Agents.' Or instead of work being 'incomplete,' it can now exist in various stages like 'awaiting customer feedback.' The guided setup mechanics were tailored to for different audiences. Setting up a workflow is a very different job than doing the work it's supporting.

After everything was in place, we launched a dogfooding initiative that allowed everyone in the company to participate in our new Ticketing workflow – one of the many formal use-cases. Everyone who submit a ticket, and jumped through the hoops we intentionally created (e.g. escalations and financial approvals), received a 3D printed badge holder to commemorate the 18 months of work it took to get here.