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Asana vs Microsoft Teams: What are the differences?
Asana and Microsoft Teams are two popular collaboration tools that are used by businesses to improve communication and streamline workflows. Let's explore the key differences between them.
Task Management: Asana is primarily a task management tool that allows users to create, assign, and track tasks within projects. It provides a more comprehensive and flexible system for organizing and managing tasks, with features like deadlines, subtasks, attachments, and project templates. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams offers basic task management capabilities but focuses more on collaboration and communication within teams.
Communication Features: Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that emphasizes real-time communication and teamwork. It offers features like chat, video calls, screen sharing, and integrations with other Office 365 applications. Asana, on the other hand, provides limited built-in communication features and relies more on integrations with other communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for real-time collaboration.
Integration with Office 365: Microsoft Teams is tightly integrated with Office 365 applications, such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This integration allows users to seamlessly collaborate on files, co-author documents, and access shared resources directly within the Teams platform. Asana, on the other hand, lacks this deep integration with Office 365 and focuses more on integrating with other third-party tools.
Project Management Approach: Asana provides a more structured and visual approach to project management with features like Gantt charts, kanban boards, and calendar views. It allows users to plan, schedule, and visualize project timelines and tasks, making it especially useful for complex projects with multiple dependencies. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, takes a more team-centric and conversation-driven approach to project management.
File Management: While both Asana and Microsoft Teams allow users to upload and share files, they have different file management capabilities. Asana focuses more on task-related file attachments and provides basic file storage capabilities. In contrast, Microsoft Teams offers more advanced file management features, including version control, co-authoring, file preview, and integration with SharePoint for organized document libraries.
Customization and Automation: Asana provides a high level of customization and automation options through its Rules and custom fields features. Users can create custom workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and add custom fields to tasks to track specific information. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, has limited customization options and relies more on the out-of-the-box functionality provided by Office 365.
In summary, Asana is primarily focused on task management and provides a comprehensive set of features for organizing and managing tasks within projects. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, is more team-centric and emphasizes real-time communication and collaboration, with tighter integration with Office 365 applications.
We are a small financial planning firm with remote workers. Trying to fix inefficiencies with technology and not people. We need to know where clients are in the pipeline/process (i.e., have we submitted applications and transfer forms, have we entered the costs basis of investments in the system, have we run their financial plans, where are we in the planning process, etc.) If a client calls and we have to research a question, who is handling it.
Karen, you can accomplish that with any of the three tools (I'm currently using all three). It depends on the user experience and the capabilities you're looking for. Here's a high-level rundown:
Trello- stands out for being simple, visually oriented drag-and-drop
- of the three, it's more minimalist but still flexible
- the more advanced features are free & paid add ons from Trello & other developers
- best when you need something quick and simple, and more visual
- great for more robust project management
- you can manage tasks in different views including lists, kanban board similar to trello, and gantt chart
- best when you need more control over the tasks and how your process is set up
- intends to be a replacement for many different tools, including asana & trello
- loaded with features, can do pretty much everything that trello & asana do
- highly customizable but it may take some time go set it up the way you want it
- the myriad of options could get confusing, but they provide a lot of templates (including a CRM template) and support tools to get you going faster
Ultimately you choice comes down to how much detail & control you want over your process (dates, categories, client information etc.) and how you want your team to work with the tool (simple drag & drop vs. structured lists). One idea is to start with Trello since it's the simplest, and migrate to one of the others if you outgrow it.
Hope that helps! If you have any follow-up questions please let us know!
I'm comparing Aha!, Trello and Asana. We are looking for it as a Product Management Team. Jira handles all our development and storyboard etc. This is for Product Management for Roadmaps, Backlogs, future stories, etc. Cost is a factor, as well. Does anyone have a comparison chart of Pros and Cons? Thank you.
I just switched to ClickUp for my development agency - I am the product team, and I relay everything there betwixt designers, devs, and clients.
Clickup = Jira + Confluence but better - more ways to slice and dice your data & documents, make custom views, mind map relationships, and track people's work, plan goals... I even use it to manage project finances and household to-dos.
They have a very comprehensive free tier that never expires, and on top of that they're extremely generous with trials of their paid features, have more-than-fair pricing, and top-notch customer support.
Since now Jira is offering pretty wide free plans, it can compete with asana at small teams. And they have a significant advantage especially if you're working in agile methodology. Confluence is also a big advantage, and also comes with a free plan, so it's a pretty big thing. But we had also talked about asana and used to work with it before a lot, but we chose to go with Jira, and it's pretty good for now.
As it is the communication tool chosen for the course, our team will be using Slack to monitor the course announcements from our instructor as well as to communicate with the instructor and industry partners. The tool for communicating within the team will be Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams enables the team to share documents and edit them synchronously(Google Drive is not an option due to one team member's location). Since it also provides a group chat feature, we chose to use it as our communication tool to avoid using too many softwares.
Communication We have chosen two tools for our team communication.
- Slack
We choose Slack since all of us are familiar with this communication tool. We have a private channel for our team Sphinx for text messages. We added Github apps inside our private channel for repo update notifications. Furthermore, we could contact the subject matter experts within the workspace DCSIL directly for the issues we meet.
- Microsoft Teams
We use Microsoft Teams for virtual meetings for its fast connection speed. In addition, the call feature in Slack is a paid feature, and we could have virtual meetings and share screens for free in Microsoft Teams.
Both Asana and Trello support Kanban style project tracking. Trello is Kanban-only project management, knowledge management, actually card-management tools. Asana is much more complex, supports different project management approaches, well integrated and helpful for any style/type project.
We choose Asana finally, but still some projects kept in Trello
Procezo is an excellent free-for-life task managing tool with several benefits. Its clear, user-friendly interface is perfect for small businesses and startups as well as enterprise-level use. It makes it a seamless transition from any other project management tools. Its simple but effective layout allows new users to quickly adapt to its ever-expanding set of features. Procezo allows users to create boards and provide access to users or teams as required, set priority and precedence of the task and allowing for subtasks and discussions to be created. With unlimited tasks, users, projects and free support, Procezo is quickly making its way into businesses from across the world and the ultimate growth hack tool.
we were using slack and at the same time we had a subscription with office 365. after a while we hit the slack free limitation quota. and it got annoying. the search ability was useless in free tier. and more annoying whenever you search, it opens a webpage and doesn't do it in the app.
on mobile there were many cases that I didn't get notification of important discussions. rooms was the way to separate a talk. but it become tedious. each time for a new subject that you wanted to discuss, you needed to add all the team members into a new room. and after a while the room goes silent. you will end up with a tons of not-in-use rooms that you don't want to clean up them for history purposes. also the slack UI for sub discussion is very stupid. if someone forget to check the checkbox to post the subdiscussion in the main discussion thread, other team members even won't notice such discussion is in progress.
we was paying for office 365 and thought why not give the teams a shot. we won't be in worth situation than we are. we moved to teams and we loved it instantly, we had a separate tab aggregated all the files upload. we could reply on other talk. no need of creating a new room. this way room belongs to a team and not a certain topic. our sub discussion was visible to the whole team. enjoyed integration with azure and unlimited history. the best part was integration with outlook. it was a full suit solution. our stats become busy on outlook meeting events. we get weekly analyse. we didn't need to host our wiki seperated. we've created wiki per team. the communication was much more fun.
trello has a much simpler interface and easy to learn for any team member. asana might have more features and configuration options but do you really need a complex system for developers to manage tasks?
After Microsoft took over trello, it has become more restricted these days but still good for startups.
Keep it simple! Focus on your product, not tools.
Pros of Asana
- Super fast task creation160
- Flexible project management150
- Free up to 15101
- Followers and commenting on tasks99
- Integration with external services57
- Email-based task creation25
- Plays nice with Google Apps17
- Clear usage14
- Plays nice with Harvest Time Tracking14
- Supports nice keyboard shortcuts6
- Integration with GitHub4
- Slack supported2
- Integration with Instagantt for Gantt Charts2
- Integration with Alfred1
- Both Card View & Task View1
- Easy to use1
- Friendly API1
- Slick and fast interface0
Pros of Microsoft Teams
- Work well with the rest of Office 365 work flow29
- Mobile friendly24
- Free19
- Well-thought Design12
- Great integrations12
- Channels10
- Easy setup9
- Unlimited users6
- Strong search and data archiving5
- Easy to integrate with5
- Multi domain switching support4
- Web interface4
- Same interface on multiple platforms3
- Great voice quality2
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Cons of Asana
- Not Cross Platform0
Cons of Microsoft Teams
- Confusing UI17
- Bad performance on init and after quite a use12
- Bad Usermanagement10
- No desktop client (only fat and slow electron app)6
- Can't see all members in a video meeting6
- Unable to Mute users5
- No Markdown Support5
- You don't really own your messages4
- MIssing public channels4
- Forced WYSIWYG4
- Stubborn, unused friendly3
- Challenging Onboarding3
- No linux support3
- Audio support problems1
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