How To: Quickly Make Asana Tasks on Android Using IFTTT
You're away from your desk and suddenly remember you forgot to reply to a very important email thread that you were added to last week. Although it's a high-priority, you don't have time to reply while you're away from your desk. What do you do?
You quickly pull out your phone to add it to your Asana task list because using your phone's "reminders" feature is super unreliable. But a few problems are introduced with this workflow:
1. The launch time of the app takes a few seconds to load up all of your current tasks.
2. Whenever you find the "create a task" option and add it, it's dropped into the pile of tasks and you then have to manually find it and drag it to the top so you'll remember to see it when you get back to your desk.
This becomes a time-consuming process and costs valuable time over time. So, I discovered a workaround that allows me to create new Asana tasks from my mobile device and have them sitting in my "My Tasks" view in seconds.
This article assumes you know the basics of creating a new project inside of Asana. If you're not sure how to do that, you can find out, here!
What is #IFTTT?
IFTTT (If This Then That) is a very helpful service, similar to Zapier, that links systems to each other.
What is #Asana?
Asana is an all-in-one task and project management solution that I honestly can't talk enough about. It's so useful!
Step 1. Create a private (to you) Asana project inside of the "General" team and name it "IFTTT".
Step 2. Download IFTTT from the Google Play Store and create a new account.
Step 3. Add and enable this trigger on your IFTTT account and set the target of the trigger to your "IFTTT" project inside Asana. This tells IFTTT exactly where to send tasks made using this widget to.
Step 4. Create a home-screen widget for IFTTT from your phone. It will then prompt you to pick what task to tie the widget to, select the Asana trigger you've just set up.
Step 5. You can now use that home-screen widget to quickly create and send tasks to Asana within seconds. Once you're on a desktop, you can move them around as needed to keep things organized. You're all finished!
That does it for this quick tutorial. Let me know what other tips you'd like to see me cover in future articles!