Since launching in 2008, Asana has since become one of the best-known names in the online task and work management space. It enables teams to track their progress against shared goals, assign tasks, schedule due dates, communicate about projects publicly or privately, and much more.
While we’re focused on Asana reporting here at Velocity we often get asked about how reporting capabilities compare to some of the other popular project management tools. In this post, we’ll look at 5 “Leaders” for Task Management (according to G2) and dive into how reporting differs between each system.
Asana
Initial Setup and Configuration of Reports
The workflow in Asana is very similar to the way many developers and designers build web products: start by creating a draft or master “sprint” for your project, then break that down into manageable pieces (portfolios, projects, sections, tasks, subtasks) that have key details such as assignees, due dates, and notes – add all of these up, and voila! You’ll have a running list of everything you need to do over the lifetime of your project. Reporting in Asana is also simple using the provided Reporting tab and the included charts.
Task and Project Organization
While not specifically reporting related, knowing how to easily find data matters. Within Asana, labels and tags allow for quick filtering when looking at overall progress figures. Once an item has been completed, its task card can be archived (removing it from public view) but ensuring that it’s still accessible for the future.
Reporting and Data Analysis
Customers on a Premium Plan have access to Universal Reporting which provides dashboards with high-level overview of project status including: updated task progress, hours tracked, projects by status, etc.
Fitting with Asana’s reputation for design and simplicity, Asana tends toward simplicity with its reporting functionality.
While Universal Reporting is simple and intuitive, some customers with more advanced reporting needs opt to use a 3rd party reporting platform such as Velocity which provides more opportunities for customizations and data exports.
Trello
Initial Setup and Configuration of Reports
Known for its minimalist look and style, Trello is a powerful task management tool for smaller teams. Trello is organized in Kanban boards, which are lists of tasks on cards, and changing the status of a task is as simple as dragging and dropping.
There’s no initial setup required for Trello – it’s designed to be easy to use out of the box. You simply sign up for an account and you can get started right away by creating a board and adding tasks.
Task and Project Organization
Boards within Trello can be customized extensively, however; Trello doesn’t provide other views such as Gantt charts “out of the box.”
Task dependencies aren’t supported natively within Trello, but similar functionality can be achieved through the use of labels.
Once again, due to Trello’s simplistic nature, there’s little customization that can be achieved on a task or project level. Trello does have an extensive library of integrations that can be added to the base product to extend its functionality.
Reporting and Data Analysis
Trello has no native reporting capabilities out of the box. However, it does have a small list of integrations (known as “powerups”) that will add some additional options for power users.
Note: Velocity is currently developing a Trello integration – you can sign up for product updates and beta access here: beta.getvelocity.co/trello
Monday.com
Initial Setup and Configuration of Reports
Monday.com is a very colorful platform that offers quite a bit of customization. Monday markets itself as a “work operating system” that goes beyond task management and enables customers to create custom applications.
With this added power, Monday.com is much less intuitive than Asana, and the initial setup and configuration steps aren’t as straightforward. This can make the creation of reports a bit more complicated than it otherwise needs to be.
Monday.com allows you to create custom fields for your tasks; but, these fields aren’t displayed or used by default unless you add them to a specific task view. Using these custom fields can be confusing without documentation because even though they’re available in the UI, there’s no way to search for them via the search bar, which makes finding them difficult if they aren’t documented somewhere on their website or social media accounts.
Task and Project Organization
The colorful user interface (UI) of Monday.com can encourage teams to use it more than other task management tools. However, Monday.com doesn’t have a way to search for tasks with specific label criteria via the UI or API, which means you can’t use this information for reporting your status against goals.
Reporting and Data Analysis
Overall, Monday.com has strong reporting functionality. While there are some gaps with the reporting in Monday.com, their native reporting tools are possibly the most powerful of all of the different tools we’ve looked at.
Monday includes reports on milestones and key metrics but doesn’t give any kind of project budget tracking or goal completion tracking – these features would help customers understand status towards meeting your targets and timelines. These types of reports would have to be built manually and require a bit more setup.
Smartsheet
Initial Setup and Configuration of Reports
Fans of traditional spreadsheets will love Smartsheet. It’s got a spreadsheet-like UI and the ability to create all kinds of custom reports on your data which you can then share with those who have access. You can link sheets together so data from one sheet flows into the next, so it’s easy to understand how things are interrelated.
The initial setup is fairly straightforward, but using Smartsheet to its fullest will require significant amounts of time and effort. Customization is limited by the fact that your reports are actually spreadsheets. While it’s simple enough to add in a column for “on track,” there’s no option to automatically populate this column based on a metric you choose.
Smartsheet has a free version if you’re looking for a quick and easy solution, but keep in mind that integration with other products will cost extra. In addition, customization options are limited to exporting data from Smartsheet into another spreadsheet program.
Task and Project Organization
The creation of Gantt charts is simple with Smartsheet, but Kanban-type boards for task and project management aren’t available. For this type of functionality, you’ll need to go with Trello or Asana.
Reporting and Data Analysis
Since it’s spreadsheet based, it’s UI is a bit less appealing and more cumbersome than Asana when it comes to task management. However, Smartsheet has strong reporting options as well as integrated budgeting and forecasting tools, so you’ll get a good feel for where you’re at throughout the project.
Wrike
Initial Setup and Configuration of Reports
Wrike also has a simple configuration setup, but its need for customization can cause additional complexity for users that value simplicity. This would be a good choice for advanced users or those that want to set up custom workflows.
Task and Project Organization
Wrike makes it easy to make edits, leave comments for co-workers with questions, and receive notifications when another user submits new data.
Reporting and Data Analysis
In addition to standard graphs, although the interface isn’t as sleek as some competitors, Wrike boasts an impressive library of chart options, allowing you to display everything from work breakdown structure (WBS) progress to burndown charts.
Conclusion
As task and work management software continues to evolve and organizations expand usage towards a central point for all internal work, reporting becomes even more essential.
As you can see, reporting capabilities and resource investment differ among each product, so be sure to understand your organization’s needs when evaluating project management solutions.
As always, we’re here to help at our website or send us an email anytime!