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Asana, Inc., a San Francisco-based project management and collaboration platform, announced a number of new product features aimed at improving user experience and helping employees focus on work without distraction. The product enhancements include video messaging, task management features, a smart calendar assistant to help with scheduling, and a new desktop app.
According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index, a report based on a survey of 13,000 workers, 80% of employees work with their inbox and communication apps open, leading to nearly 75% feeling the pressure to multitask when they can be doing focused work.
“The rapid shift to distributed work has fueled distraction and disruption. Message pings and meetings are at an all-time high, while focus time has fallen to the wayside. One thing is clear — something needs to change,” said Alex Hood, Asana chief product officer, in a press statement.
Here are the highlights of the new suite of features:
- Video Messaging: Via a partnership with Vimeo, users will be able to record and share short videos and screen captures and generate automated transcripts.
- My Tasks: Users can organize their personal tasks in Kanban, list and calendar format and set up automation to organize tasks based on priority and communicate when a teammate completes a related task.
- Smart Calendar Assistant Integration: A new integration with Clockwise, a smart calendar assistant, will allow users to schedule tasks into focus time without leaving Asana.
- Asana Desktop App: Available on Mac and Windows, Asana’s desktop app aims to give users enhanced ability to focus. A new Dark Mode feature on desktop, mobile and web reduces the strain of device light.
Video messaging in particular is aimed at helping distributed teams overcome video meeting fatigue and work more efficiently asynchronously across time zones and multiple locations. Earlier this month, enterprise video platform Loom unveiled a software developer kit that will allow businesses to add Loom video recording features to their own applications, VentureBeat reported.
Asana’s partnership with Vimeo also makes sense for the New York City-based video platform, which has been stepping into team-based video messaging as remote work took hold in the past year. The company debuted Vimeo Record, an asynchronous video messaging tool, in October 2020.
San Francisco-based Asana’s project management software is used by 100,000 paying customers, including Amazon, Japan Airlines, Sky and Under Armour. The company reported $76.7 million revenue in Q1 2021, up 61% over the prior year according to its latest quarterly results.
