Asana Comes To Android
by Tim Bavaro and Kris Rasmussen
February 28th, 2013
Five months ago, we launched our first bonafide mobile app, for the iPhone, and we’ve been steadily improving it ever since. Focusing on a single platform at first allowed us to be meticulous about our mobile experience, adding new features and honing the design until we knew it was something people loved. After strong positive feedback from our customers and a solid rating in the iTunes App Store, we knew it was time.
Today, we are happy to announce that Asana for Android is here. You can get it right now in the Google Play store
With Asana’s Android app at your fingertips, you can create, assign and edit tasks on the go. With mobile Inbox, you can stay up to speed on with the tasks and projects that matter to you. And if you’ve been using the mobile web app, you’ll notice that the native app comes with some big improvements:
- Workspace search
- Smoother task creation and editing interface
- The ability to add due dates, notes, tags, and followers to any task
- Faster startup times
- Animated transitions
- Integration with Android’s Single Sign On, and more
At Asana, we believe that when you and your teammates have a single, shared tool to plan your work, communicate, and stay organized, your potential expands. But to stay coordinated in an always-on, ever-connected world, you need to take that tool with you everywhere, staying in sync with your team whether you’re at your desk or on the way to the airport or anywhere else you might go.
Now, whether you’re on an Android or iPhone, you can.
Thank you !!! You people keep us on track, now more so. A real big thank you. If one can hug a company, I would hug ASANA !! You guys rock. Lots of respect for your work, lots of thanks.
Does it show subtasks?
It does show subtasks on tasks that have them, but doesn’t currently let you create them.
I’ve been waiting like forever for this. Finally, i don’t have to put with all those crappy “unofficial” apps or the slow mobile web interface.
Great work Asana Team!
This is awesome. It took long but I am glad it’s here. Now following up with tasks for self and clients will be a lot easier. Thanks
Great! Does it support push notifications?
Not currently.
That’s a pity. Can I get notified somehow as soon as it does support push notifications?
Thank you for your Hard Work the app is perfect !
My Rarz M crashed after installing this. When I powered it down, it came back completely wiped out. I’m not sure if it’s related to the App, but thought I’d give you a heads up.
Thanks! Functionaly it is great, however switching from one pane to another (for example from task list to workspaces or from task to task list) is not smooth on my DesireHD. Dont know if thats because phone is not very new or there are some problems with your app.
This is a disappointment, to put it mildly. Why even bother, Asana? You already had a web app.
First of all, thanks, this was totally needed. A few comments:
Still looks like a webapp (it kind of is). Does not have swipe functionality or some other natural native app features. In tablet (nexus 7) landscape mode, it shows you the same exact layout as in portrait, so it feels like empty.
It also does not feel like native to Android. The design guielines are there… only need to follow the ones make sense. Just take a look on polished apps like evernote and you will see this point…
Anyway, it is a good starting point and I’m sure you guys are gonna do something great, as your web app is.
A few questions/comments about the app —
I can’t seem to see priority headings or a breakdown of tasks based on project (ala the website) in the “My Tasks” view. Is this intended? It’s an unexpected change from the website.
Additionally, tasks will not display in the My Tasks view if they are not marked for “Today” or “Upcoming”. Tasks that are marked as “Later” and unmarked (though assigned) tasks do not appear.
Ditto on the “Later” and unmarked categories–why are those not shown in the iPhone mobile app?
As much as I love Asana, I have to say this app is practically unusable.
It is just too slow and clumsy on my HTC Desire X. And the reason is obvious: this is not really an application, but just a wrapper around Asana webpage.
Now I really see no reason why I should use it at all if I can just access Asana with my web browser. Which is faster, by the way. Why bother with the application if it just a mini-browser and that’s it? Only for marketing reasons, so you can say “now we have Android app”?
Well you don’t, I’m sorry.
It is slow, it is transfer-consuming, it doesn’t take advantage of any Android features, it is just a browser, not an application.
I still love Asana, but I’m awfully disappointed with your approach towards Android-based mobile devices. Come on, you can do much better than that!
It’s true.
Hi Martin,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re disappointed with the first version.
I do want to clarify though that the app is not simply a wrapper around the browser. Just like our iOS app, it utilizes WebViews to facilitate a few UIs, but the app itself is native and took quite a lot of development time to create. There are many flows that do not involve WebViews at all, like creating and editing tasks, and a lot of the basic behavior of the app is different in important ways. I’m confident that if you keep using it, you’ll appreciate how it differs from the web-based application (which happens to share the same visual design).
Dustin
Thank you for the answer.
Well, all right, I’ll give it a try and test it for longer. All technical details aside, you have to admit though that the application is just too slow too use it comfortably. Workflow on mobile devices really needs to be fast and responsive. With clever programming (and you proved you are clever) it can be done.
I know it’s a huge challenge, I’m a programmer myself. But you’ve done absolutely brilliant job with desktop Asana so it’s natural we expect only the best from you. But clearly it requires a completely different approach.
Great, I appreciate being given a second chance :)
Speed is a priority across all our platforms. Internally, we’re unhappy with parts of desktop performance (esp. page loads and search) in addition to mobile performance on both of the currently supported platforms. It’s one of our primary focuses right now, per my recent blog post: http://blog.asana.com/2013/02/our-product-priorities-for-episode-7/
We’re currently working on some low level changes that will increase performance across all platforms at once, and I agree we’ll also need to do some more Android specific work focused on this. We’ve been able to make a lot of progress on iOS performance over the past year, esp around things like increasing the % of warm starts (though again, we’d like it to be a lot better) and I’m confident we’ll do similarly well on Android given some time to iterate. But we wanted to get something out for people to use now and choose to air on the side of achieving feature completeness/parity with the other platforms.
One of the best things to keep in mind is that there are many Asana developers who are using this app every day, so you can rest assured that we feel this pain, too. I’m thinking of switching back myself now that we have the app.
Great news!!
Windows phone users are still waiting.
Thanks.
Waiting for offline access.
Me too. I think this feature is a must. Specially for those who don’t work only in a city (when travelling to zones where’s there’s no wifi or abroad).
That is very important, and would likely incredibly improve response time.
The app is slow to the point of unusable.
At least access to the mobile site on Windows Phone would be appreciated. I can’t install Chrome Frame on my phone.
Hooray! :-)
I can’t even begin to explain how important Asana is to my daily life, both work and professional, having the official mobile app is certainly gonna make life easier!!!
Hmm, is this a bug? I’ve experienced this before on the mobile site.
I got to “Alex’s Sortable Tasks”, Sortable is one of my workspaces. I see one task, listed under “New tasks”. But, in the website, under “My Sortable Tasks” I see 11 tasks (many are not part of a project, could that be the issue?)
Android users bitch and bitch whining for an app.. you deliver a native one, and now it’s “too slow”. Guess what.. Android is slow. If you want a fast OS with quality apps, well, you know where to find that.
Android WAS slow, but that’s changed. If you haven’t tried a GSIII or another high-end Android device from the past six months or so, you should. My GSIII blows the pants off my third-gen iPad.
I stuck with a real smartphone when the iphone came out. Windows Mobile had crApple beat at that game before they ever tried. Android has been consistently faster, and just plain better, than ios since Android hit 2.1.
The reason this ‘native’ app is so slow is because it is constantly refreshing online data, rather than doing the smart thing and syncing data for offline use. Despite claims to the contrary, it is functionally little more than a web wrapper.
I have been waiting a couple years for this. I am super excited to see Android support. Thank you! Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your work Asana Team!
Great for Asana. Please don’t forget Windows Phone and Windows 8 users.
This is really THE thing which was missing in Asana. Good job guys !
Windows phone please!
The app looks and works very good!
The only one critical feature that I couldn’t find is how to move task to Today/Upcoming/Later.
You can drag and drop tasks into those sections if they are already visible to you.
I can see Today tasks but can’t find a way to move them to Upcoming … makes it borderline unusable for me. Any tips?
Cool. Awesome job. I was waiting for this since long time.
Well it’s a nice beginning but it could use some more Android design.
Like the workspace pane. We should be able to swipe right to see it, and swipe left to hide it.. ala youtube/currents (and any other well built app).
Also over all design is a bit apple like, and not very android inspired but.. hey at least we have it I guess..
You probably should take a look at this though : http://developer.android.com/design/patterns/pure-android.html
Finally!!! Awesome jobs guys. All my colleagues are iPad freaks. And so, they can enjoy Asana on the go. I am the only one with a Google Nexus and was stuck in front of my laptop.
Now, I can smile back to them.
Let me give it a try, again.
If this works, I will reintroduce to team.
Thank you!!
The android app is looking great! Been waiting for this for a while.
The only feature I wish it had was offline access to asana, and the ability to add tasks offline.
Great job, guys. I have been waiting for this app for a while too.
Let me know when you decide to translate it, including the website, to Brazilian Portuguese ( pt_BR ). I really want to help.
Hey this is great,
I’m an Android user and long time fan of Asana. At risk of sounding forward I’d like to see if someone from the Asana/Android UX team would be interested in speaking at our mobile UX meetup happening in the East Bay on March 21st. Could Dan or one of the other team members reach out to me?
Many thanks,
Angel
Thank you all for this effort. Bringing Asana to Android is really awesome. Unfortunately the app in this current state is very unresponsive. I use a Galaxy Note 2, which is a truly speedy phone, and Asana is just too slow. The mobile Web version is faster. Your desktop version is by far the best Web app I’ve ever used and your mobile one doesn’t do it any justice. Nevertheless I’ll be using it every day. Thank you all for your work that have been so helpful to do mine.
Great job Asana! So glad to finally have this tool. We’re now able to fully deploy Asana to our entire field team, which we’ve been deparate to do. I’m not experiencing any of the latency issues others are complaining of. I’m running on a Droid Bionic. Congrats on another well-crafted piece of software. Would love to see offline access in future versions.
I was really hoping for subtask creation and offline access in the android version. Thanks nonetheless. Maybe a future version, I guess.
Is there any view on either the website or the mobile app that lists all your tasks from various workspaces, rather than having to switch to each workspace to check what’s due?
Also, it seems one can’t create projects in the iOS app?
thanks a lot!
Good
Hi Asana team!
I want to thank you for your great job! This is what I was waiting for :)
Needs some improvements, but ABSOLUTELY a great tool. Keep going!!
I reckon the Android app is a great start. Knowing what it takes to make this happen, I’m confident that it will develop towards further capabilities and improvements. I’m not entirely wrapped with the release, but appreciate the effort totally! Keep up the sensational work folks…
A good start, but many features are missing. Offline support please!!! Widget maybe? Full subtask support?
Can’t say much as i couldn’t get it to open on my HTC Thunderbolt. Every time I tried to open it, it just kept saying that it had “stopped”. Uninstalled and re-installed, no luck. Too bad as I like the web version.
How can you sort tasks by date in the app?
Same question – how can I sort tasks by date in the My Tasks view mode??
I realize that Blackberry may be something that some developers don’t think about. But Blackberry has made it very simple to convert an Android app to their OS 10 format. There are 2 methods. First is to convert the .apk file to a .bar file which can run on the Android player on the Blackberry device. (about a 10 min. process). Or there is another process to convert to native OS 10 format (apparently this takes a couple of hours). Something to think about given that Blackberry is still very strong in the business world where project managers are used ;)
It’s great to have a mobile app … and one suggestion: a home screen button for *quickly* adding a task. For me (G2 handset) the apps takes 10-15 seconds to load. When I think of a new task I need a way to add that quickly.
Are there any plans to make the mobile apps usable offline? Perhaps switch to a REST or other synchronization approach? Would certainly improve the speed at all times and allow for use anytime, anywhere. Thank you!
Great with a Android-app, but there is *only* one problem…
Google Play says “this app is not compatible with your unit (Samsung Galaxy S)” and “The object can not be installed in the country (Sweden) of the unit”??!!
Any hint why?
I’ll throw in another Blackberry 10 mention. Our company has a mixture of ios/android and blackberry 10. Hope that you will consider the new BB platform.
Push Notifications!!!
How can you sort tasks by date in the android app?
And is there plans to add a Calender view ?
Dear Asana team,
The problem is not that the app is bad. It’s certainly better than some of the others out there. The problem is the fact that your main web interface is lightyears ahead of everything else out there, so we naturally expected the same awesomeness from the app. Sadly the app is not one I will be using often. I will maintain my Asana account, but am now looking at other options.
A reminder/to-do app that doesn’t have push notifications to… remind you, is a non-starter.