Can web development be made easier, simpler, quicker, and more transparent? I guess that’s the question that keeps management and executives awake a lot of the time.
Whilst developers focus on techniques, patterns, principles and developmental concepts management, in contrast, is more focused on the broader picture, understanding where a project is at, will it meet its deadline, did it overrun and by how much. Here’s how to use Asana for bug tracking.
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So as well as an opportunity, you’re also presented with a challenge. On one hand, the development team produces, consciously or otherwise, all the metrics and data which is needed by management to plan and forecast a web project. But how can they turn that data into a format which management needs to forecast and plan? Today, I’m going to answer that question for you.
Recently, we finalized a bug tracking integration with Asana, who transform data and metrics into beautiful dashboards, dashboards which can present all kinds of information, able to be consumed or presented at a glance. The browser screenshot below gives a great overview of what’s on offer.
Asana Dashboards
In the screenshot above, you can see that a number of dashboards have been set up. You can see one for a recent website launch, for quarter 3 marketing, for bug tracking, design requests and so on. No matter what your position, no matter if you’re technical or not, you can know exactly where a project is up to, with nothing more than a quick glance.
The dashboards, which you can drill down in to for increasing levels of detail, give you all the information you need, but without overloading you in the process. And not only are they functionally proficient, they’re also beautifully designed.
Whether you’re showing them to your team or giving a presentation to higher management, to outside investors, or just showing off what you’ve achieved to friends — dashboards let you do all this simply and easily.
I could go on all day about the value they bring, but I’m sure you don’t have all day to listen. So I’ll cut to the chase. Recently, Usersnap integrated with Asana. Now you can take the bug reporting efforts you’re used to with the Usersnap widget to a whole new level.
With the integration, you can start getting a better handle on just how well your team’s progress. Here are some suggestions:
- How many issues are reported, versus how many are closed?
- What is the turnaround time on reported issues?
- How many issues are reported and in what time period?
This is just a sample of the types of questions you can set dashboards up for. But for any metric you feel is of value to your team, you’re now able to be more transparent about it with very little effort.
Want to see more? Let’s have a look at just how easy it is to add Asana to your Usersnap account.
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How to Connect Asana for bug tracking with Usersnap
Firstly, open http://asana.com in your browser of choice. There, you can either directly sign up using a Google account, if you have one, or enter your email address, where it says name@company.com and click Get Started.
You’ll then see a popup appear, as in the screenshot below. If you’re not using a Google account, enter a password and click Log In. Otherwise, you’ll see another popup asking you to confirm permissions which Asana can use on your Google account.
Asana Account Creation
After that, you’ll be ready to use Asana. As time permits, feel free to customize your profile and browse around to see everything on offer. I’m going to stick just to the key aspects of integrating Asana and Usersnap in this article.
At first, you’ll have no projects. But in the left-hand side navigation bar, you’ll see PROJECTS in grey, with a plus icon next to it. Click the plus icon and a new, empty, project will be created, ready for you to give it a title, as in the screenshot below.
Add in whatever is most appropriate, I’ve called mine Test Project. When that’s done, you’ll see that it has no tasks assigned to it yet. That’s fine, Usersnap will take care of that for us.
Now login to your Usersnap account and navigate to the projects list, which you can find at https://usersnap.com/a/#/company/p. Open the project which you want to link to your Asana project, or create a new one if you don’t have a suitable one already.
When that’s done, click the cog icon in the top right-hand corner, then click 3rd Party Integration, on the right-hand side of the page. You’ll then see a list of 3rd party vendors which you can integrate your project with, as below.
Click on Asana, in the top row, and you’ll see a new form appear. In it, add your Asana email address as the Asana account address, and add the Asana project name as Subject prefix.
Then, though this is only optional, you need to add the Target project id. To find this, go back to your Asana project and in the address bar, you’ll see a URL like this:
https://app.asana.com/0/18727945356286/18727945356288.
Copy the number which comes after /0/ and the next slash. This is the project id. Click Save and the integration’s complete.
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Sending Browser Screenshots to Asana
Now it’s time to send some annotations to Asana. As a simple example, I’m using a few images from my local filesystem and adding some simple annotations to them. Below, you can see the second image which I’ve annotated in Usersnap.
It’s a simple book cover, with a pen tool annotation. Nothing too advanced, but enough for our purposes. Changing back to my Asana project, you can see that for each annotation I added in Usersnap, that they’ve been added as project tasks in Asana. And that, really, is all there is to it.
We’re Done!
Now you can use the power of Asana to give you, even more, control and vision on your projects when using Usersnap as part of your development efforts. Through professional, intuitive, and feature-rich dashboards, which allow you to seamlessly integrate Usersnap browser screenshots and annotations.
You can know at a glance where your web project’s at, ensure that bugs aren’t overlooked, and feedback isn’t forgotten about. That’s how you can make development easier, simpler, quicker, and more transparent? If you’ve not set up an Asana/Usersnap integration, definitely check it out — I’m sure you’ll be impressed.
This article was brought to you by Usersnap – a visual bug tracking solution for every web project.
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