Asana vs Microsoft Project

2019. Microsoft Project becomes user-friendly


Microsoft Project is, of course, the most famous and legendary project management software, but it can be hardly called simple and user-friendly, especially in comparison with a most of new cloud services such as Asana, Basecamp, Trello or Wrike. Microsoft finally understood this, and made a massive redesign of the system. As you can see, the presentation video is focused on simplicity (like even a child can use it). Nevertheless, the developers also managed to implement several new features: kanban board, resource management, budget analysis, and time and expense tracking. In addition from now use Microsoft Project as a subscription service for $10 per month per user.


2018. Work management software provider Asana gets $50M



Asana, a service that teams and individuals use to plan and track the progress of work projects, has raised another $50 million in funding with a $1.5 billion valuation — to invest in international and product expansion. Asana has lately been focused on international growth — half of its new sales are already coming from outside the US — and expanding its product as it inches toward profitability. Specifically, it plans to open an AWS-based data center in Frankfurt in the first half of next year, and it will set down more roots in Asia-Pacific, with offices in Sydney and Tokyo. It is also hiring in both markets. Asana has customers in 195 countries and six languages, and it looks like it’s homing in on these two regions because it’s seeing the most traction there.


2018. Asana launched $19.99 Business tier to help managers handle multiple projects



Project management service Asana is adding another tier for enterprises that are using Asana for multiple projects: Asana Business, priced at $19.95 per user, per month. Aimed primarily at teams that have managers or executives overseeing multiple projects simultaneously — sometimes in the thousands for a single organization — the idea is that Business will have extra features to help designated people handle and triage that workload more effectively. That focus on executives and managers is one part of the company’s bigger vision of where it sees its own place in the range of productivity tools that a business might use, alongside other areas like efficient storage (a la Dropbox, Box or another cloud-based service) or communication (eg, Slack, Workplace, Teams, etc.).


2018. Asana adds AI-powered interactive project maps



Workflow management platform Asana announced a new feature - Timeline - composite, visual, and interactive maps of the various projects assigned to different people within a team, giving the group a wider view of all the work that needs to be completed, and how the projects fit together, mapped out in a timeline format. Timeline can be used in scenarios like product launches, marketing campaigns and event planning, and it’s not a matter of a new piece of software where you have to duplicate work, but each project automatically becomes a new segment on a team’s Timeline. Timeline is only for paying users. Those who are among Asana’s millions of free users will have to upgrade to the premium tier to access it.


2018. Asana raised another $75M



Asana, the productivity and collaboration service, is getting $75 million Series D investment. Asana said in a blog post that 45 percent of its 30,000 paying customer base is located outside of the U.S.. Some of its high-profile names include Tesco, Sky, Danone, Chanel and Spotify. In that light, it is planning to introduce Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese versions of its service having recently rolled out support for French and German. This new round included, Asana has now raised $168 million from investors. Business Insider reported that the startup is now valued at $900 million.


2016. Asana added Custom fields



Task management app Asana  is introducing a new product called custom fields, that will let you tailor Asana’s information management to cover a variety of structured data points. As Asana describes it, a company that, for example, might have been conducting a recruiting drive can now use Asana to create a form to track more details about actual candidates; a marketing team can now drill down into a larger plan to track specific campaigns; engineering teams can use it to record and monitor bug tracking; and design teams can use it to provide more detailed looks and updates about larger projects. The company also will be integrating custom fields into its API.  It means that you could, theoretically, come up with new applications of it that expose Asana even as a customer-facing tool to instantly gather and start structuring information.


2016. Microsoft unveiles Project Server 2016, inpired by Cloud



Microsoft has announced general availability of Project Server 2016, which provides significant project and portfolio management (PPM) value to our on-premises customers. Microsoft says that its performance and scale are inspired by cloud - from an engineering standpoint, Project Server is built from the same code used to deliver company's cloud service. As for the functionality, Project Server 2016 release looks largely similar to the 2013 version, but it expands functions at resource management, into resource engagements with heat map displays, adds capacity to bring transparency to the interaction between project planning and line planning, removes the Resource Plan from the Project Web App interface as Microsoft Project 2016 expanded to include this function. Microsoft also released a content pack for Power BI Dashboards which integrates with its cloud-based Project Online offering.


2016. Project management app Asana raised $50M



Asana, the app that lets teams track projects at a $600M valuation led by YC’s Sam Altman. Asana today has 13,000 paying businesses as customers and over 140,000 businesses using the product overall adding some 10,000 every month. The company has both free and premium tiers, with the latter charged at $8.33 per member per month for groups above 15, and for more features. As more businesses move their work processes online, the productivity apps are having a moment right now. Just last week, BetterWorks — another platform that helps workers set and manage tasks and goals — announced a Series B of $20 million. In addition to BetterWorks and Asana itself, there are others like Basecamp, Wrike and Trello all offering ways to boost productivity and help organize so-called knowledge workers.


2015. Task management startup Asana launched major revamp



Collaboration service Asana announced redesign, and several new features that, presumably, it expects to bolster its current in-market performance. The new version includes new features designed to bring communication inside of its own platform (hello, Slack), and a tool built to assist users in keeping tabs on information inside of their current work environments. There’s a new Asana Conversations feature to keep in touch with employees, too. You can create tasks inside of the new Conversations section. Another new feature will provide spreadsheet-like functionality, with easy filtering and dashboards. And from there Asana can notify those who are involved with a task. Currently in beta, this feature, called Track Anything, will ship in early 2016.


2014. Asana finally launches iOS app



Popular collaboration service to corporations and groups Asana released a unified iOS application for iPhone and iPad. It provides normal Asana features like task management, search, and calendar capabilities. It also includes a green-colored button that allows quick task making, or taking a note. The app itself sports what the firm called a new “design language” that is more vibrant than what preceded it. That language will, over time, leak into Asana’s web product. In its current form it contains small effects like a heart-based animation and colorful tags. The similar Android app is under construction now.