Running a successful agency demands smart organization and workflow management apart from delivering exceptional results to your clients. To accomplish every campaign on the desired time while maintaining all the check boxes for the client, require a centralized solution. This is when an operating system agency comes into the picture which is capable of converting the backend chaos into clarity and provides crystal-clear results.
This comprehensive guide will provide all the important step- by- step instructions necessary to build your custom Asana agency template from scratch. This will be helpful for every organization for scaling up their operations to improve profitability by ensuring no project slips through the cracks.
Why Asana for Your Operating System Agency?
Asana is a cloud- based project management platform that allows to manage strategic flow of work, co-ordination with clients & ensure better team management to enhance productivity and thereby delivering quality results to the clients on a given time.
Apart from various project management tools, Asana is well known for its flexibility and customization facilities that assure smooth performance within an operating system agency. The key features of Asana are-
- Client Onboarding & Management
- Project Management
- Standard Operations & Procedures
- Team Collaborations
- Automation Tools
Build your own agency operating system with asana
STEP 1- Structure your asana organization
Create Your Organization
- Sign up at asana.com using your agency domain email.
- Navigate to Admin Console → Settings.
- Set default permissions: Team members can create projects & Guests will have access to assign projects only.
- Enable two- factor authentication to strengthen security.
Build Teams
Organize your teams logically to manage permissions and reporting. Create these teams with specific project templates:
- Client Services Team: Create Projects for- Active Clients, Onboarding Pipeline, Offboarding Archive etc.
- Creative Team: Design Requests, Brand Assets Library, WIP Reviews.
- Operations Team: Agency SOPs, HR & Admin, Internal Tools.
Define Naming Convention:
Always make sure to properly document and allot names for every task, campaign & projects for easy tracking and accessibility to every team member.
For e.g.- Client Name (Y Group)- Service Provided ( LinkedIn Marketing).
Customize Fields: Try to use consistent labels like Active, On Hold, Completed.
Step 2: Managing Workflow – Client Onboarding & Templates
Use Templates- Create customized templates for your services like client onboarding, SEO campaign, blog post creation etc. to save sufficient time while ensuring consistency in work.
Sections- Use sections to understand the stages of work and to prioritize tasks accordingly. (e.g. To do, completed, under review and set status like high priority, low priority).
Tasks & Subtasks- Properly assign every task to the team members after breaking down all the complex work into small segments of tasks and subtasks.
Task Dependency- Carefully ensure what project needs to be completed first before assigning a new task.
Below is the format to give you a brief idea to create templates and to effectively use them.
| Section | Task | Assignment & Due Date | Custom Field |
| Discovery (Week 1) | Schedule kickoff call | Assigned to: Account Manager Due: 1 day left | |
| Send intake questionnaire | Subtasks: “Draft questions,” “Get client responses,” “Document in project brief” | ||
| Collect brand assets | Asset Status: Pending/Received/Approved | ||
| Project Setup (Week 1-2) | Create client project workspace | Dependency: Blocks all delivery tasks | |
| Assign core team | Subtasks: Assign account manager, Assign lead strategist, Assign lead designer | ||
| Set up recurring status meetings | Use an Asana Rule to create weekly check-in tasks | ||
| Strategy & Planning (Week 2-3) | Develop strategy document | Review Stage: Draft/Client Review/Approved | |
| Build 90- day roadmap | Dependency: Requires strategy approval |
Step 3: Execution & Accountability
- Set up Recurring tasks- Use automated features within Asana of your operating system agency so as to schedule regular & repetitive works without manual intervention. You just need to-
Navigate to Project → Customize → Rules → Create Custom Rule.
This includes weekly & monthly team status reports, performance dashboards and client billing etc.
For e.g. Auto- assigning Client Reviews-
- Trigger: Task moved to Client Review section
- Action 1: Add comment- @[ClientName] & review by (Due Date- e.g. 3 days left)
- Action 2: Change custom field Review Stage to Awaiting Client
- Standardize Communication- Utilize the task comment section properly inside the operating software by discussing topics, clarifications & feedbacks about a specific task within it. Use @mentions to have a word with a specific person to gather his instant attention.
For e.g.- Set Overdue Task Alerts
- Trigger: Task overdue by 2 days
- Action 1: Post comment with- @mentions to assignee and project manager
- Action 2: Add tag- #Urgent
- Use Reusable Templates- These templates become saviour for common deliverables like website launches, content campaigns, or social media management. These templates should include all necessary tasks, dependencies and approval workflows.
Step 4: Monitoring & Tracking
- Review Workflow- Monitoring and evaluation of tasks becomes easier in Asana’s Work Workload feature. Follow the below given steps to configure the workload view-
- Go to team project → Portfolio tab → Add Workload.
- Set team capacity: 40 hours/ person/ week.
- Add an ‘Estimated Hours’ custom field to all task templates.
- Review weekly: Redistribute tasks if anyone exceeds it by 45 hours.
This ensures tasks are evenly distributed to all the team members so that no employee should feel overburdened.
- Dashboards & Portfolios- Creating custom made dashboards gives all the information in the real time. Therefore, analysing all the metrics like task completion, its progress has now become manageable.
- Automate Notifications- Enabling the automation feature for achieving a milestone or completion of a task will automatically send an alert to the clients or people you want to get notified. For e.g. when a team member changes the status of a blog to review, asana will automatically send an alert to the editor.
- Workload Balancing Process Checklist
| Timing | Action | Goal |
| Monday morning | Review team Workload for the week. | Ensure no one is overallocated (45+ hours). |
| Flagging | Flag overallocated team members (45+ hours assigned). | Target team capacity utilization of 70-80%. |
| Mitigation | Adjust deadlines. | Prevent delays and ensure timely completion of the tasks. |
| Documentation | Record changes of workloads or agency operations in written format. | Create an audit for changes for accessing them later. |
This creates seamless workflow management that keeps projects moving forward efficiently.
Step 5: Create Standard Operating Procedures
Maintain a new project SOPs separately for a specific context like process library which should be easily accessible to gain information & documentation at a single place so as to help the team while completing a task.
Create ‘Agency Handbook Project’ with Sections:
- Client Management SOPs:
- How to onboard new clients (link to your template)
- Monthly client reporting process (with sample report)
- Offboarding checklist
- Delivery SOPs:
- Content creation workflow(research → outline → draft → review → publish)
- Design request process(brief → concepts → revisions → finals)
- Quality assurance checklist before client delivery”
Make each SOP a task with:
- Description: Step- by- step instructions.
- Attachments: Templates, examples, checklists.
- Subtasks: Checklist format people can duplicate when starting a new project.
Some Advanced Features
- Manage Portfolio – To deliver outstanding results, it is important to examine and track multiple projects simultaneously.
- Custom Reporting- This feature helps to filter out high priority projects and provides complete reports on clients services insights and overlook revenue potential.
- Communication Tools- Connecting Asana with Slack or Microsoft Teams can be beneficial to centralise smooth conversations & relevancy without the need of switching applications to create new tasks.
By adhering to the above steps, you can create a robust and well- designed mechanism for an agency operating system with Asana to implement clarity of vision and scalability to your operations.
Maintaining Your System for Long- Term Success
Developing a structured operating system agency is not a one time setup, rather it requires continuous effort to stay one step ahead of your competitors. As soon as the agency flourishes, the process of managing and streamlining work operations becomes hectic.
Incorporating Asana into your operating system, results in better functioning & improved team collaboration which can eventually lead to achieve sustainable growth for businesses.
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