Plenty of Australian practices start their task management in a general work tool. Someone sets up Asana for the tax team, a few projects appear for onboarding and BAS, and a year later the practice has thousands of tasks, comments and attachments sitting in a tool that does not know what a client, an entity or a lodgement deadline is.
If that sounds familiar, this guide shows how to bring that history into Portal 360 with the free Asana importer. It covers what comes across, what to decide before you start, the steps from connecting to confirming, and how to check the result. You do not need a developer.
What the Asana importer does
The Asana importer is a free app in the Portal 360 Marketplace. It reads your data from Asana and creates it in Portal 360. It works one way and it is read only: Portal 360 never changes, writes to or deletes anything in Asana. Your Asana account stays exactly as it is, so your team can keep using it while you check the result.
It can bring across:
- Workspaces
- Projects
- Sections
- Tasks and subtasks
- Comments
- Attachments
- Assignees
- Due dates
- Tags
- Custom fields
You choose what to import. Many firms bring across only their active projects and leave finished ones behind.
What it does not do
Being clear about the limits saves surprises later.
- It is not a two-way sync. Changes you make in Portal 360 do not appear in Asana, and changes in Asana do not appear in Portal 360 after the import.
- It does not write back to Asana. It only reads.
- It never sees your password. You sign in on Asana's own page and approve read-only access.
- It is not an official Asana app. It is a Portal 360 app that reads from Asana using the access you approve.
Five decisions before you start
A little planning makes the import cleaner.
1. Who will run it. Only owners and admins can import, and every import is logged. Pick one person to run it so there is a single point of contact.
2. What a client looks like. In Asana, a project might be a client, a service line or an internal team. In Portal 360 you map each project you bring across to a client, an entity or a task group. Work through your project list and decide the destination for each one.
3. Which projects to bring. Archive-worthy projects can stay in Asana. Importing less makes the preview easier to read.
4. How people match. People are matched by email address. For each person you can match them to an existing Portal 360 user, invite them, or skip them. Contractors and former staff are usually a skip.
5. Which fields matter. Where your projects use them, you can map statuses, priorities, tags and custom fields. Decide which ones you want to keep as fields in Portal 360 and which you can drop.
Step by step
- Connect Asana. Open Marketplace > Apps, choose the Asana importer and click Connect. A secure pop-up opens on Asana's own sign-in page. Log in and approve read-only access.
- Choose workspaces and projects. Tick the ones to bring across.
- Map each project. Choose a Portal 360 client, entity or task group for each.
- Match people. Match, invite or skip each person, based on email.
- Map fields. Map statuses, priorities, tags and custom fields where you use them.
- Run the dry-run preview. Review it carefully before moving on.
- Confirm. Portal 360 writes nothing until you confirm.
What the dry-run preview shows
The preview is the most useful step, so give it a few minutes. It shows counts, conflicts, possible duplicates and skipped items. Typical things to look for:
- A count that is far higher or lower than you expected, which usually means a project was selected or missed by mistake.
- Possible duplicates, for example two Asana projects mapped to the same Portal 360 client.
- Skipped items, so you know what will not come across.
- People who did not match by email.
If something looks wrong, go back and change the mapping. Nothing has been written yet.
Re-running and rolling back
Imports can be re-run without creating duplicates, which is handy if more work lands in Asana between your first import and the day you switch over. Each import can also be rolled back, so you can undo it if the result is not what you wanted and try again with a better mapping.
Security and control
- Only owners and admins can import.
- Every import is logged.
- You can disconnect the importer in Portal 360 and revoke its access from Asana at any time.
- Access tokens are stored encrypted.
Your first week after the import
- Check two or three projects against Asana: task counts, a few comments, a handful of attachments.
- Invite the people who were marked for invitation.
- Tell the team where work now lives. Keep Asana open for a short overlap, since the import did not change it.
- Move new client work into Portal 360 first, then retire the old projects as they finish.
If you would rather not do it yourself
The importer is free and designed for you to run yourself. If you would like help, the migration program is a fixed A$2,999 per practice (ex GST) where our team completes your data transfer and sets up the whole of Portal 360 for you.
In short
The Asana importer reads your projects, sections, tasks, comments and attachments from Asana, lets you map them to Portal 360 clients, entities and task groups, and shows you a preview before anything is written. It is free, one way and read only. You need a Portal 360 account to use it.
Asana is a trademark of its owner. Portal 360 is not affiliated with or endorsed by Asana.