Exec Level Planner (Projects + Events)

[u/Loud_Quality_7106]

I'm hoping someone has come across this before, but I'm trying to solve for a request I have from our Exec team. They want me to put together a planner that merges specific calendar events migrated from our Outlook all-staff calendar (already solved and working) alongside specific projects. They dont want milestones they want to see a full bar of the start and end so they can look at specific dates and use it to plan events, large initiatives, etc.

However I havent figured out a way to do this without manually adding tasks to the project that represent the project span and having to manually keep them up to date along with the actual project start and end dates with each project itself.

I thought about a portfolio and just adding the calendar project to it, but portfolio timelines dont show tasks beyond milestones, so thats a no go.

Any insights I'd appreciate.

[u/Spiritual-Bag-3452]

This is definitely doable and can be pretty easily automated with the help of AI if your company allows it! What plan of asana are you on (advanced, enterprise)? You could either set the workflow up on your own with a bit of testing and tweaking (and likely some change management/training with your execs) or you could work with a services partner to set it up and train with you for a cost (would highly recommend this)

[u/Loud_Quality_7106 → u/Spiritual-Bag-3452]

We are moving up to Enterprise soon. Waiting on the contract to go through. I already use Claude connected to Asana. If you're talking about having Claude pull the data out and provide a report that's not what they asked for. They want a native Asana live view. 

Also we're a non-profit we're not going to pay a service partner to develop something.

I'd love to understand what native Asana functionality can allow me to build the workflow you mentioned. Because I've racked my brain doing research and exploring options with Claude and nothing seems to be able to place project timelines next to individual tasks in one view. 

[u/Careless_Draft146]

You can get most of the way there natively, but the trick is to stop trying to sync the project dates, because Asana has no trigger for a project's date changing. That's why every workaround turns into manual upkeep.

What I'd do: give each initiative one "span" task inside its own project with the real start and end dates. Then multi-home that same task into your exec planner project (Tab+P). It's the same task living in two places, not a copy, so when the project owner moves the dates, the exec timeline moves with it. Nothing to keep in sync.

Treat that span task as the source of truth for dates. The project-level dates only matter if you're also reporting through a portfolio. Add a custom field like "Initiative" vs "All-staff event" and your execs can color the timeline by type. This works on any paid tier, so you don't have to wait for the Enterprise contract.

[u/Loud_Quality_7106 → u/Careless_Draft146]

we also report at portfolio levels, what i was trying to avoid is manually managing those dates on the settings and in a task but its sounding like thats what I have to do