Can you Integrate Workfront with Asana using Workfront Fusion?

[Matt_McC]

I know it is blasphemy, but we have users in multiple tools and bringing them all together into Workfront can be challenging. I am investigating options that would allow Workfront to remain the single source of truth and intake point but allow users to use their preferred tools for day-to-day task management. To that end, does anyone know how you might integrate Asana and Workfront using Workfront Fusion? This does not need to be a complex integration.

• Good (one way / one off): Workfront object (e.g. task/issue) creates a task in Asana with selected fields.
• Better (one way / refresh): Workfront object (e.g. task/issue) creates a task in Asana  with selected fields - updates to the object updates corresponding Asana entry. 
• Best (two way): Workfront object creates a task in Asana. Task status synchs with Workfront so that tasks status in Asana updates status in Workfront

Any and all tips welcome!

[lgaertner]

Hello Matt,

Although there is no native connector to Asana in Workfront, this should not be a problem. In general Workfront can almost talk to any 3rd party tool which has an API using the HTTP modules. Asana has an API as well (https://developers.asana.com/reference/createtask).

Your Good approach should be possible without great effort. You could work with a Watch Event, e.g. if a new task is created in WF, the scenario starts and uses any fields from the WF task to create a task in Asana. Also the Better way will not be a problem, as far as you are considering when a create and when an update call should be made to the Asana API.

I do not have any experience with the Asana API, but concerning the Best way you just need to clarify what you are expecting related to the timings of the "sync". 

If you need to have an almost realtime sync, you need to find out, if the API of Asana is able to call a webhook as soon as a status change is made in Asana (possibly here). If yes, you could use the webhook module of Fusion as the starting point for your scenario.

If the trigger cannot come from asana, you could use a scheduled Fusion scenario, which calls the Asana API in regular intervals to check for changes.

You see, there are different ways to achieve your plan, just depending on different parameters on both sides.

Regards

Lars

[Matt_McC]

This is really helpful. Just knowing it can be done gives me the confidence to pursue this further - thank you!

[LeahWy]

Question to add... can this be done in reverse? Most of us use WF, but we have a handful of people in Asana who refuse to leave it. They have an intake form that captures some incoming requests that often need to go into WF for the creative team. Is there a way to export/forward an Asana task into a WF issue? To me it doesn't make sense to have specialists forced to go into Asana to grab the details & manually enter it into a WF request... is there any way to automate that?