Task Management

Kelly Hook

Hi everyone!
I'm curious what you're using for onboarding task management with your teams? I'm managing a few onboarding architects who have a lot of tasks to do during onboarding to get a customer ready. I made a mistake trying to use Zendesk for task management and realize we need a better solution. 

I have used Trello and Teamwork in the past for tasks but they're not my preference for this. I'm considering using Salesforce since we do account management there. Any tools/processes you recommend for a scrappy startup? Would like to automatically generate tasks and have analytics capabilities. Currently, the team spends time in Salesforce, Pendo, Zendesk, Airtable, Confluence, Google drive, Jira, our UI and admin backend, and Tableau (I'm hoping to continue streamlining rather than add more things they have to go between)

Alex Turkovic

We used Zendesk for a long time and managed tasks via checklists we built out using macros. It was good - but definitely not perfect. 

We now use SmartSheets for large client engagements. It's pretty fantastic and very flexible, though you need someone who is very well versed in setting SmartSheets up to get you up and running with templates, dashboards, views, etc. Pretty heavy upfront effort but well worth it in the end.

We toyed with using several SaaS implementation tools - all of which had some good and bad qualities around it. We ended up going with SmartSheets just because it was so customize-able.

Britt Hall

We use Smartsheets as well, and I'll echo everything Alex said about getting them up and running.

I have seen TaskRay brought up in my circles lately. I'm curious about them for sure, as they sit right on top of SFDC. Might be worth a look - the price is right and the fact that they work in SFDC might make it feel more like streamlining tools than Smartsheet would, but I can't give a personal story.

Swati Jain

Kelly - based on your current eco-system of tools, another cheaper alternative might be Jira or confluence. Either of these tools can be leveraged with predefined templates of checklist that can be cloned per customer. Your templates can be customized quite easily, plus teams have option to start with a scratchpad and add/edit from there. Additionally, management can get real time visibility and metrics on progress and overall portfolio of customers. Saleforce can be integrated with Jira to streamline customer onboarding and Tableau can be integrated with Jira for Advance reporting down the road. 

Jordan Thompson

I implemented TaskRay in my previous position with a high touch onboarding process, and I highly recommend it for managing high volume complex onboarding / implementation needs. It‘s fairly easy to set up, offers templates, and is pretty affordable - my favorite thing about it was that it can adjust to the way your rep works best (Kanban /list view / etc) while providing you with easy reporting as a leader.. all within Salesforce. 

Kelly Hook

That's great advice, thank you! Makes sense to at least take a look at them if it sits on top of SF.

Kelly Hook

@Swati Jain  - thank you! We do use confluence now for checklists and task management but it just feels clunky. I'll look into how to add analytics on top of it. We haven't really tried to use Jira for our own task management - just product requests and collaboration. I'll spend more time researching how these could fit together! Sounds like there's a lot more capability heer then I realize. 

Kelly Hook

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Kelly Hook

ok, that's 3 for TaskRay! Definitely will check it out, thank you!

Swati Jain

@Kelly Hook sure thing. Jira would be a suitable option if you are looking to stay within current set of tools. Feel free to reach out if you have questions on jira. It sounds like taskray is becoming more industry standard though. All subjective on your cost constraints and decision matrix. Looking forward to hear more on where you land. Good luck. 

Dave Barber

We implemented Wrike last year after looking at Monday.com for a while - felt that it worked well for both internal and external projects with customers, and seemed more professional to external users than Monday.  You also can sign up customers as basic users so that they can update and own tasks themselves.  Only issue is slightly complex to get everything is SF but currently working on improving this.

Found it greatly useful for onboarding new team members as well, with the ability to copy and duplicate tasks to new members that are starting.

Kelly Hook

Thanks so much for the input, @Alex Turkovic ! I'm curious about your initial solution using checklists -would you have an aggregated view of tasks within Zendesk using this route? 

I've heard great things about SmartSheets but not sure we're ready to go that route just yet. I'll start looking into it more, though! 

Did you also look at CS management tools like GainSight before going with SmartSheet? 

Zohar Gillai

We just started using TaskRay as well. -Zohar 

 

 

Brian Hartley

Hey @Kelly Hook we use SFDC and created a custom object to help us track the project.  It isn't a great task management tool persay but it does help us track goals, dates, conversations, etc.

Alex Turkovic

We initially used a tool called 'Myndbend', which is a Zendesk app. It essentially allows you to nest 'child tickets' within a 'parent ticket'. Each child ticket was a separate task and once closed, would kick off the next child ticket. It was good for a while, but it became an administrative nightmare.

We ended up building checklists in macros as I mentioned, and then built out reporting around those macros in Zendesk so that we could see our entire volume of projects, their age, who owned them, what stage they were in, etc. 

We still use that reporting today, even though day-to-day tracking of tasks is now in SmartSheets.

Nathan Aycock

Hi Kelly, I've been down this road on implementing task management systems with my clients a few times. It's always difficult because every team leader has their own preference. I would say today the most important route would be to look at the ones that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Teams or Slack... 

gurd3v

Seen a few mention this already, but TaskRay is a great tool for task management if you use SFDC. 

Gretchen Hustad

I realize I'm a little late to this party, but I'll echo the vote for Smartsheet. I've led that implementation across two orgs now, and consulted on a third. It is very flexible, easy to use, and does not require a high technical proficiency to get up and running. Additionally the ability to have unlimited free collaborators is huge. We used the tool extensively at my last company, not only internally, but also with clients, vendors and partners. If anyone has specific questions about what it can/can't do I'm happy to try to help. I'm a super fan, but will also give "real talk" about where we've had troubles.

I also caution anyone who things this is "better Excel" to really think about what you're looking for. If you want data collection, task management, workflow solution, etc.; Smartsheet is great. If you want reporting and advanced formulas, you might be disappointed. While there are formulas, Smartsheet isn't trying to replace Excel or PowerBI...it is a workflow/task tool.