Asana vs. Smartsheet vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

The usability of Asana is broad since it's available in a variety of platforms that are widely used nowadays. I think that it would be great for people who are constantly on the move and switching devices, since it has allowed me to work from my phone, too. I also think that Asana has proven itself to handle a large quantity of work

Smartsheet shines for collaboration. When you have multiple people involved with planning events Smartsheet makes it easy to share and collaborate. For instance, multiple people can be in Smartsheet working at the same time. Also setting permissions for exactly those who need to know is quite easy with Smartsheet. For data analytics and general spreadsheet purposes Excel is better but for project management and event planning Smartsheet is superior

Incentivized

When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.

Incentivized

• Through it, we were able to communicate and cooperate with the rest of the team to complete the work in the required manner and at the appropriate time.
• Available for free on Android and iPhone.
• Asana has a simple and easy user interface

• Its hard to overstate the value of familiarity. Being able to use a tool that has some familiarity takes away the time needed to train and orient employees on a new tool and allows an organization to hit the ground running.
• Smartsheet covers most of the basics of a project management tool, the usual tasks, milestones and project viewing options.
• For data viewing, you get multiple data viewing options including a calendar view (good for marketing teams and those who work around scheduling), Kanban, Gaant etc

Incentivized

• I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
• If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
• The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.

• Asana is not really a project management tool, it is good for simple projects only
• UI has some glitches (doesn't save preferences, etc.)
• Integration with other tools (Office 365, MS Project)
• No reminders if the working period you entered is on holidays

Incentivized

• Smartsheet set up is similar to Excel, yet when you upload an Excel file, things like conditional formatting are lost. Smartsheet has its own conditional formatting, and you have to reinstate the rules. It would be great if those would apply automatically once a file is uploaded
• Some Smartsheet management and access rules can take some tweaking to work properly. This may be a case of offering more info to admins so they can apply these better and with more efficiency

Incentivized

• Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
• The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
• Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.

Incentivized

• Mobile + Desktop capabilities - Able to use it anywhere, anytime.
• Task management - Easy to view projects and their progress.
• Time management - Easy to see what elements require time / how they interrelate and manage the project on an overall basis.
• Company management - Be able to see from a master dashboard perspective where each project is in its stages of completion.
• Clear communication - It's visually documented who is doing what at what time so that the whole project gets done.

Incentivized

It definitely meets our needs as far as organizing and archiving our tasks and files. As we train more staff to view it, I see opportunities for more improvement, which I am sure this program can handle. I look forward to seeing continued improvement from Smartsheet on their capabilities and functionality.

Incentivized

VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.

Incentivized

It is very user-friendly. Takes a new employee an hour to start figuring out how the system works. That's an important factor. You don't want to encounter the issue where employees need a week to understand how the system works. For example, JIRA, I tried using it for a week and I still don't understand the complicated layout. Asana has a simple interface. Once you see it, you get it type of program.

Incentivized

Smartsheet is very easy to learn. However, while I have been able to pick it easily, Microsoft Excel and Project super users that I have trained on Smartsheet get bogged down in the differences and can find it frustrating. Explaining the differences ahead of time and why Smartsheet is being chosen instead of a different software seems to counteract those reactions

Incentivized

I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.

Incentivized

Working with Asana on a daily basis

I haven't had to use their support so I can't rate it. The fact that I haven't needed them reflects the ease of use of the product. I would recommend that any new users schedule a complete demo of the product to ensure that they are using it to it's fullest (there's a lot of useful features).

Incentivized

I give this rating because it fills a niche in the market. MS Project scares many away from proper task management but there are limited tools our there, especially cloud-based that are mobile-friendly. Smartsheet fills this market gap, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. IT is not fair to compare it to MS Project, but fairer to see what gaps it fills.

Incentivized

There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.

Incentivized

IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.

Incentivized

If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.

Incentivized

It's absolutely paramount to take a few minutes to actually play with the software. It's nearly impossible to do anything wrong or make a mistake which cannot be fixed easily. Under the help menu is Live Training option. After you familiarize yourself with the commands, watch the live training for some in depth understanding of how to make the software fit your needs perfectly.

Asana is a top-tier project management software that helps us organize and track projects from start to finish. It allows us to apply tasks/to-dos to multiple projects without duplication, divide complex projects into smaller tasks, and track project progress. It also helps us organize work on Kanban boards or linear lists. It stands out from the crowd in a big way compared to the competition.

Jira and Redmine are much more robust and technologically advanced project management solutions. I enjoy using either when managing a very large project. However, I prefer to use Smartsheet for my smaller to medium sized projects. As for Google Drive - I would say that Google sheets and Smartsheet are almost identical in my opinion when it comes to functionality. Personally I prefer to manage smaller projects via Google Drive, but it is a personal preference!

Incentivized

I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.

I used this tool on a daily basis at work and it runs as a solid rock

• Productivity - Most of all, it allows me to be more productive and have a good sense of where I am with projects and deadlines.
• Easy to use - I can make the most of my time to get up (and stay) up and running.
• Project coordination - Allows me to assign tasks to my interns and communicate directly within the platform to keep the work train moving.

Incentivized

• This has really opened up collaboration across teams. A lot less working in silos.
• It hasn't fully replaced any one tool so it means having to go to another place. Hopefully, we can eliminate a tool or two in the next six months.

Incentivized

• Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
• Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
• When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.

Incentivized