5 Ways Tech Teams Save Time with MeisterTask and Zapier - Focus

5 Ways Tech Teams Save Time with MeisterTask and Zapier - Focus When you’re managing a team across different projects, departments and maybe even locations, there’s a lot of room to miss out on something important. Whether it’s a looming deadline or a forgotten email, things can slip through the cracks. Tools like  Zapier  help teams to get everything they need in one place. By connecting over 750 apps via their so-called Zaps, teams can set up all sorts of automatic workflows. Want to Slack someone whenever you complete a task? No problem. Want to automatically order a pizza every time youre assigned a new task? The pizzas could get expensive, but its possible! We spoke with five tech teams about how they’re using Zapier alongside task management tool MeisterTask to ensure all team tasks get seen through efficiently. Here are their top tips: 1. Build a Visual Roadmap Using Kanban boards like the kind MeisterTask provides, your team can build a visual roadmap for each project or workflow youre working on. With  each Project Board, team members and leaders can have a quick overview of everything that’s in the pipeline, in progress and already completed. At MeisterLabs, this is how the growth team manage experiments via their MeisterTask Growth Experiments Project Board. To come up with new experiments, the team use a Google Sheet to evaluate current product issues or user hold-ups, as well as new solutions to try.  The team then use the  Google Sheets Zap to automatically create a MeisterTask task for each new Google Sheet row added. As a result, all new ideas are added as tasks in the ‘Upcoming’ section of the Growth Experiments Project Board. If your team uses Google Sheets to collate ideas, make sure nothing is missed with the Google Sheets to MeisterTask Zap: 2. Automate Your Product  Updates The real estate technology company, LiveBy,  use MeisterTask and Zapier for a similar effect: monitoring the development of their product as new features and bug fixes move across the different stages of their development process. “Once we’ve decided on an improvement in a brainwriting session, using MindMeister, we take the idea through our design to implementation process. MeisterTask is the cornerstone of this process for our products. Our backlog of tasks goes through the many stages of our Project Boards, until the changes are successfully implemented,” CEO, Cory Scott, shares. Discover a more productive workflow Sign up for MeisterTask Its free! Sign up for MeisterTask All involved team members will remain as ‘Watchers’ on the task, meaning everyone is kept in the loop as the task progresses. The team then uses the Slack integration via Zapier to update those who aren’t yet ‘watching’ the task. “Whenever a task is moved from one phase to the next, the Slack Zap informs our team members. This means that once a  task is moved to the quality assurance stage, for example, a meeting will be organized. This allows the relevant stakeholders to then judge whether the change should be implemented. Once the change has been made live, the whole team is notified. We can then double-check that it looks as expected on the live site.” Keep your team updated, automatically, using the MeisterTask to Slack Zap: 3. Save Time  Switching Between Apps By collating all communication in one place, MeisterTask and Zapier can prevent teams from needing to swap between different platforms. Jeff Wilensky, the President of Salesforce implementation company, RelationEdge, shares that he uses MeisterTask to stay out of his emails and remain focused. When wanting to check in on a task, Jeff simply communicates with team members via the relevant tasks comment section: Not only does Zapiers integration with MeisterTask help save time, it keeps our team organized and makes collaboration a breeze. Im able to easily check in on the status of tasks without having to create an entirely new email thread. When working outside of MeisterTask, Jeff uses Zapier’s Chrome extension to create new MeisterTask tasks straight from his browser. In one click, Jeff can enter his to-do and Zapier will automatically add it to his designated Project Board. Both workflows enable Jeff and his team to remain focused, without needing to swap between platforms. Try the Zapier Chrome extension to do the same: 4. Work Towards Inbox Zero Apple education trainer James Hannam  also uses MeisterTask with Zapier to cut down on time spent in emails. To remain focused and edge towards inbox zero, James uses the Gmail to task Zap: “When receiving school requests, its annoying to have to switch between apps to manually input emails into MeisterTask. Using the Gmail to MeisterTask Zap, I can simply forward an email to a specified address and Zapier will create the task in MeisterTask for me with the email contents as the description and the email subject as the task title. This process saves a lot of copying and pasting when tasks roll in thick and fast.”   By turning all actionable emails into tasks, teams can ensure that important to-dos dont get lost in a packed-out inbox.  The tasks act as a handy reminder to respond  while enabling you to cut down on that unread email figure. Turn your emails into actionable to-dos and step towards inbox zero with Zapier’s Gmail to MeisterTask Zap: 5. Create a Clear Team Schedule Having deadlines strewn across emails, chat channels, calendars, and post-it notes can get a little confusing. Fortunately, all of these deadlines and dates can be collated in one place using MeisterTask and Zapier. If you use Google Calendar, your team can ensure that all dates are added to MeisterTask as tasks via Zapier. The Zap provides an overview of your upcoming deadlines and appointments within MeisterTask, without having to switch between platforms. Suzanne Musin, director of customer success at ScheduleOnce, uses the Zap between MeisterTask and scheduling platform, ScheduleOnce, to manage her team’s schedule. Using the Zap, all of Suzannes ScheduleOnce bookings are added as tasks to their Bookings Project Board. The customer success team can then review and process all bookings simply and efficiently.   “It can take a long time to individually review all booking notifications for a whole team.  But when I read through the bookings all together in MeisterTask, they’re all organized together in one section, with all the information required to make key decisions. This way, I’m able to quickly review every booking our department receives. It’s easier to keep my finger on the pulse of our customer base and on my team’s activities. As a result, I can ensure that both have what they need before and during the meeting,”  Suzanne shares. Set up your own Zap between ScheduleOnce and MeisterTask, using Zapier: So, that’s how five tech teams use MeisterTask and Zapier together to manage their projects and teamwork. How do you manage teamwork in your company? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below! Discover a more productive workflow Sign up for MeisterTask Its free! Sign up for MeisterTask 5 Ways Tech Teams Save Time with MeisterTask and Zapier - Focus When you’re managing a team across different projects, departments and maybe even locations, there’s a lot of room to miss out on something important. Whether it’s a looming deadline or a forgotten email, things can slip through the cracks. Tools like  Zapier  help teams to get everything they need in one place. By connecting over 750 apps via their so-called Zaps, teams can set up all sorts of automatic workflows. Want to Slack someone whenever you complete a task? No problem. Want to automatically order a pizza every time youre assigned a new task? The pizzas could get expensive, but its possible! We spoke with five tech teams about how they’re using Zapier alongside task management tool MeisterTask to ensure all team tasks get seen through efficiently. Here are their top tips: 1. Build a Visual Roadmap Using Kanban boards like the kind MeisterTask provides, your team can build a visual roadmap for each project or workflow youre working on. With  each Project Board, team members and leaders can have a quick overview of everything that’s in the pipeline, in progress and already completed. At MeisterLabs, this is how the growth team manage experiments via their MeisterTask Growth Experiments Project Board. To come up with new experiments, the team use a Google Sheet to evaluate current product issues or user hold-ups, as well as new solutions to try.  The team then use the  Google Sheets Zap to automatically create a MeisterTask task for each new Google Sheet row added. As a result, all new ideas are added as tasks in the ‘Upcoming’ section of the Growth Experiments Project Board. If your team uses Google Sheets to collate ideas, make sure nothing is missed with the Google Sheets to MeisterTask Zap: 2. Automate Your Product  Updates The real estate technology company, LiveBy,  use MeisterTask and Zapier for a similar effect: monitoring the development of their product as new features and bug fixes move across the different stages of their development process. “Once we’ve decided on an improvement in a brainwriting session, using MindMeister, we take the idea through our design to implementation process. MeisterTask is the cornerstone of this process for our products. Our backlog of tasks goes through the many stages of our Project Boards, until the changes are successfully implemented,” CEO, Cory Scott, shares. Discover a more productive workflow Sign up for MeisterTask Its free! Sign up for MeisterTask All involved team members will remain as ‘Watchers’ on the task, meaning everyone is kept in the loop as the task progresses. The team then uses the Slack integration via Zapier to update those who aren’t yet ‘watching’ the task. “Whenever a task is moved from one phase to the next, the Slack Zap informs our team members. This means that once a  task is moved to the quality assurance stage, for example, a meeting will be organized. This allows the relevant stakeholders to then judge whether the change should be implemented. Once the change has been made live, the whole team is notified. We can then double-check that it looks as expected on the live site.” Keep your team updated, automatically, using the MeisterTask to Slack Zap: 3. Save Time  Switching Between Apps By collating all communication in one place, MeisterTask and Zapier can prevent teams from needing to swap between different platforms. Jeff Wilensky, the President of Salesforce implementation company, RelationEdge, shares that he uses MeisterTask to stay out of his emails and remain focused. When wanting to check in on a task, Jeff simply communicates with team members via the relevant tasks comment section: Not only does Zapiers integration with MeisterTask help save time, it keeps our team organized and makes collaboration a breeze. Im able to easily check in on the status of tasks without having to create an entirely new email thread. When working outside of MeisterTask, Jeff uses Zapier’s Chrome extension to create new MeisterTask tasks straight from his browser. In one click, Jeff can enter his to-do and Zapier will automatically add it to his designated Project Board. Both workflows enable Jeff and his team to remain focused, without needing to swap between platforms. Try the Zapier Chrome extension to do the same: 4. Work Towards Inbox Zero Apple education trainer James Hannam  also uses MeisterTask with Zapier to cut down on time spent in emails. To remain focused and edge towards inbox zero, James uses the Gmail to task Zap: “When receiving school requests, its annoying to have to switch between apps to manually input emails into MeisterTask. Using the Gmail to MeisterTask Zap, I can simply forward an email to a specified address and Zapier will create the task in MeisterTask for me with the email contents as the description and the email subject as the task title. This process saves a lot of copying and pasting when tasks roll in thick and fast.”   By turning all actionable emails into tasks, teams can ensure that important to-dos dont get lost in a packed-out inbox.  The tasks act as a handy reminder to respond  while enabling you to cut down on that unread email figure. Turn your emails into actionable to-dos and step towards inbox zero with Zapier’s Gmail to MeisterTask Zap: 5. Create a Clear Team Schedule Having deadlines strewn across emails, chat channels, calendars, and post-it notes can get a little confusing. Fortunately, all of these deadlines and dates can be collated in one place using MeisterTask and Zapier. If you use Google Calendar, your team can ensure that all dates are added to MeisterTask as tasks via Zapier. The Zap provides an overview of your upcoming deadlines and appointments within MeisterTask, without having to switch between platforms. Suzanne Musin, director of customer success at ScheduleOnce, uses the Zap between MeisterTask and scheduling platform, ScheduleOnce, to manage her team’s schedule. Using the Zap, all of Suzannes ScheduleOnce bookings are added as tasks to their Bookings Project Board. The customer success team can then review and process all bookings simply and efficiently.   “It can take a long time to individually review all booking notifications for a whole team.  But when I read through the bookings all together in MeisterTask, they’re all organized together in one section, with all the information required to make key decisions. This way, I’m able to quickly review every booking our department receives. It’s easier to keep my finger on the pulse of our customer base and on my team’s activities. As a result, I can ensure that both have what they need before and during the meeting,”  Suzanne shares. Set up your own Zap between ScheduleOnce and MeisterTask, using Zapier: So, that’s how five tech teams use MeisterTask and Zapier together to manage their projects and teamwork. How do you manage teamwork in your company? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below! Discover a more productive workflow Sign up for MeisterTask Its free! Sign up for MeisterTask