Austin Community College District saves 355 workdays and improves student outcomes with Asana

Highlights

Challenges

• Disconnected systems and inconsistent processes across 11 campuses and 100+ programs created inefficiencies, making it harder to effectively support students and employees.

• Manual work and reliance on emails and spreadsheets led to lost information, delays, and a lack of clear documentation.

• Limited transparency into workflows and time-consuming data analysis slowed progress and made it tough to see how the College was tracking toward its strategic goals to improve student outcomes.

Solution

• Within the Office of the Provost, ACC uses Asana to centralize goal tracking and work management, boost transparency, streamline workflows, and improve collaboration.

• To eliminate manual steps and help teams prioritize work to hit the ground running, teams in the office use Asana forms and automations.

• Real-time updates speed up decision-making and keep the teams aligned, ensuring members can proactively identify risks and pivot accordingly to stay on track.

Outcome

• ACC saves an estimated 355 workdays annually with Asana, freeing up 71 weeks of valuable time to focus on improving student outcomes and making sure every student has equal access to a great education.

• By integrating systems, the College has boosted efficiency and substantially cut down on manual data tasks. Instant insights into work data have eliminated the two-week wait for many reports, providing faster insights and expediting decision-making.

• Enhanced transparency and communication have helped reduce frustration and increased visibility into each department’s impact.

Asana helps us improve alignment, transparency, and communication across the college. By tracking OKRs and key metrics, I can maintain a clear, high-level view of all programs, which helps us address issues proactively and make timely, informed decisions to support our institutional goals.”

Aligning goals and real-time insights to drive student success

The Office of the Provost manages a broad range of responsibilities, from overseeing academics and student affairs to driving key metrics like enrollment and graduation rates. With so many moving parts, including accreditation and technology integration, staying coordinated can be challenging.

By using Asana and Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), the team can now track progress in real time toward their goal of a 70% completion rate by 2030, focusing on initiatives that not only help students succeed but feel a sense of belonging.

Organizing projects and outcomes in Asana to increase student impact

• ACC captures its OKRs and associated tactics in Asana, enabling clear tracking of key metrics like student enrollment, retention, graduation rates, and compliance.

• Every student outcome and strategic pillar is set as a goal, with projects aligned to each one to ensure prioritization, transparency, and alignment across departments.

• Asana automatically calculates goal progress based on project updates or key milestones accomplished, saving time on reporting and ensuring resources are directed toward impactful initiatives.

Tracking progress and enabling proactive interventions through goal reporting

• The team generates bi-weekly status updates for the Provost in Asana, tracking project progress, key outcomes, and areas that need attention. It also provides up-to-date insights into initiatives impacting institutional metrics like student outcomes.

• Dashboards and status indicators in Asana (red, green, yellow) help highlight areas that need intervention, with red prompting immediate action from the Provost.

• This proactive reporting system allows the team to identify trends and address issues in real time, rather than waiting until mid-semester to react.

Asana helps us operationalize and visualize ACC’s goals, connecting department-level projects to our high-level objectives and allowing us to track progress in real time. This clarity enables us to see how everyone is contributing to the innovation at the college and driving student outcomes.”

Providing a clear path to continued education

ACC’s Teaching and Learning Excellence Division (TLED) supports faculty and learning departments, including the Articulation & University Relations Team, which plays a key role in helping students navigate the transition from ACC to four-year universities. By creating articulation agreements and transfer pathways, the division ensures course credits map smoothly to partner institutions. 

Previously, this complex process was done manually, with no centralized digital records—making it clear the team needed a more efficient approach. Enter Asana.

Streamlining agreement management and student transfer pathways

• New articulation agreement requests are submitted via an Asana form that captures key information upfront, automatically creating tasks to allow for seamless tracking.

• The task progresses through various stages, with clear visual tracking and communication captured in subtasks, including correspondence and document approvals with Vice Chancellors and faculty via the Gmail and Google Drive integrations.

• Once finalized, automated notifications and workflows alert stakeholders and initiate the agreement’s implementation through coordinated marketing communications.

• For student transfer pathways, Asana automatically converts finalized agreements into new projects, capturing each pathway development step as a subtask to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

We’ve streamlined our process, communication, and approvals in Asana. This has given our Provost and stakeholders the transparency they need into agreement progress and timelines, and ensures we have a record of all articulation agreements and transfer pathways for students.”

Using Asana to support faculty and enhance student learning

Also in ACC’s TLED is the Office of Faculty Communications which connects faculty with the resources and information they need to support student success. From weekly newsletters to LinkedIn posts and event calendars, the team manages a variety of initiatives. 

Finally, the Academic Technology Team supports faculty and students by implementing and managing instructional technologies like learning systems and audio-visual tools. The team also produces video content and manages tech support for internal events, from live streaming to large conferences. 

Before centralizing the team’s workflows, these employees struggled with disconnected processes, inefficient coordination, and limited transparency across their many complex projects.

Transforming project intake and execution to improve faculty communications

• The Office of Faculty Communications now manages all communications requests through Asana, from newsletters and social media posts to event planning and content requests, streamlining incoming requests.

• Departments submit a form for their communication needs, which are assigned and tracked based on support requirements, while templates and automation ensure cyclical tasks run smoothly.

• Larger projects like workshops and events are tracked in dedicated Asana projects. Regular status updates keep stakeholders aligned and encourage them to be proactive in addressing risks.

Centralizing event planning and budget tracking to deliver support faster

• To enhance platform adoption and proficiency, the Academic Technology team holds Asana training for ACC faculty and staff, including beginner and advanced courses.

• Technology service requests are routed via Asana forms to the appropriate teams, improving coordination between departments — like instructional design, video production, and use of computer centers and software — which previously happened in silos.

• Major events, such as off-campus conferences, are managed in Asana using templates that streamline planning and ensure all logistics are covered, from venue selection to day-of details.

• Purchase tracking and budget management are streamlined through Asana forms, eliminating confusing email chains. They also track all software purchases and automatically re-add them for the next fiscal year, improving budget visibility.

Our work is usually behind the scenes, but by managing everything in Asana, we can deliver support faster and ensure faculty have what they need to deliver successful learning experiences to students.”

Replacing fragmented communication with ownership and collaboration

The Student Affairs Communications team has their hands full supporting engagement, success, and awareness programs for roughly 70,000 students across ACC. They manage communication across multiple channels, including social media, digital signage, email, and traditional print newsletters. But, without a centralized system, an overreliance on email led to inefficiencies, impacting the team’s ability to deliver consistent and timely communications.

With Asana, the team has transformed how they manage creative production, improving efficiency, organization, and visibility while freeing up time for impactful work.

Effortless workflows keep everyone organized and in the loop

• To ensure work is reviewed and assigned efficiently, new creative requests are submitted through a form that captures all necessary details upfront.

• Subtasks and due dates are automatically generated and assigned based on request-type data captured in custom fields, keeping workflows organized and on track.

• A dedicated coordinator is assigned to each request, ensuring clients have a single point of contact for seamless communication (meanwhile, all behind-the-scenes work is efficiently managed and tracked in Asana).

• Asana’s Google Workspace integration centralizes files within tasks, while automated notifications keep stakeholders updated as projects progress.

• A reporting dashboard provides real-time visibility into project status, team bandwidth, and risks, enabling proactive planning.

Asana makes us more efficient. Everyone knows what part of the creative work they own. Whereas with email there is no way to know that.”

Looking ahead: Driving efficiency and student success with Asana

Focused on operational efficiencies that fuel innovation and improve student outcomes, ACC is tracking toward its goal to reach a 70% completion rate by 2030. By continuing to leverage Asana, the College ensures resources are aligned with its strategic goals, enabling the institution to stay on track. Looking forward, ACC will tap into Asana’s AI capabilities to further streamline processes and save valuable time that it can put toward students’ success.