If you’re part of a large business, managing your tasks can present some very unique opportunities and challenges. In this article, we’ll share how you can collate all team deadlines, tasks and project communications in one place, while giving sales a boost, with the help of MeisterTask Business and Zapier’s automations.
Smart Project Management with MeisterTask Business and Zapier
Keeping everyone informed of project progress, deadlines and responsibilities can be tricky, particularly when working across different teams and offices. However, via transparent project boards and a few smart task automations, juggling tasks can become far more manageable.
With MeisterTask Business, your team can keep all project information and supporting collaterals in one place, readily available for all team members. Additionally, with roles & permissions, project data and user abilities can be managed centrally and securely.
Then, using Zapier for Teams, your team can create a wide range of automations that will keep things running all on their own. If you haven’t yet come across Zapier, it connects MeisterTask with 1,000+ other apps via workflow automations, or in their lingo ‘Zaps’.
By setting up a Zap, you can send information to and from your favorite apps, automating outcomes. Need to create a follow-up task in MeisterTask every time a sales query enters your email inbox? Zapier have you covered!
3 Ways to Grow Output and Sales with MeisterTask Business + Zapier
What connects Zapier for Teams and MeisterTask Business is the shared focus on providing efficient task and project management, specifically for enterprise teams.
Via the following time-saving workflows, teams can ensure that project data is collated in transparent, secure project boards while lining up new sales leads all at the same time:
1. Keep Stakeholders in the Loop Without Lifting a Finger
Effective task management for the enterprise begins with a clear project plan and effective task delegation.
Transparent, Secure Project Boards
To achieve effective task management, a transparent project roadmap, listing all upcoming, assigned tasks, can go a long way.
However, your team will also want to manage how project members are able to alter tasks and projects themselves, without prior permission.
Let’s say you have a client that you’d like to keep in the loop with project progress. You’d like to involve them in task-related discussions, but wouldn’t want them to add extra tasks without prior discussion. Using roles & permissions, you can restrict their ability to alter a shared project and do just that.
Roles & permissions is a feature exclusively available on MeisterTask Business, which enables project admins to assign a different role to each project member.
The roles currently available under MeisterTask Business include:
- Administrator who has full control over the project and its properties, meaning they can change the way sections are set up, add integrations and section actions, as well as manage the roles and permissions of other project members.
- Member who can manage tasks in the project (create, modify, assign, complete, archive, trash etc.) but cannot change any project properties.
- Commenter who can view and comment on tasks, but otherwise cannot modify them in any way. When a Commenter comments on a task, they are automatically added as a Watcher and are notified of changes made in the task.
- Read only who can open the project and view all tasks individually, but cannot edit the project or its contents in any way.
So, in the case of a client, you could add them to the project as a Commenter, enabling them to leave questions and feedback, without actually modifying tasks.
With roles & permissions, if a member of your project previously had the right to create new tasks but is then downgraded to Commenter or Read-only, any Zapier automations that previously created new tasks will become invalid. Read more on how roles & permissions affect Zaps via our help article.
Automated Updates with Slack and HipChat
Additionally, you can optimize your project communication workflow with Zapier automations between MeisterTask and your favorite chat tools.
With the Slack and HipChat Zaps, you can keep your whole team in the loop by automatically sending MeisterTask updates on project progress to your chosen chat channels.
With Slack, you can share all of your project updates in one fell swoop, by posting a digest of your MeisterTask updates on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis:
Or, if you use HipChat and would like to update your team more frequently, set up an update for every time a MeisterTask task is completed:
With either approach, you can update your team on project progress periodically, without even lifting a finger.
2. Collate All Project Meetings and Deadlines in One Place
When attempting to stay on top of communication across multiple teams, offices and tools, there’s a chance that tasks and deadlines can slip through the gaps.
However, with one centralized task management tool – and Zapier automations to collate all project information – appointments and deadlines become easier to handle.
Never Miss a Meeting
To manage his schedule, Bradley Ellison, Director and General Manager of Financial firm Equitem, ensures that all client meetings are recorded and attended via the Google Calendar to MeisterTask Zap.
To collate all dates in one place, his uses the Google Calendar integration with Zapier to turn his team’s calendar events into tasks within MeisterTask.
For each new client, the team creates a new project board for the partnership. Then, as soon as a new calendar event is added in Google Calendar, a relevant task is automatically created in the linked MeisterTask project, via the Zap.
As a result, all upcoming appointments are listed within their upcoming tasks, and with an added due date, can be viewed via the MeisterTask calendar view.
This way, the team stays on top of all appointments and save time, as there’s no need to switch between multiple apps to view upcoming dates.
Collate All Deadlines in One Place
Deadlines can also be imported to your project via various team communication tools, ensuring all deadlines are collated in one place.
For example, if you set up a label within Gmail called ‘[project name] deadline’, you can create a Zap that converts all emails labeled as such into tasks in your chosen MeisterTask project.
The subsequent task will include:
- The email subject line as the task name
- The body of the email within the task notes
- The email address to get back to, also within the task notes
You can then set a deadline for the task too, to ensure the task is completed in good time.
Once a due date is added, all deadlines can be viewed as tasks according to their deadline in MeisterTask’s Calendar View.
Remember that with MeisterTask Business, you can also manage who is able to modify the details of each task. This way, you can rest assured that only Project Admins and Project Members are able to alter upcoming deadlines.
3. Grow Your Client Base with a Sales Lead to MeisterTask Zap
If you’re a client-serving company, one of the top priorities is to acquire new business. Here’s how MeisterTask and Zapier can help with your sales acquisition and CRM process:
Creating a Successful Sales Project and CRM System
To achieve a regular flow of business, the sales team at OPITZ CONSULTING – who manage over 600 clients between their team of 450 – use MeisterTask Business to manage their sales process:
“We use MeisterTask on the sales teams, particularly where we have bigger sales pitches and leads. Via our sales pitch project board, we can move customers through from potential lead to acquired client,” Torsten Schlautmann, Head of HR, Controlling & Administration at OPITZ CONSULTING, shared.
“In our project, we create a task per sales pitch. We attach all supporting materials and set the pitch date as the due date. Then we assign relevant team members as ‘watchers’, meaning they’re notified of all task updates. We also tag the tasks to specify the type of sale and who’s involved. This way, our management team can have a quick visual overview of sales progress and filter pitches via relevant tags.”
Add Sales Leads Automatically with Zapier
With Zapier for Teams, you can then automate the process of adding new potential clients to the ‘New Leads’ section of your project board.
To do this, first create a simple project board in MeisterTask for qualified sales leads, with a section for each stage of your sales funnel. Then, set up a Zap between MeisterTask and your favorite lead-generation tools, for example, Salesforce or Facebook Ads:
Via the Zap, every time a sales lead is added in Salesforce or Facebook Ads, a task will automatically be created in your MeisterTask Lead Funnel project board – ready for you to convert them into an acquired customer!
So those are our tips for boosting your team’s output across project management, team productivity and client acquisition. If you have any questions or suggestions of your own, we’d love to hear them in the comments below!
- You might also enjoy reading Customer Story: World-Class Project Management with MeisterTask Business