7 task automation tools to increase productivity in 2025

2025's top task automation tools

The majority of software platforms offering substantial support for IT task automation aren't devoted to this use case alone. Instead, they're general-purpose robotic process automation offerings that can automate many aspects of common business operations -- such as notifying customer support staff about a new client request or updating the status of a purchase order.

The following list of task automation tools caters to IT-related use cases based on market analyses by IT analyst firms, such as Gartner and IDC. Products are listed in alphabetical order.

1. Airtable

Airtable is a cloud-based platform that's essentially a relational database but with a much more user-friendly interface than conventional databases. The platform's main goal is to make it easy for teams to share and manage the data driving business processes.

While task automation isn't Airtable's key focus, it offers an automation feature that triggers actions necessary to complete data-driven tasks. For example, an Airtable automation could consolidate requests from users using multiple channels, such as email and IM, into a central data repository and then generate IT help desk tickets based on them. In this way, Airtable helps automate end-user support.

Airtable's major limitation is that it's not well suited to automate tasks that don't involve data transfers or reporting. For instance, there's no straightforward way to reset a user's password using Airtable because it's not a task that can be triggered by importing data inside a database.

2. Asana

Asana is primarily a project management platform whose core focus is assigning tasks to teams and individuals, tracking their work and facilitating communication. However, Asana offers the following features that enable task automation:

• Rules. Rules can automate common tasks, such as assigning a ticket to a technician, setting the ticket's priority level and generating status updates as the technician works through the ticket request.
• Templates. The Asana templates feature enables teams to define the various tasks that should occur within a project. For example, an IT team could create a template to describe the tasks necessary to set up a new server and then delegate responsibility for each task to a specific team member.

Asana is a widely used platform that offers extensive integrations, making it easier for users to connect the system to other tools they might use for communication or project management, such as Slack, Jira and Microsoft Teams. A common complaint among users is that there's no way to assign multiple users directly to a single task in Asana. However, it's possible to create multiple subtasks, each with a different user, as part of the same primary task. This makes the tool clunky when automating tasks that involve multiple team members.

3. Jira

Jira is a project management platform that offers extensive automation support. Jira automations enable teams to set up triggers, conditions and actions to help automate a variety of tasks that commonly occur within IT projects, such as deploying an application or setting up a server.

However, like most of the task automation tools in this article, Jira doesn't perform most of these tasks directly. Users need to integrate it with external tools, such as application deployment automation software or an infrastructure-as-code tool, to complete the automations. Jira can then trigger and track these tasks.

Jira stands apart from most other project management and task automation offerings in that use cases related to IT and software development are a key focus of the platform. Jira can support other business domains and functions, too, but it has always catered to technical teams.

4. Motion

Motion is a work planning and project management platform notable for its extensive focus on AI to plan processes. Other platforms in this article offer some AI capabilities, but none have made AI as central to their functionality as Motion.

In the context of task automation, Motion's main benefit is helping to plan how long it will take to complete tasks and determining who should be assigned to each one. Motion doesn't focus as extensively on tracking the progress of tasks and can't execute any technical tasks on its own, so most organizations will likely use it in conjunction with other task automation software, rather than as an end-to-end task automation tool.

5. RoboTask

RoboTask is a platform that focuses on task automation using a no-code approach. Users can define the tasks they want to automate using a visual interface and then let RoboTask carry them out.

Unlike most other offerings in this article, RoboTask executes many common IT-related tasks -- such as entering data into a website, triggering the execution of scripts and transferring files -- without help from external tools. If users need to integrate with external systems for purposes such as importing data, RoboTask can be challenging to work with because it offers few prebuilt integrations. However, it's possible to create scripts to integrate other software with RoboTask manually.

A major limitation of RoboTask is that it only supports Windows, meaning it can't automate tasks that need to run on Linux or macOS. The platform also doesn't offer automation capabilities that IT teams couldn't implement on their own by writing scripts in a language such as PowerShell; however, for staff who don't want to have to code, it's a valuable option.

6. Zapier

Zapier, a general-purpose workflow automation platform, excels at triggering automatic actions carried out by external tools. In this way, it can automate tasks such as ticketing management by creating tickets, assigning technicians to them and updating ticket status.

Zapier's main advantage, compared to other task automation and project management platforms, is its very extensive set of integrations. Zapier can connect to virtually any other tool or system to trigger tasks within those systems. This means that even if platforms don't have built-in automation capabilities, teams can implement automated tasks with help from Zapier. However, Zapier alone can't execute most tasks, so organizations need to use it in conjunction with other software.

7. Zoho

The Zoho platform offers capabilities ranging from an online office suite to social media management tools. Among its features are project management and task-tracking automations.

The main offering in this vein is a feature in Zoho Projects -- the part of the Zoho platform devoted to project management -- to create Gantt charts that display the progress of tasks and projects. For task automation, Gantt charts can help teams map and manage tasks such as responding to user tickets or deploying a software application.

Compared to other approaches to task automation and tracking, Gantt charts can help manage multiple tasks in an integrated way. They also make it easy to estimate the time required to complete each task and to track the actual time once a task is underway. They also present task roadmaps and status information in a visual way, letting users track progress at a glance.

However, using Gantt charts to help automate simple tasks that require just one or two steps is likely overkill. In addition, like most other tools mentioned in this article, Zoho doesn't perform tasks; it merely provides features to help track and trigger them using external tools.

Choosing the right task automation software

When it comes to selecting the right task automation tool for your IT team, consider the following key factors:

• Reliance on external tools. Most automation software must be integrated with external tools to perform tasks, although some offerings can carry out actions independently. The latter is likely to appeal to teams that seek a platform capable of doing everything without requiring external integration. For organizations with other IT systems in place, it likely makes more sense to choose an automation tool that integrates with them.
• Breadth of capabilities. While some task automation offerings focus solely on task automation, others offer this capability as one component of broader platforms -- in particular, those that support end-to-end project management. For teams with other products in place to address needs such as project management, an offering with a narrow focus on task automation might be more appropriate; the opposite is true for organizations seeking automation as one component of a project management offering.
• Skill requirements. None of the automation platforms described above require specialized technical or coding skills to automate tasks. Some have simpler interfaces than others, while some require more expertise to do things like configure integrations. Depending on your team's technical skills, certain platforms might be better from a usability perspective.
• Visualization features. While most task automation platforms can visualize tasks to some extent, certain offerings provide more robust visualizations, such as Zoho's Gantt charts. This is an advantage for teams that value the ability to plan and track tasks visually.
• Support for multiple users. All of the tools described above can support task automation involving multiple users; however, this is easier to do in some cases than others. For example, as noted above, Asana doesn't offer a simple way of assigning multiple users directly to the same task. This might pose a challenge for teams with many members.

Chris Tozzi is a freelance writer, research adviser, and professor of IT and society. He has previously worked as a journalist and Linux systems administrator.