What is on our short-term roadmap?

Published by Valerie  |  Wednesday, 10 October, 2007
Every day we get e-mails from our subscribers who like Wrike a lot and are curious about the upcoming new features. We appreciate your feedback and want to reveal some details of our roadmap to assure you that we work hard to make Wrike even better.

We practice the Agile Software Development process; thus we adapt our plan to your feedback and prioritize work to deliver productivity features that are in greater demand. So here is what you should expect in the near future.

Priorities Currently, you can prioritize your tasks by putting them in the appropriate folders named “high,” “critical,” “normal,” etc. We plan to add the "Priority" field for each task soon. So it will be very convenient to categorize tasks by their importance within a concrete project, advertising plan or issues pack. What’s more, the priorities will be inherited after those defined for your e-mails about the tasks. No matter which e-mail client you use, Outlook, Gmail, BlackBerry or something else, your tasks will be marked with the appropriate priority level in Wrike. Update: priorities have been released.

Tasks dependencies We know that many Wrike users utilize simplistic task management approaches similar to David Allen’s getting things done. However, the number of people using Wrike to manage product development and other complex projects is constantly growing. That is why we are now developing a tasks dependencies feature for projects that require a strict order for task execution. This upgrade is coming in a couple of months. Just think of Wrike’s Gantt charts – they will save you even more time! When you update your plans on a timeline, interrelated tasks will be also rescheduled. There are some architectural challenges that we want to solve elegantly.

Custom statuses Right now you can imitate any custom field in Wrike, including priorities, with folders. This approach has a huge advantage – it gives you unlimited flexibility. You create several folders that correspond with your statuses. For example you can name these folders “in research,” “not clear,” “postponed” and “unapproved” (see the picture below).



When any idea comes up, you put it in the folder “in research,” discuss it with colleagues and give it the appropriate status when the decision is made. Or alternatively, if it’s approved, you can put it into the “design” or “develop” folder and assign it to your team members. It’s very convenient, as you can apply a particular categorization for each of your projects if you manage several different customer projects.

However, we know that some users are more comfortable with managing statuses as task attributes. Our customers’ satisfaction is paramount for us; that’s why we recently included custom statuses in our development plan. We’ll design the feature so that you will be able to define statuses for every folder if necessary. It will lighten up your folder hierarchy. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Soon you’ll be able to try it out.

Your feedback on these parts of the system is very welcome. We always aim to enhance Wrike’s functionality, so please let us know what you would like to see in Wrike by commenting on this post.
Category: Highlighted Posts, FAQ, Vision and Roadmap
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14   Comments
  • Published by Conor Bracken, Monday, 15 October, 2007
    Looks good to me. I've long hoped for task dependencies but assumed that would be a long way off.

    A quick thought on Gantt chart functionality -- how can it be made easy to show to clients without allowing them to drill down to details that shouldn't be disclosed or for them to react with alarm if the tasks are not updated for a few days?

    Well the obvious answer it to simply print the timeline to PDF and email it instead of giving too much access... but.... the timelines are not very printer/PDF friendly as we don't want to display data in the left pane or extraneous data.

    Any thoughts on making the timelines more PDF friendly?
  • Published by Andrew Filev, Monday, 15 October, 2007
    Better printing of timeline is one of the tasks in our development plan that we did not highlight in the post above.

    Another solution to your problem that you can utilize right now:
    You could create a separate group that you share with your client. Include in that group those and only those tasks/groups from the full timeline that you'd like to share.
  • Published by Christi Milligan, Wednesday, 17 October, 2007
    I can't wait for task dependencies and the ability customize statuses for individual groups! Conor's request for better printing capabilities would be right up there for me as well. Keep up the great work! I'm eagerly awaiting more updates and functionality.
  • Published by Jim, Saturday, 20 October, 2007
    I agree, printing timelines is a must.

    Wrike is a great product but without the ability to share the plan on a bulletin board, in a memo, or in other printed formats it is going nowhere.
  • Published by Stephen, Wednesday, 05 December, 2007
    Hi gang, printing anything on the web is easier than you think. Use Firefox, with Screengrab!, and capture the image you are looking to print or email. Save the .png. Then Copy it and Paste it into an Open Office Drawing. Edit or redact any info that is off limits, and then export the file as a PDF.
    Quick.
    Easy.
    Free.
  • Published by Bill, Sunday, 02 March, 2008
    I also agree, great product--but I had to go back to MS Project in order to effectively print a timeline I tried Screengrab!, which doesn't appear to do a good job of printing what is off-screen, so there really isn't way to make a professional presentation. When interacting with higher management, such timelines and clear visuals are all the difference...
  • Published by Will, Thursday, 01 May, 2008
    Any update on dependencies? I really like the look of wrike and the web based architecture is a huge plus for our bi-coastal projects, but without dependencies it's just not as useful as we'd need. I'll give it a shot if you can tell approximately when dependencies might be worked out.
  • Published by Andrew, Thursday, 01 May, 2008
    Will,
    An internal alpha version should be finished by the end of the next week. We need about one month to polish things up and release the feature. It can take less, it can take longer, no promises.
  • Published by Torgrim Sandvoll, Monday, 19 May, 2008
    Hi,

    We are also looking forward to the release of the dependencies feature. Much needed! This way when marketingmanager has finished pricing&sizing, the designer will automatically get notified to get started designing, etc.

    I really like the daily emails with both tasks overdue assigned to me AND tasks assigned by me. And especially like the fast and easy snooze feature right in the email. Great!
    Would be nice to see a dependency feature in the future as well in these emails. Much like you click "tomorrow" to change a tasks due date, it would be great to see a "make dependent" link. When you click it you can make the task in question dependent on other task right in the email. This way I can prioritizy my day by working on task A, and get notified to work on task B only when Im finished with task A.

    New feature suggestion.
    CSV import/export with description/notes (and dependencies) information included. When importing Wrike automatically recognises existing tasks in folder (by taskname), and updates these tasks (dont duplicate tasks as of today). When taskname dont exists Wrike add them as new tasks to folder (as today).

    XLS fileformat is propiratery (need Excel to open them), CSV is open (to other applications) and can be opened directly in Excel as well. Plus easier for other applications to export to Wrike.

    Keep up the good work! :)

    Med vennlig hilsen/Yours sincerely
    Alfasoft AS
    Torgrim Sandvoll
    Dir: +47 64 84 15 92
    www.alfasoft.no

    ...fra idé til resultat
  • Published by Andrew, Monday, 19 May, 2008
    Thanks, Torgrim. Your requests are noted.
  • Published by Alex, Tuesday, 17 June, 2008
    I'd like to enter a description when I log time against a task.
    Right now, I just see a bunch of time logs, but having no idea of what happened
  • Published by Andrew, Wednesday, 18 June, 2008
    The time tracking works the best way if your tasks are small and their names are self-descriptive.
  • Published by Cherie, Wednesday, 09 July, 2008
    Is there any update on task dependencies?
  • Published by Andrew, Wednesday, 09 July, 2008
    We are fixing final issues. The release should come out in the beginning of August.
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