Drag-and-Drop for Tasks: Move and Copy Tasks to Folders Easily

Published by Valerie   |  Saturday, 09 February, 2008
The drag-and-drop function has been released to help you quickly move your tasks from one folder to another. Just click on a task, hold the mouse button and pull the task to the appropriate folder. Once you release the mouse button, the task is placed in the selected folder. As previously, you can simply click the “Edit task” link and type the appropriate folder title in the field “Included in.”

1) Move tasks with the drag-n-drop feature.
To move your task, you simply click on the task bar and pull it to the appropriate folder. In the picture we are moving the task “discuss the trends session with B.L.” from the “Agenda” folder to the “Applicants” folder.

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2) Copy tasks with the drag-n-drop feature: hold CTRL.
The same way, you can copy your tasks in several folders. Instead of clicking the “Edit task” link and then enumerating folders “Agenda, Applicants” and separating them with commas in the “Included in” field, you simply click on the task bar and pull it to the appropriate folder holding CTRL on your keyboard. The task will be copied to the chosen folder.

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It’s very easy to organize you tasks with the drag-n-drop feature now. More importantly, the drag-n-drop feature works with the Wrike’s usual perks like sharing and automatic notifications.

Automatic sharing.
Once you move a task to the “Applicants” folder shared with Mary and John, the task automatically becomes shared with them as well.

Automatic notifications.
Mary and John receive automatic notifications about the changes according to the notification type chosen by them. The responsible party of the task is always notified about the changes via e-mail. Therefore you don’t need to explain to him or her the details. Your associates always stay on the same page with you.

Build Extended Reports in Wrike

Published by Valerie   |  Saturday, 09 February, 2008
Reports have become even more flexible in Wrike. Now you can keep track of your organizational effectiveness even faster and easier than before. Now you are able to slice your projects for reports with extra accuracy.

It has become possible, thanks to the new field that allows you to specify the date filtering criteria. Now you can filter tasks not only by the due date, but also by the creation date, start date, completion date and the date when last changes have been made. Remember that you can combine such sorting criteria as dates, responsible party, task status and priority to get clear visibility of a particular part of your plans.

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In other words, you can create a report that tells you what high-importance tasks John Smith has completed by today, tomorrow or any other date. Or what tasks Mary Brown has completed since the beginning of the week. Or what tasks created by you start on the next Monday.

Your partial reports can be created in each folder, as well as overall reports across all your projects can be created in the special “Reports” area. The “Reports” area has one more advantage: you can select tasks by the author.

Now it’s your turn to benefit from Wrike’s easy-to-customize reports and evaluate your organizational productivity. There is always room for improvement in successful businesses. Very likely, you will be pleased with the opportunities for growth of your team's overall performance.

Track time spent on your tasks in Wrike

Published by Valerie   |  Sunday, 03 February, 2008
The time-tracking feature is now released in Wrike, the project management software. We have received many inquiries from our users about ability to track time in Wrike, so we decided to implement this feature.

Professional services providers, companies that work with freelancers, implement hourly pay, or have many projects and employees — all of you will find great value in the time tracking feature.

Besides time tracking, Wrike offers a powerful platform for collaboration, task organization, task management, reports across diverse projects, Gantt charts, e-mail integration and smart notifications — all in one user workspace.

Time-tracking is an essential part of increasing the productivity of your team. Time-tracking helps you keep track of the hours spent on a task or a project and evaluate the effectiveness of your employees.

Your team members now can add time entries to tasks easily. They just open the task to edit, choose the date and enter number of hours spent on the task.

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Then you can create time reports for projects and track the workload of your team members. You can export reports to CSV file format, print and provide them to clients.

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Wrike as Marketing Project Management Software

Published by Valerie   |  Tuesday, 29 January, 2008
We prepared a video in which our users, Philip and Laura, tell you how Wrike helps them to plan and manage product development successfully. Additionally, you will learn how to:
  • create tasks
  • attach files to tasks
  • set the due date of tasks
  • add folders
  • organize tasks in folders
  • delegate tasks to your associates
  • give the responsible party 24/7 access to tasks
  • be notified about changes in tasks
  • and, finally, how to get control and a unique visibility of operations
Watch the full-sized video:
How a manager plans a Product Launch in Wrike



Feel free to ask questions and make comments. We’ll be happy to give you additional details about how you can benefit from Wrike.

Make Wrike a part of your 7 habits for becoming highly effective

Published by Daria   |  Thursday, 13 December, 2007
Have you ever thought about being more effective in business, in relationships, in life? If so, you probably have already read the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Dr. Steven Covey. Millions of people became more productive encouraged by the powerful lessons collected in this volume. If you have not yet gotten a chance to read this book, we recommend that you do so, as it can become a gold mine for ideas about how to improve your personal and professional management and how to form quality relationships with other people.

Among other concepts of effectiveness, Steven draws our attention to organization. How can you organize your life? Steven’s idea is that you should get a good tool that will help you to organize. A good organizing tool, according to Steven Covey, should match 6 criteria. They are:
  • Coherence
  • Balance
  • Motivation
  • Ability to deal with people
  • Flexibility
  • Accessibility

If you have a tool that matches all these criteria, you will be able to organize your plans and activities. Steven notes that there 2 ways to organize: organizing yourself through a schedule and delegating to other people. The biggest challenge here is to be able to control your own schedule and follow the results of the others at the same time. How can you do it? Wrike has the answer.

Wrike is project management software that lets you organize your personal and business to-dos in one place.
It perfectly combines two methods of organization: your personal time management and your delegated tasks.

Wrike has all of the characteristics of a good organizing tool, giving you a big picture prospective. If you work in a team, every team member will have the opportunity to organize his or her life with Wrike, and your business plans will still be interconnected.

First of all, Wrike gives coherence to your vision and mission, your goals and roles, your plans and your commitment. Steven draws our attention to one observation: we play many roles in life. For example, you can be a manager, a designer, a sales person, or even a combination of all three. To perform successfully in all those roles we need to define our goals and then write them down into an organizing tool like Wrike. In Wrike you can create tasks for every plan and every goal. The best thing is that you can review them anytime you need. We suggest you create special folders for your different roles, for your long-term commitments and your short-term plans. Wrike lets you organize your tasks in various ways, so that it is easier for you to organize all the information and figure out your priorities.

This is how you get balance with Wrike, which is the second characteristic. You keep everything in one place you can wisely spread your time and energy between your family, professional preparation, and your colleagues. Wrike gives you the whole picture of all your roles and goals, both business and personal, as you get all of them neatly organized in folders. You won’t neglect any important part of your life and you won’t forget anything. Wrike will “press against you,” sending you smart notifications and reminding you of every event you have scheduled for yourself or for your colleagues.

Steven states that a good tool should encourage you to spend time on your long-term commitments and spare at least half a day for the things that are most important in your life. You should not spend all of day trying to solve routine problems. You should reserve time for bringing your mission and vision to life; otherwise, you won’t be able to fulfill them. The key to success here, according to Steven Covey, is weekly planning. Wrike will help you plan your activities through a week or even through a month and set your priorities. You set due dates for every task as you create it and then see what things you and your team members need to get done this week and this month on a timeline.

Then, according to Steven, it is absolutely necessary that a good organizing tool should deal with people and help you to collaborate and delegate.  No other tool will help you collaborate better than Wrike. Wrike gives you a unique opportunity to store all the communications on each task and every project and everybody involved in the project can easily access them. Your main benefit is that you can always go back and review your communication and the results you’ve agreed upon. Nothing is lost!

The beauty of Wrike is that it lets you to delegate seamlessly. Wrike lets your associates control their own tasks, make plans, set and change due dates, and make updates. You and everybody involved in the project are informed of all the progress in your team’s work with Wrike’s smart email notifications. Wrike lets each person on your team get a progress report on how well he or she is doing. This way people become less dependent upon you and you get the complete delegation. People get an opportunity to organize themselves around their priorities. Here you benefit from the 5th criterion of a good tool that is found in Wrike - flexibility. You start using Wrike by creating several tasks that later can be organized in folders according to projects, departments or clients. You environment may change every day.  Wrike lets you reorganize your plans, your goals and roles in seconds. You can tag your tasks, including them in folders according to your daily, weekly or monthly priorities.

You can make changes to your plans, to your tasks and projects from any computer with an internet connection, since Wrike is Web-based. Being easily accessible, Wrike gives you and your colleagues the freedom of working anywhere and anytime.

Even at home, even at the airport waiting for your plane, Wrike will keep you organized and let you track the results of others. Wrike lets you schedule your life and delegate tasks to other people, so that you can spare time for the most important things like: leadership, recognizing new opportunities, defining the goals and having a rich private life.

Wrike can be the best supplement for your 7 habits as it lets you be highly effective in your organization.

Update tasks via e-mail

Published by Valerie   |  Monday, 08 October, 2007
It’s addictively simple and unites the initial task state and the next e-mail conversations.

Let’s say a colleague asks you to solve some issue. He CCs this e-mail to wrike@wrike.com. You can comment on the situation by using “Reply to all.”

Leave wrike@wrike.com among the recipients of the initial email, and the task description will be changed in Wrike. If you add files and pictures to the e-mail, they will be attached to the task, as well. If you include third parties in the To/CC fields, the task will also be shared with them.



So when you decide to go back to the task and work on it, you will see its updated state and save time on trying to recall what you discussed previously. 


View a short demo about updating tasks via email

Stay turned. Later the rule will be also applied to replying to email notifications.

Default due date for tasks created via e-mail

Published by Valerie   |  Sunday, 07 October, 2007
You create tasks via e-mail to avoid forgetting important ideas. Often you don’t have time to set up the deadline for it, so you take the risk of shelving the task. We applied a tiny change in Wrike to help you get tasks done much faster.

All tasks created via e-mail now receive a default due date marked as tomorrow if you don’t set it explicitly. Therefore a reminder about the task will soon appear on the dashboard, and you will get a chance to reschedule or mark the task completed.

Getting things done with Wrike saves us hours

Published by Daria   |  Monday, 01 October, 2007
We got valuable feedback on our post "Wrike helps you get things done." Many people asked us if we tried to get things done with Wrike ourselves. Our reply is “yes.” Our team successfully practices GTD, and we feel that it saves us hours weekly. We designed Wrike to make ourselves more productive and to save time, so Wrike is a perfect system for us to apply the getting things done method.

Here’s how we do it at a glance:

We manage our workflow and get our things done in 5 easy steps in Wrike.

1. We collect our stuff by creating tasks in our personal Web-spaces in Wrike or forwarding them to wrike@wrike.com.

2. We process our tasks by deciding what’s actionable and what is not. We decide whether we should do a thing right now, do it later or delegate it. We assign some tasks to our colleagues by sending a regular e-mail and adding wrike@wrike.com to the CC field. We don’t forget to set a due date, so that the system can remind us to review the task.

3. We organize our tasks in Wrike by building a structure that is convenient for us. We organize our tasks according project folders. We also have “next actions” and “someday” folders. We don't need the “waiting for” folder, as the system reminds us of our tasks. It’s always possible to create more folders or change the whole folder structure. We can also put our tasks in several folders simultaneously, in case our projects overlap. We share our projects with our colleagues and track the progress together.

We use filters to see who is responsible for what (see the picture on the left). Reports help us to follow the progress of each project and every team member (see the picture on the right).



4. Reviewing our tasks and overdue items is fast with Wrike. We get reminders of our to-dos automatically from the system directly into our inboxes. Our review takes only seconds as we use Wrike’s dashboard. We quickly reschedule our tasks or mark them completed.

5. So we find that getting things done with Wrike actually saves us up to 30 minutes per day. We feel that we have become more productive and do all our things much faster and with less stress.

To get more information on how to implement the getting things done method with Wrike, read the detailed guide on the system.

The Dashboard helps you meet deadlines

Published by Valerie   |  Tuesday, 18 September, 2007
Now you will have quick access to the tasks that are due shortly.

They are displayed on the dashboard, so you can begin your work at once. The dashboard will also help with your daily review of your tasks. It lets you immediately mark them completed or reschedule them.

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Check the box, if the task is done, or reschedule it for the future. Completed tasks become grey and disappear from the list in a few seconds. On the dashboard you can also find tasks that are due today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Scrum in Wrike: making software development more agile

Published by Daria   |  Tuesday, 11 September, 2007
We keep telling you that Wrike is very flexible and easily adjusts to your needs. We told you how you can make your project management mobile with your Blackberry or PDA phone. We also wrote a guide about getting things done with Wrike to make your days more productive.

Here we’ll tell you how to use Wrike for the Scrum method, which is gaining popularity with project managers nowadays.

The Scrum approach to managing projects is becoming more and more popular. A small, cross-functional team can be much more mobile and agile in producing the best possible results in delivering a project. The Scrum method is based on daily meetings, during which every team member reports on what he has done since the last meeting, notes whether there are any problems and says what he is going to do until the next meeting. This makes management more adaptive to emerging circumstances. Scrum is now successfully applied in various spheres from marketing and finance to medical products development. But first of all, Scrum is applied to management of software development projects.

As a lightweight process, Scrum complements agile management practices and makes the process of software project delivery more efficient. But can Scrum be even more agile? Yes, if you use Wrike.

With Wrike support, Scrum practices make the team even more productive and reduce project delivery terms dramatically.

Customers become a part of the development team: In Wrike you can share your project workspace with your clients so that they can follow every step of the team’s progress and add something on the go.

The whole work process is transparent: The tasks on the project are shared among all the team members, Scrum master, stakeholders and clients, so that interested parties know who is responsible for what.

Reports on accomplishments and commitments: In Wrike, the workflow process is reflected in detail. When a task is marked completed by any of the team members, all the others get an immediate e-mail notification and can move the project further ahead. There are also e-mail notifications when task attributes are changed by anybody in the team, like when somebody adds comments, attaches files etc. Team members get a chance to quickly react when they are able to promptly receive the necessary information.

Development team can contribute directly to project plans: In Wrike, each team member can update his plan. All the other members of the team, as well as clients and stakeholders, will be instantly notified of any changes in the project work.

Flexible workplace: Wrike is a web-based service, so project developers can work from any computer with an internet connection. Moreover, they can create and manage tasks just by sending e-mails. So when members of the team are separated by great distances, Wrike still makes Scrum-like process possible.

Quick timeline make Scrum planning easier. Wrike allows you to get an overview of the whole project and see who is working on which part of software development. It’s also possible to see what every team member is planning to do next.

Wrike is indispensable when projects overlap and developers, Scrum masters or stakeholders participate in several projects. In Wrike, you share different projects with different people and can always quickly find out where any of your projects stand.

With multiple overlapping projects, it is vital to get business-value products fast. Scrum methodology allows you to get this product much earlier than the traditional “waterfall” management method. With Wrike support, Scrum helps you to get the best project value in the shortest possible time. If Wrike is a platform for Scrum iterative and incremental practices in your team, you save hours on reporting. Wrike gives every team member an opportunity to be aware of all the changes in the project before the daily meeting. So you go straight to discussion of possible issues.

Scrum in Wrike makes the work on a project less bureaucratic and more productive. We developed Wrike to help everybody involved in a project’s development easily communicate and collaborate to move this project ahead faster, bringing more immediate business value to you and your partners.

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Having tested many project collab and management tools in the past which always seem to end up having something missing... Fortunately, Wrike is one of the tools which I’ve found to be complete in many ways... Secondly, what is really the ‘killer’ feature of Wrike is the ability to assign tasks and manage projects through e-mail... Given its simplicity with an appealing and familiar interface, it’s a great product."


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