Today, we introduce you a new handy feature that lets you easily draw somebody's attention to your comments in Wrike. Simply add @TeammateName in a comment to a task to invite a colleague to the task discussion!

No matter if the person mentioned after @ follows the task or not, she or he will immediately receive an email notification with the text of your comment. Imagine how handy the feature is when you need a piece of advice from a teammate who is not directly involved in the task! For example, if you work on your company's branded YouTube channel, you may need to know if the design mock-up you created is technically viable, so you mention your DHTML developer in the comment. Or when you need to ensure the sales proposal you created aligns with your team's goals, you mention the appropriate executive. There are so many cases when the feature is very handy, including the ones when you need to involve overly busy teammates into the discussion.

If the task wasn't shared with the teammate you mention after @, it automatically gets shared right after you submit the comment. This way, he or she is able to better understand the context of the comment and actively participate in the discussions in the future.

If your colleague replies to the comment via e-mail or in the workspace, Wrike considers this as an interest in the topic, and the person automatically starts following the task and keeping track of the task progress. Now you can be sure the person will be aware of all updates and discussions of this task!

Wrike auto-suggests a drop-down based on what you've typed after the @ symbol, so the feature is very easy and intuitive, and it quickly draws the attention of the right teammate directly to your comment. You are very welcome to try this new social communication feature right now and share your experience with us in the comments!

Goodbye to the habitual 5-step process of collaborative file editing! The tiresome “download-open-edit-save-upload” routine has had its day. Today, Wrike breaks the last barrier to seamless document collaboration by letting you edit your MS Office and Open Office files online without downloading them.

Removing the “download” and “upload” steps from the file editing procedure, Wrike makes it incredibly easy for you and your team to update files attached to tasks. You can see it for yourself!  The next time you need to update an MS Office or Open Office file attached to a task in Wrike, just click on it, and it immediately opens without downloading to your computer. The file opens in the appropriate program, be it MS Office or Open Office, depending on which one you use. When you are done with editing, save changes and close your file. That’s it - the new version is automatically created! Your freshly updated document instantly appears right at the top of the file versions list. All the previous versions are also conveniently stored in Wrike, so you can easily track the history of changes by downloading a particular file version when needed.

We all have projects that reappear from time to time: similar customer contracts, feature releases, regular trade shows, etc. And when a new project with basically the same milestones starts, we all would love to have a one-click way to set it up. As so many of you voted for adding a feature for quiсk duplicating of folders, today we are excited to roll it out for you!

The feature will become a huge time-saver if you have a lot of similar projects. You simply create a new folder, say "Client order" and duplicate it with its milestones, tasks and subfolders in just a few seconds the next time you receive a new order. Simply right-click on the folder used as a template and choose "Duplicate folder" in the pop-up menu. In the dialog’s entry field, write the name for the new project (let it be "Biggest order ever!") and customize the new project.
 
The template folder will be copied with its subfolders and milestones by default, but you also have the option to copy the tasks (1) with their descriptions, attachments and assignees (2).
 
The last checkbox (3) in the dialog lets you adjust the new project's schedule. You set the start date of the first task in the folder, and the other tasks are rescheduled accordingly. They keep the same sequence, durations and time intervals between them as in your template folder.  If you leave this box unchecked, the tasks' dates will be identical to the schedule in the original folder.
 
The next time your prospective client calls you to tell you've won the project, you'll set up and customize a new project in just a few minutes. Then share the plan with the client or simply e-mail them an image of the project's Gantt chart – you’ll look super-efficient!
 
We invite you to try the power of instant folder duplication and share your experience with us! If you are looking forward to having more new, handy features, let us know about them on our feature voting portal!

Today one more feature from your wish list has come true! Many of you who actively use the built-in time tracking tool in Wrike asked us for the ability to add a detailed description of the hours spent on a task. For instance, when you look through the time report of the task to follow-up on the contacts from the last trade show, it would be very handy to see how much time was spent on follow-up for each prospective client. Thanks to the new feature of adding comments to time entries, now this is easy to do!

When you click on the "hours spent" link in the task details, you will see the text box right below the field for entering hours. You can use this text box to specify what exactly you have done so far.

In the time report, you will see not only a list of time entries for each task, but also have a clue about what the time was spent on. This way, you can always provide your clients with a thorough report of what you are billing them for and ask the same from your contractors.


More new handy features are on their way to come before Christmas! In the meantime, if you have ideas of what can make you more productive, please let us know at our voting forum.

Despite the global quest for work-life balance, many people still regularly work over the weekend and don't use all of their vacation days. This in turn causes them to be overwhelmed, overworked and laboring in overtime... So if you dream about a 25th hour in the day to be fully productive and dedicate some time for yourself, we've got something for you! Since having an extra hour in the day is still impossible, we decided to give you some tips on how to work on things smarter. Here's a neat infographic with tips for saving heaps of time for leisure (click on the preview image below to see the full infographic)!


 
Summary of the 7 key points:

1. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. In other words, immediately deal with tasks that take less than 2 minutes to complete. Are you sure all such tasks from your backlog in Wrike are done?
 
2. Business before pleasure. At work, try to fight off tempting distractions like Facebook. Spend working time productively and use your weekend for the fun, not work! To boost your productivity, choose a professional system. And with Wrike, professional doesn't mean boring! Wrike is as easy and attractive as using your familiar social networks.
 
3. It's not the hours you put in, but rather what you put into these hours. So tackle the most important and urgent tasks first. Timely prioritization of your tasks in Wrike will let you and your team always keep the focus on the highest-priority tasks.
 
4. When scheduling a project, remember to leave contingency time to deal with the unexpected. This way you can ensure you'll be on time and fulfill your commitments. If you need to reschedule a task or the entire project, it's as easy as a mouse motion in Wrike. 
 
5. Is multitasking productive? The latest research shows that doing several things at once lowers your IQ score by 10 points! So actually devoting all of your attention and effort to one concrete task is much more cost-efficient, as it saves you time otherwise wasted on switching between different activities.
 
6. Single-handed success doesn't exist. Divide your tasks into small, actionable items and then delegate them to achieve more together with your team. In Wrike, it's a snap to assign multiple tasks, if needed. You can even do it right from your e-mail inbox!
 
7. Spare your mind for creative work, letting a reliable and easily accessible system remember all the tasks for you. Wrike helps to handle thousands of tasks and dozens of routine jobs, like sending reminders about due dates and notifications about the plan changes to your team. 

While redesigning Wrike, we paid a special attention to the favorite feature for many of you – the interactive timeline. Switch to the Gantt chart view right now, and you won't believe your eyes: regardless of the number of tasks in your projects, the timeline loads in a flash. The ease and speed of navigating the chart is really breathtaking. Scroll down the chart, zoom it in and out, move across the tasks – everything with your mouse. Handy filters allow you to specify the type of tasks you want to see on the chart. 

Pay special attention to the farthest right button on the control panel at the top of the chart. It is a brand-new preview feature that will certainly capture your imagination.  Just click the button, and a small panel will show you a mini-picture of the whole timeline. The red square marks the part of the chart that you see on the screen at the moment. Drag it to quickly jump to another project or a month ahead. Isn't it just amazing?



The second function of the control panel is to give you an easy way to zoom the chart in or out. Just drag the slider and see how the scale changes. You also can easily zoom your chart in and out by holding the SHIFT button and using the scroll bar on your mouse.

To create a task right on the Gantt chart, hold the SHIFT key and the left mouse button, then pull your mouse to the right.

Take a look at the Gantt chart right now and tell us, isn't it just great?

My colleague, Henry, got stuck in the Bahamas, so I need to quickly reassign all his tasks scheduled for this week to Adam. Do you think I will do it one-by-one? No way!

I search all the tasks assigned to Henry and click on the "select all" checkbox. If I needed to select just some of them, I would just click on the corresponding checkboxes while holding the CTRL key (CMD on Mac). Then I hit the "Reassign" button in the right-pane menu and choose Adam from the assignees list. It takes me just a couple of seconds!





With the same ease, you can move your tasks between folders, reschedule them, transfer them to the backlog or mark them complete by clicking on the corresponding buttons. Just imagine how much time this new feature will save you. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

Regardless of how well your tasks are organized, sometimes you need to quickly find a task that is hidden somewhere in a long chain of subfolders.


With Wrike's new universal search, there are no hidden places left in your workspace. Just type in the search word or phrase, and Wrike will find them not only in task and folder titles, but also in their descriptions and comments. On top of that, the search box is available across the whole workspace, so you can look for the tasks or folders of interest, for example, while you're scheduling tasks in your Gantt chart or working with tasks in the table.

Your search queries appear as tags under the search box.  They persist as you switch between multiple workspace views, so you can, for example, quickly get an overview of the found tasks on the Gantt chart. To quickly refine your search, remove the corresponding tag from the list or click "x" at the end of the search entry box to clear the whole query.


Three available search options in the drop-down menu allow you to specify where Wrike will look for your search query:

         1) Search in titles and descriptions of tasks in the current folder;
         2) Search in titles and descriptions of tasks in all folders (choose the "All tasks" option); or
         3) Search in titles, descriptions and comments on tasks and folders (choose the "Everywhere" option).

If there are no tasks found with your search query, that's not a reason to give up. Click on the "Descendants" button, so tasks in subfolders are also included in the search results.

There may be the opposite situation: you get a long list of tasks that suit your search query. In this case, you can further narrow the list with Wrike's new enhanced filters or sort your search results by different criteria (importance, due date, status, priority etc.).

Quick, convenient and precise – the new universal search will make your project work much more efficient.