We regularly release tutorial videos to help you learn how to use Wrike. Recently, we released a new video that teaches you how you can easily adapt your plans in Wrike to the fast-changing business environment!

The new video describes how to make the best use of Wrike’s Backlog feature. It tells you how tasks in your backlog are different from usual ones; and how to create, manage and prioritize tasks. In this tutorial, you will see examples of how useful the backlog can be for scheduling and assigning tasks to your peers. You can use Wrike’s Backlog feature in many ways – to manage agile development teams, store important ideas, prioritize product requirements, or even create your personal backlog.

Watch this new tutorial and see how to save time and make scheduling and prioritizing even easier!



Watch the other tutorials at the top of Wrike’s help page.

We finished 2010 with unveiling a couple of very helpful new features: the add-in for Outlook 2010 and the ability to export filtered task lists to Excel. In this post, we’ll introduce the first updates of 2011 that many of you were suggesting to Wrike’s support team.

Whenever you get a valuable idea that doesn’t have to be realized in a fixed timeframe, you can instantly add it to your project backlog in Wrike without even leaving your inbox. To create a backlogged task via email, add the tag [backlog] in the subject of the message that you send to wrike@wrike.com.



If you want to create backlogged tasks often, Wrike offers you another handy solution. You can simply adjust your account settings so that any email you send to Wrike without specifying a date turns into a backlogged task. To do so, click on the “Account” link in your workspace and go to the Personal profile tab. On that page, you can choose how you want Wrike to process emails with no date tags – either create one-day tasks for today, or add these tasks to the backlog. If you choose to create backlogged tasks by default, you can still add one-day tasks for today by adding the date to the email subject in the following format: MM/DD-MM/DD (or DD/MM-DD/MM if you have this date format set as the default in your account).



Another significant addition to Wrike’s scheduling functionality is that backlogged tasks are now reflected in the table view, as well as the list view. The new column in the table view – duration – lets you get a more accurate picture of your plans. By the way, you can easily move the columns by dragging and dropping them to adjust the table view to your preferences.

We hope these features will help you build agile plans and manage your tasks productively in 2011!
 

Do you see more overdue tasks appear on the dashboard every day, even though you and your team members are working really hard? These days we often have to deal with uncertainty, so it’s not always possible to specify fixed due dates for some tasks. Later, when you don’t meet the set deadlines for these tasks, you need to reschedule them again and again. Maybe there are some items that don’t have an actual deadline. For instance, they can be not actionable items, but valuable ideas to elaborate on sometime in the future. Whether they are tasks or ideas, in order to prevent them from slipping out of your sight, you need to record them in your plan. In a multitasking environment, it’s hard to keep them all in your head when it’s overloaded with information. Occasionally, you may miss something important in the workflow under such pressure.

To free your brain from the pressure of remembering too many things and to avoid stress, you need to get the ideas and tasks with no deadlines in safe storage as soon as they pop up. After you and your team cope with urgent matters, you can then turn to that list to develop your ideas or tackle some action item. Now Wrike allows you to keep these items neatly organized, so that none of them gets lost. If you use the new beta version, you may have noticed that now the tasks can not only be planned for exact dates or set as milestones, but also marked as “Backlogged.” Let us give you a view into this new, important feature of Wrike. 



Generally, a “backlog” is an accumulated list of work that still needs to be done. In terms of Getting Things Done (GTD), a personal productivity methodology that can be rolled out companywide with Wrike, a backlogged task can be defined as an item from the Someday/Maybe list. It means it’s a task that you will possibly pick up and complete sometime in the future. Backlogged tasks have no start date and due date. Backlogged tasks are not tied to the timeline and not visible on it. In the new version of Wrike, backlogged tasks are shown on a separate widget of the dashboard, so that you have a clear overview of them and don’t miss any item in the workflow. However, Wrike doesn’t include backlogged tasks in the daily to-do emails.

To see the tasks marked as backlogged in a certain folder, hit the “Backlog” button. Then you can easily rank your tasks by priority using drag-and-drop. As simple to implement as it sounds, this feature is a powerful tool that will help you to turn a long, messy list of unsorted tasks and ideas into a valid, agile plan. You can change the sorting order whenever your priorities change. 



With the new backlog feature, you take the load of too many things to remember off your brain. Wrike takes care of them and remembers them for you. You and your team members can store and prioritize the items in your workflow, gaining a clearer sense of what to focus on while moving toward your goals. In addition to a personal backlog, Wrike also allows you to accommodate backlogs for your projects, products, departments, etc.  Thus, this feature not only boosts your personal productivity, but turns into a very helpful tool for building your long-term strategies. For instance, you can record all your ideas about the future development of your product in the backlog. Keeping them in a neat, prioritized list that is not tied to inflexible or unfeasible deadlines, you can build a transparent roadmap of your product development and tackle the items one by one when the right time comes.
Try the new backlog feature and gain extra bonus points on your efficiency!