Are You Making the Most of Wrike?

Now we’ve prepared some efficiency tips for you from a project management professional — and, of course, a devoted Wrike user! Francesco Mangone, with 15 years of experience in the business consulting field, shares how he saves time and makes the most of our cloud-based solution.

Here’s an overview of Francesco’s main ideas:

#1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally

Of course, you already log all important tasks and milestones into Wrike project management software. But we bet there are some minor tasks or personal to-dos that you still keep in your head, thinking they aren’t worth logging. The devil is in the details, for sure. No matter how tiny they are, they still take away some of your attention and make you wonder whether you have forgotten anything or not.

Francesco suggests taking them off your brain completely so you can perfectly concentrate. Don’t spend even a few seconds thinking of whether the task should be logged or not – log it right away.

“My memory is as long as my pencil. Basically, as all things are logged into the system, there’s no chance I can forget anything,” Francesco says.

By the way, with our quick task creation feature, logging all the assignments you have on your mind takes just a few seconds:

Wrike Quick Task Creation — Wrike's Quick Task Creation feature helps you get everything off your mind

#2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment

Thanks to Wrike, you have a 100% transparent picture of all your current projects. Let everyone else have it, too! Grant user (or viewer) licenses not only to your team members, but also to all your clients and contractors, and don’t forget to make sure they see just as much as needed.

The goal is to save your precious time on keeping the team on the same page and answering status requests from customers.

“Now I can avoid all those e-mails about the current state of things or the schedule. [My clients and teammates] simply log into Wrike, and they can instantly see what’s going on,” Francesco Mangone shares.

#3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks

The task activity stream is a powerful tool both to brief a new person on what’s going on and to keep others in the loop.

Wrike Task Activity Stream — Wrike's Task Activity Stream provides a complete history of updates

Don’t keep your team’s brainstorming ideas and interim file versions locked in the assignees’ inboxes or buried in the history of instant messages. Instead, simply put Wrike in the CC field when sending them to each other. See our cheat sheet to learn all the great things you can do in Wrike project management software from your inbox. Lately, the full task history may be very useful to make the final decision.

“[Keeping the conversation within a task] is a huge time-saver and helps eliminate a lot of e-mails. You no longer need to search for the related e-mails by subject. You just look through the task newsfeed and tap your comment – that’s it!” Francesco comments.

#4 - Don’t waste time downloading files

Nowadays, people are moving a lot, and it no longer makes sense to keep your important data on numerous PCs. Make the most of the ubiquitous power of the cloud and attach all files you create through Google Docs or MS Office to tasks in Wrike.

Wrike Task Attachments — Wrike can keep documents in the cloud, attached directly to the relevant work

As your team edits them online without downloading from wherever they are, all stakeholders automatically see the up-to-date version. Finally, confusion over file versions is left far behind, along with all those additional clicks to save, attach, and send files. We’re sure your time is worth so much more!

“I chose Wrike primarily because of its integration with Google Docs. You can attach a file and collaborate on it with a team no matter where they are. This feature makes Wrike so powerful!” Francesco shares.

#5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports

Now when you have all tasks, task details, and docs in Wrike, running reports and supervising the progress is simply a piece of cake.

To get a complete picture of the project progress, use your advanced filters in the right pane of your workspace. Here you can flexibly combine any criteria to create reports by different time frames, number of assignees, particular projects and much more. Any tiny detail can be easily retrieved. And don’t forget to check on your personal efficiency as well, using the “Tasks completed by me” criteria!

“I have to confess I like to push things forward a little bit. And Wrike’s reports are a really big feature for me. They are super-fast, easy to use, and they make me instantly see what has been done so far,” Francesco comments.

Want to know Francesco’s insights into how you can improve your team’s performance with the help of Wrike? Tune in to our podcast now:

"Back then, when I just started my business, I was heavily using spreadsheets and Outlook for e-mails and building task templates. What can I say? Of course, there’s nothing that you cannot do with the help of these tools, but Wrike offers an absolutely different prospective … It’s simply an evolution of project management! The technology is here, and it’s time to move on and make the most of it!” — Francesco Mangone

With his IT and business consulting experience, Francesco Mangone loves to teach just as much as he loves to learn. He helps small and medium businesses customize their task management systems for different types of organizations and efficiently manage up to 80 projects at once, in groups and individually.

Project Management 3 min read

How to organize goals and milestones in Wrike

One of the best ways to organize your project effectively is to interconnect the tasks with the project goals. Thanks to this, tasks become meaningful for your team, people become more motivated and thus you get things done faster. For example, if you manage an online ad campaign, you can create top folders named after your goals: increase CTR, increase traffic, increase conversion rate. If you often create tasks via e-mail, it will be more convenient to name folders with shorter titles and describe exact goals in the folder details. Thus you get an important advantage: you can specify goals with numbers, such as: “Increase conversion rate from 5% to 20%.” Similarly, you can organize your tasks by the project milestones: In both cases, your tasks will include concrete steps to achieve the goals or the milestones. For example, these tasks can be: “try different landing page,” “specify keywords,” "create text ad for the new keywords," etc. As you can see, Wrike is very flexible. You can organize your plans conveniently and easy. If you are intersted in other ways of organizing your tasks in Wrike, you can read about How to organize work of departments, How to customize statuses, How to better organize projects and events, How to organize client projects.

Project Management 3 min read

How to organize client projects in Wrike

If you provide professional services, you may be wondering: What is client database management, and how can I do it right? It may be convenient for you to organize your tasks in Wrike in the context of clients. You can create a special folder for each client and share it with him only. That way you have a clear picture of all your clients’ information, while still keeping it private for every client: At the same time, you don’t need to limit yourself to such an interpretation of your plans. You can add the context of services that you provide. Think about what needs to go into a project dashboard that works for you. Create an additional folder for each service and share it with the appropriate team members. For example, if you provide interior services, you can create the "Decoration," "Design," "Furnituring" and "Lighting" folders. If the client Brown&Co places a new order for decoration and furnituring, you can create an appropriate task and include it in both “Brown&Co,” "Decoration" and “Furnituring” folders. The task will be automatically shared with the representatives of the Brown company, your decoration and furnituring teams. The same rule applies to other orders. What is great, when the responsible party updates the task, marking it as completed, adding comments or updating the due date, your client is instantly informed about the order process. You don't need to spend time on creating special reports for your clients. Moreover,your business becomes absolutely transparent for you in the light of clients and services. You can also read about: How to organize work of departments, How to customize statuses, How to organize goals and milestones, How to better organize projects and events in Wrike.

Project Management 3 min read

First Things First: Watch A New Video on How to Prioritize Your Work in Wrike

Have you ever wished to be saved from the pressure of looming deadlines? If so, prioritizing project work is exactly what you need! Explicit and timely prioritization helps your team focus on the most important and urgent tasks, fight off distractions, and avoid deadline panic. If you drop by our blog, you already know how easy it is to prioritize tasks in Wrike project management software, as it takes only a mouse motion to set, adjust and share task priorities with your team. Prioritizing tasks is so crucial for efficient project management that it deserves more attention, and we decided to shoot a video on this topic. Our new video will help you refine your priorities and let important and urgent tasks make their way to the top of your team’s to-do lists: Now that you know our suggestions for avoiding the stress of a hectic schedule, please tell us about your practices for defining and sharing work priorities. What tricks do you use to keep the most important and urgent tasks on the radar?

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Are You Making the Most of Wrike?

#1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally

#2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment

#3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks

#4 - Don’t waste time downloading files

#5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports

Wrike Team

Are You Making the Most of Wrike?

#1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally

#2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment

#3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks

#4 - Don’t waste time downloading files

#5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports

Wrike Team

Related articles

How to organize goals and milestones in Wrike

How to organize client projects in Wrike

First Things First: Watch A New Video on How to Prioritize Your Work in Wrike

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