Brandon Weaver, Author at Blog Wrike
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Brandon Weaver

Brandon Weaver

Brandon Weaver is a former Senior Content Marketing Manager of Wrike. Early in his professional career, he worked with Conan O’Brien and ate breakfast at his house. He shares a birthday with Elvis, loves traveling, appreciates a great tagline, has a healthy obsession with the Golden State Warriors, and his favorite quote is “Keep smiling, it looks good on you.” At Wrike, he wrote about collaboration, project management, and how automation makes work not only easier, but better. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?
Wrike Helps Yourbiz Earn 25% More Revenue With 10% Fewer Resources
Project Management 7 min read

Wrike Helps Yourbiz Earn 25% More Revenue With 10% Fewer Resources

“How do you Wrike?” It’s a common question we ask customers in our customer advocacy program Wrike Stars. As you can imagine, the answers vary across industries and use cases, but we love hearing the variety of responses! In today’s ‘How I Wrike’ interview, we meet Pietro Poli, the Chief Operating Officer of Yourbiz, a marketing agency based out of Treviolo, Italy. Get an inside look at how Pietro and his colleagues integrate Wrike into their everyday operations to streamline tasks, create order out of chaos, and deliver exceptional services to clients across the globe.  “Thanks to Wrike, we solved many of our problems and generated 25% more revenue with 10% fewer resources.”  How’d they do it? Let’s dive in to get the details.  What does your company do? PP: My company Yourbiz works with manufacturing companies that produce in Italy and sell worldwide, especially in the B2B market. We help them acquire, nurture, and transform potential customers into paying customers via demand generation activities. What department do you work in and how is your team structured? PP: I work with two departments: marketing and content. The marketing team has two branches — demand generation and ecommerce. This department has two team leaders and six people who work alongside us. I'm also the team leader for the content department, which has four copywriters, two SEO Specialists, and two SEM specialists. What is your job function? Describe a day in your life using Wrike. PP: I am the Chief Operating Officer at Yourbiz. My responsibilities span three different categories: Collaborating with my colleagues to support their marketing or content endeavors, provide guidance on technical matters, and help them achieve their goals.  Overseeing the entire team's workload through Wrike, actively assisting colleagues in resolving any bugs, monitoring incoming intake requests, and creating informative dashboards for efficient information retrieval. As a trainer, I frequently attend events and webinars and visit prospect and customer companies to educate them on demand generation and HubSpot, sharing valuable insights and knowledge.  Which Wrike features do you feel most knowledgeable about?  PP: Wrike no longer has many secrets for me as I'm becoming an onboarding partner. I especially love: Workload chart The ability to see in real time how much teammates are loaded with work and to be able to make forecasts on what can be sold to obtain an optimal load. Try Wrike free Wrike Analyze Even though I don't consider myself a true Wrike Analyze guru, having a background as a marketer and data analyst, I spend a lot of time creating new data visualizations and discovering trends that I never would have seen in other ways. Automations Coming from the CRM world, marketing automation, and CRO, being able to create automations to simplify and execute the work is a huge benefit for all our teams love. We save a ton of time and can focus more on impactful work for clients. Please provide 2-4 examples of processes you use Wrike to support. PP: As I mentioned in the Wrike Community, we use Wrike throughout all our business processes. Whether it's a website development, marketing campaign, or strategic analysis, we have implemented and continue to implement and maintain specific processes and blueprints to help us in the work. Example #1: Integrating other software The process I’m most proud of in Wrike is integrating TimeLog with our billing software. It combines information on the budget available for each project with the hours that we schedule (effort) and the hours used. This process lets us know in advance if we’ll "overrun" when entering the project. It's incredible! Try Wrike free Example #2: Customizing project workflows One of our web agency’s most important services is creating client websites. All departments are involved in these activities (sales, product marketing, content, developers, graphics, etc.). It took me three weeks to implement the process — designing a large workflow, defining all the dependencies, and all the possible activities (optional and otherwise). Only at that point did we create the blueprint. Every six months we do a review because things change quickly. Example #3: Wrike request forms We use Wrike custom request forms for a variety of reasons, but here are the top two. Request for quotes with new clients We ensure a seamless and efficient client onboarding process through a dedicated request form that our sales team utilizes when approaching new clients. This form contains a comprehensive set of interview questions that our salesperson can refer to during the client meeting. By using this form within Wrike, our team avoids the need to work with external files, and all the information gathered is conveniently stored within the platform.  After the interview, if a quote is needed, a different form is filled out, specifying objectives, client budget, and analysis requirements. Wrike then automatically creates tasks and subtasks for each analysis. It’s a manual process, but our goal is to automate it in the future, ensuring more efficient client onboarding. Transfer of new contracts Every time a contract is signed, the salesperson must use a specific form to pass it over to operations, the administrative office, and the PM. The PM confirms the salesman's request, with an approval, and completes all the missing information in the created task using a custom item type. At this point, the operations and administration teams receive an approval. They create the job in Wrike and ERP software and kick off the tasks. Try Wrike free Which Wrike features or use cases do you want to learn more about? PP: Working with production companies that produce in Italy and sell all over the world, it would be very useful to know how other similar manufacturing companies have leveraged Wrike to communicate the value of the software even to more structured companies. What’s your story? Want to tell your Wrike story and be featured in a customer spotlight?  Join our exclusive customer advocacy program where you can connect and network with other Wrike users. When you do, you’ll get your chance to earn points, badges, and rewards by completing fun activities, participating in the Wrike Community, and amplifying the Wrike brand.

Step-By-Step Process How To Build a Wrike Request Form
Wrike Tips 5 min read

Step-By-Step Process How To Build a Wrike Request Form

Work requests can be big, or small, come in via email, direct message, conference call, and of course, the most dreaded — the "pop-in" request. With a variety of channels, it can be chaotic and difficult to keep track of everything and what projects are high priority. Not anymore with Wrike’s custom request forms. What are Wrike request forms? Wrike's request forms help you automate your work intake, route all requests to one place from internal and external customers, and ensure requesters provide the information you need. Translation: you have more control and can kickstart work immediately. Request forms don’t just streamline work intake, they also enable you to create tasks, workflows, and entire projects automatically — saving you and your team hours of time. Wrike request forms can also launch blueprints, which are templates for new work items and are designed to replicate recurring tasks such as writing a new blog post or press release. During this process, all necessary tasks, owners, and due dates are automatically created as well. When you create a project from a blueprint via the request form, project progress settings are preserved, along with the date and custom field rollup settings and the statuses of any subitems.  In the end, request forms and blueprints both increase efficiency, helping you save time and eliminate admin work so that you can start focusing immediately on more impactful work. How to build request forms in Wrike Step 1: Navigate to the space where you want to create a request form Step 2: Click the gear icon in the top-right corner Try Wrike free Step 3: Select Request forms Step 4: Click ‘Create a Request form’ if it’s the first request form in the space, or + Form if the space already contains existing forms. Step 5: Insert form information Enter a name for your request form (Optional) Provide a description for the form to help users understand what it’s for and when to submit it. Move to the right-hand panel and specify: The space your form should belong to Who should be able to see the form (everyone in your Wrike account, specific users and groups, or nobody in your account) If the form should create a new task or project, duplicate a task or project, or create an item from a blueprint Note: to create an item from a blueprint, first select ‘Duplicate task’ or ‘Duplicate project’ from this dropdown, then select ‘template task,’ and finally, the ‘blueprint’ tab. (Optional) Designate whether you want to enable a public link to the form (for non-Wrike users) and if it should trigger email notifications or contain a CAPTCHA security feature (Optional) Select the folder, project, or space where the items created via the form should be placed Note: If you don’t select anything at this step, the item created via form submission will be placed in the ‘Shared with me’ folder (Optional) Select a status for the task or folder that will be created after form submission. If you don’t select a status, tasks and projects created via request submission will have the first active status of the workflow applied to the folder, project, or space where they’re created. (Optional) Select a user to assign the created task or project (Optional) Set up an approval to be created via the request form (Optional) Add a prefix. You can set a prefix for tasks and projects duplicated via a request. The prefix will be a specified answer and is added to all associated subfolders, subprojects, tasks, and subtasks upon submission. Step 6: Customize form inputs After completing the steps above, click + Add question Select the question type you’d like to add from the dropdown menu Try Wrike free Step 7: Customization continued Enter your question and available answers (depending on the question type) (Optional) Enter ‘helper’ text to add additional information about the question. This information is visible to requesters but won’t appear on the resulting task or project. Click ‘Required’ to make a given question mandatory to complete and submit the form. You can also make questions and answers in your request form conditional, so requesters are redirected to different questions based on their form inputs. You can also map responses telling Wrike how to use certain answers in the created task or project Publish or save your new request form How will you use Wrike request forms to organize work?  For more details and to learn more about Wrike’s request forms, visit our help center. To set up an approval process in Wrike, please take a look at this how-to article.

Customer Spotlight: Educational Insights’ “How I Wrike” Story
Wrike Tips 7 min read

Customer Spotlight: Educational Insights’ “How I Wrike” Story

Customers are at the heart of what we do at Wrike. Over the years, customers have provided feedback and valuable insights that have led to us releasing some of our best features to date. We love hearing their feedback and take every opportunity to highlight their experience and stories in case studies, testimonials, and our customer advocacy program Wrike Stars.  Today we’re highlighting Kelly Recinos, Project Coordinator for the creative department at Educational Insights, a 60-year-old educational toy company based in Torrance, CA that produces learning toys, games, and educational materials. What department do you work in and how is your team structured? KR: I’m the Project Coordinator for the creative department. We recently went through a massive growth spurt, which inspired us to look closely at our processes as we brought in new talent. We had Wrike blueprints already created from the previous year's production cycles, so we dove right into process mode and built RACI charts for each type of asset we generate. We spoke with the stakeholders in every process and got their feedback. I then updated our request forms and blueprints to mirror more closely what actually happens during development. I use Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed custom fields in the blueprints to add the roles our stakeholders hold in each project. Since the infusion of new talent, we now have a brilliant copywriter and two widely skilled creative teams. Our digital team creates assets for marketing, social media, eCommerce, video, photography, and our website. Our print team designs packaging, guides, and products in tandem with the product development team along with catalogs and sales collateral of every type. Our Sr. Creative Director guides our brand strategy and ensures our design aligns with product positioning. What is your job function? Describe a typical workday using Wrike. KR: I usually start every morning with my Wrike inbox. Most of the messages roll in before 9 a.m. and after 2 p.m. Clearing the inbox first thing in the morning gives me a few hours to attend to other priorities.  My inbox has three main priorities: Automated notifications: These alert the assignee (and me) of any potential risk. The triggers are tasks due in three days, approvals in review for three days, and anything overdue. New requests: We have a request form for each type of asset we create. I verify that we have the information needed to get to work right away. I either assign the tasks to the designers or hand them off to the design managers to alert them of anything new. Questions, comments, and general project management: After the first two priorities are addressed, I review all other messages that require my response or feedback so that work can continue moving forward. After clearing my inbox, then it’s meetings, non-Wrike communication, and general project management. I spend a little time each day reviewing allocation so we can reassign tasks if necessary. For that, we’ve just started using Wrike effort to track capacity in our teams. At the moment we estimate, but I expect to track real numbers by this time next year.  Next, I check in with Wrike Stars to hear about updates and see what the black belts are up to. I get the best ideas from the workarounds and processes posted in Community. The rest of my time in Wrike is spent building or learning to refine tools and features. Try Wrike free Which Wrike features do you feel most comfortable using or most knowledgeable about? KR: I love a really robust automated request form! Anything that provides the information we need to get right to work without multiple rounds of clarifying questions — that’s my kind of feature.  The project intake process is wonderful, but Wrike’s approval feature is what sold us on the platform four years ago. The ability to assign specific approvers to review a file with a deadline and notifications is helpful. An asynchronous review platform with tools to mark up the file and comments linked directly to the marks on the file? That’s a game-changer. The approval feature easily cuts 25% off the time it used to take us to review designs. Having all comments collected in iterative versions is the icing on the cake.  In the last six months, I have become a huge fan of Spaces. Each department now has a dedicated Space for better access in finding their files. Users can now see specifically what they need to see and not an avalanche of all the projects and tasks of the last four years. Since Wrike is very robust and includes a ton of useful functionality, I always build a “How to Use Your Space” guide with screenshots showing their views and tools. What are 2-4 examples of processes you use Wrike to support? KR: Our new product design work is seasonal. We start working on the new product line in March for release in September. Late summer is extremely busy as we are finishing packaging and product and submitting every piece for approval. At Educational Insights, 95% of our approvals happen in Wrike, with the final sign-off meeting being face-to-face with the executive team.  As we are finalizing the new product line, we are ramping up the marketing launch. Photography, video, eCommerce pages, website landing pages, GIFs, giveaways, every type of marketing asset, and thousands of words of marketing copy are captured and managed in Wrike. And that’s just the new product!  The digital team is working on these marketing assets for our existing product year-round. Our OEM team creates “exclusive” versions of our products for big retailers. OEM projects have a concept phase and a design phase so they needed a Space due to their interrupted product cycle. We create concept artwork the sales team presents to buyers at big retail stores. The concept project sits until we hear from the buyer. If the project is picked up, the concept goes to development immediately. The OEM team Space has a calendar for meetings, reports, folders for each product phase, and their user guide. When we have a very big project outside of standard production, I create a Space for it, so it doesn’t get mixed into the standardized requests.  So far this year, we’ve designed the interior of our new office, written an enormous brand book, and launched a robot pet (Meet PYXEL!) each with its own dedicated Wrike Space. This year we started with Wrike Analyze and I spend as much time as possible learning how business intelligence streamlines project management. Recently, I earned the Wrike Report Mastery Silver certification and build analytics boards of all sorts looking for the best visuals to illustrate the work we’re doing. Try Wrike free Which Wrike features or use cases do you want to learn more about? KR: Custom item types, in particular, because I use a recurring meeting template that creates three active tasks at a time. I created a meeting workflow and when I change the status to Next Meeting, a message is sent to the managers so they can add to the agenda.  I’d like to create Custom item types for some of our quick-turnaround asset requests to make them simpler and differentiate them from other tasks. I need to see examples of ingenious Custom item type templates on their own, not just in Space templates.  I also want to keep up the continued development in dashboards and analytics board widgets. I haven’t even started to use all the fantastic new updates added this month, but I will because creating clean, visual stories for my stakeholders is critical to my success. How do you Wrike? Want to join Wrike Stars or be featured in a customer spotlight story? Join our exclusive customer advocacy program that celebrates top supporters! Once you’re a member, you can earn points, badges, and rewards by completing fun activities, participating in the Wrike Community, and amplifying the Wrike brand.

How To Write an RFP for Work Management Solutions
Wrike Tips 3 min read

How To Write an RFP for Work Management Solutions

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely already compared top work management vendors, sat through product demonstrations, and trialed a few solutions. Now comes the time to write a request for proposal (RFP) to each of your top selections. But before you send off this all-important document, you need to know everything to include so you’re not backtracking later. Defining your organization’s requirements also helps the responding vendors know upfront how to tailor a response according to your organization, use cases, etc. Writing your RFP: it’s all in the details Writing an RFP for a work management solution is just as much about the vendor as it is about your company. For starters, it’s important that your RFP include a short company biography so vendors know how long you’ve been in business, any awards you’ve received, why you’re looking for a work management solution, and more. Our new guide explores the following items you can take action on right away when you receive responses. Scoring vendors Timing  Solution constraints Legal requirements You’ll want to define your primary use case and possibly secondary use cases for needing a work management solution. Knowing those definitions will help you determine what features are of higher or lower priority as you further evaluate vendors. Having an established timeline and any legal requirements are essential to your RFP too, but what else? The checklist: what to include Keep in mind that no universal RFP applies to every company and the document will vary depending on your relationship with a work management provider. If your company is brand new to work management, your RFP will be structured quite differently compared to if you’re already a customer and looking to add more departments (who may have different requirements and use cases). Customer win stories/references What content do you expect to see in custom demos? Product questions Integration requirements Security questions Download guide now What to look for in a work management provider When you’re deciding on a solution, you need more than just a centralized hub to store all work data and conversations. There are five key areas and an associated list of features to seek out during your evaluation process, including how work is created and managed, and how the vendor supports growing and changing organizations. Make sure your chosen provider can satisfy all your wishes and requirements so you’re not facing buyer’s remorse later. (Download the guide for more details!) Prepare to write your RFP with our new guide Download our free guide today and get all the details in writing an RFP for work management solutions so you can make an informed decision for your team going forward. You won’t find this level of detail anywhere else.

FAQ: Wrike Experts Answer Everything About Custom Item Types
Productivity 7 min read

FAQ: Wrike Experts Answer Everything About Custom Item Types

Over the years, Wrike has become known as the most intuitive and versatile work management platform, one that any team, department, or company can leverage for work. No two teams are alike; they adhere to different workflows and have unique terminology and processes. So, it’s only logical to offer users the flexibility to configure their work however they need. Enter: Wrike Custom item types. This feature is unique to Wrike, enabling teams to go beyond generic tasks and projects. Translation: Wrike adapts to you, not the other way around. Our platform speaks your team’s language, so you can tailor work items in whichever way suits you best. ‘Work your own way’ has never been more true than it does today with Custom item types. During a recent webinar, Wrike experts Andrey Moskvin and Ryan Candela introduced Custom item types, and we caught up with them after to get some more insight. The questions here were collected from webinar attendees along with our Collaborate 2022 session. For an in-depth demo, please watch the webinar here, but until then, enjoy the Q&A below. QUESTION: Do Custom item types eliminate the need for projects for fairly simple workflows?  A: No, if you prefer, you can keep using native project and task types for your work items where it’s relevant. Though, some teams don’t feel comfortable relying on project management terminology and prefer their own language to name work. In that case, you can use Custom item types, which are tailored derivatives of a native task or project with very similar attributes, but with the ability to configure the layout, fields, automation rules, parent-child relations, and set specific naming and icons. Furthermore, Custom item types can be unique to the Space where the team is operating. To sum up, you can rely on out-of-the-box Wrike Projects or make it your own project-based work item type — whichever works best for your use case and work style.  QUESTION: Can we update current tasks to Custom item types?  A: Yes! Open a task and hover over the three dots. Scroll down to “Change item type” to select a Custom item type you've created. You can also change the item back to a task if you want. The detailed step-by-step process is covered in this help center article. QUESTION: Can we set up a recurring Custom item type? A: Yes! Custom item types (and any item with the new Work Item View) now have the option to add recurrences. Feel free to ideate and create item types for regular activities, such as meeting notes, sprint reviews, company all-hands agendas, and many more. Try Wrike for free QUESTION: Can you provide information on when to use a Blueprint vs a Custom item type?  A: Blueprints are meant to help quickly create a project without starting from scratch and serve to templatize work structure, assignments, and other details in any work item. Blueprints are commonly used for recurring work and usually contain pre-filled content, assignees, and/or dates. Custom item types don’t have pre-filled content (except the description field) and serve as types of work items allowing you to configure fields, layout, and automation rules. A Custom item type defines key characteristics of work elements and specifies the parent-child relationship between objects.  Custom item types and Blueprints work great in tandem. Custom items can be used as Blueprint building blocks as any regular work item (task, project, folder). You can simply build a new work structure based on a mix of tasks and your own items, add values to the fields, add sub-items, and finally templatize it all as a Blueprint. For existing Blueprints, you can make adjustments and convert some tasks to relevant Custom items when it makes sense for your scenario. Also, both Blueprints and stand-alone Custom item types can be used with our powerful dynamic request forms — the selection depends on your specific use case. QUESTION: Is there a gallery of examples of creative ways to use Custom item types? A: You can visit our help page which features a few examples along with a three-minute video on how to set up Custom item types. The Wrike community page also highlights some use case templates, and you can expect to see more templates — with out-of-the-box custom types — for various use cases in 2023. QUESTION: How do Projects and Custom item types co-exist in a marketing/creative services team?  A: The best practice is to set up and rely on Space-specific, project-based Custom item types, like Campaigns, Events, or Press Releases. Your own types can then be configured to include only relevant task-type subitems, like Copy, Brief, Ad, Promo, etc. that include the same values. Marketing and creative services teams will benefit from having familiar terminology, standardized behavior, an intuitive layout, and field names (removing all unnecessary fields and clutter). Some teams may still be used to existing Wrike projects and tasks and willing to experiment with only a few work item types. In this case, they can work with both, and start noticing the benefits of Custom item types. For instance, type- and space-specific automation rules and fields that bring unique business logic to work streams. Once teams adopt Custom item types and decide to switch, it’s easy to convert existing work items to the specific type they need. If there are still initiatives (like cross-functional activities) that don’t fall under this category and miss a dedicated item type, we recommend you rely on our native Project and Task types instead. Marketing and creative users will still have the option to add these items to their Space and manage projects alongside project-based Custom items using Wrike views, progress tracking, and risk prediction. QUESTION: Are the item types already supported in API Calls and BI export?  A: Custom item types are supported in API. BI export support is not ready yet but is on our roadmap, and we'll make an announcement when it’s available. QUESTION: Can Custom item types be usable in multiple Spaces, but not account-wide? A: Custom item types are configured one of two ways — Space-specific or account-wide. At this time, it’s not possible to pick and choose which Spaces they appear in or to convert between Space- and account-level Custom item types. To clarify, you can: Create and manage Space-level Custom item types in one Space only Create real work items based on the Custom item type catalog related to this Space, or account-wide Tag Custom item type-based work items to other locations, i.e. other Spaces or folders and projects from the other Spaces Try Wrike for free QUESTION: Can we filter by Custom item types in Wrike Analyze, reports, calendars, and dashboards? A: Yes! We provide full support across reports, calendars, dashboards, and various Wrike views (table, board, Gantt, etc.). Pinnacle customers can also filter in Wrike Analyze.   Get started with Custom item types today Custom item types unleash Wrike’s power and configurability to unprecedented levels, but it’s worth mentioning that not all users have access to create and manage them. For security and governance reasons, Custom item types are managed by Space and Account administrators depending on their respective needs. Want to add Custom item types to your team’s toolkit? If you’re on a ‘Business’ plan or higher, good news — you already have access! For other Wrike users, please contact your customer success representative about upgrading today. Now, the only remaining question is — how will you configure Wrike for your team?

Intelco Unlocks Operational Efficiency with Wrike
Collaboration 5 min read

Intelco Unlocks Operational Efficiency with Wrike

Here’s a story we’re sure you’ll like because it’s one that you can probably relate to or stirs up past memories. Intelco is a software house that provides services for large industrial groups such as the motorway, airport, engineering, retail, textile, and many others. Based in Gussago, Italy, they’re a true strategic partner for companies that outsource personnel administration. The company offers a wide range of services thanks to the "tailor-made" customization of the IRIS software, an Intelco-owned platform made up of about 42 modules to optimize, rationalize, and digitize human resource management processes. Back in 2019, the company faced an all-too-common scenario. Their teams worked out of disparate systems, needed more visibility, and couldn’t track work efficiently or see work in progress or a historical record of completed projects. They were determined to find ways to optimize their processes and work smarter. Change management was needed. Although change seemed intimidating, they knew it had to be done to reach their end goal — improving collaboration and streamlining processes. We talked with Mattia Ronchi and Paolo Baiamonte, Project Managers at Intelco, to learn more about their workflows, major pain points, and what led them to choose Wrike. How did Intelco manage and track work before? MR & PB: We used to manage all our work via spreadsheets and handwritten notes. Our service team, in particular, relied on email and phone calls because clients couldn’t initiate new requests without first emailing or calling the service team. So any time a bug needed fixing or a change request was sent, the service team was inundated with inbound inquiries. It wasn’t ideal, and we knew there had to be a better way. What motivated your team to look for a better solution? MR & PB: It all started with upgrading our ticketing system and fielding new requests. The glaring problem was with multiple channels to accept requests. There needed to be a consolidated, easy-to-track system to handle everything. But we also wanted to streamline processes, enable more teams to have visibility into the work being done by all departments and collaborate. And here’s the big thing — we wanted to achieve everything in one place.  What was your evaluation process, and what sold you on Wrike? MR & PB: Implementing organizational change isn’t easy, but we knew change management was in order, so we sought a work management solution. We sat through multiple product demos to determine which solution best fit our needs. After all the demos, we weren’t impressed because every provider was too niche, the software was too clunky, or it was not customizable to what we needed. Once we saw Wrike, it was clear how robust the platform was and how we could customize it to how we preferred to work. The other platforms were not as flexible as Wrike, which made all the difference. For instance, the request form is everything we hoped for and more because it simplifies the process and auto-assigns the right teammate instantly. Our request forms help us to prioritize work so that every morning when our teams arrive, they can easily see a prioritized task list in Wrike of what they have to do, so they’re not guessing what needs to be done. Which Intelco teams use Wrike to manage work and collaborate? MR & PB: Along with the service team, our project management team was the first group into Wrike because I helped spearhead the change management process. Once we saw immediate success, word traveled fast to other departments like marketing, legal, finance, and IT. Fast forward to today, and the entire company works inside Wrike. That’s another wonderful aspect of the product — each department at Intelco has its own dedicated Space where we set up projects and can track activities. It’s great because all our work can be kept separate yet still housed in Wrike. What Wrike features do you recommend most? MR & PB: With request forms, we can tie them to Blueprints and launch full-fledged projects in a few clicks, so that’s great! And before using Wrike, we didn’t track time spent on work, but now we do with timesheets — we couldn’t live without them! We can monitor the time spent per task in real-time. We can better plan and forecast easier because there’s more visibility and a record of time spent. Speaking of visibility, other features we love include the ability to create custom dashboards via Wrike Analyze. Everyone, including managers, can see which projects are being released and their respective statuses. No more digging through emails, spreadsheets, or handwritten notes because it’s all in Wrike. Not only is all our work and collaboration in the platform, but these features specifically have helped us quickly understand which teams are performing the most compared to others and where we need to improve. What’s next for Intelco using Wrike? MR & PB: Every new employee gets onboarded into Wrike from day one, and we plan to use Wrike Integrate to sync our Salesforce account and others from our tech stack. Check out the full case study There’s more to the Intelco story; you can get the complete details here. You’ll see how, with Wrike, they deal with 90% fewer emails, can complete bug fixes 50% faster, and save 30% time in progress meetings. Read the full case study here.

How They Wrike: Lead Express’ Scalability Journey
News 5 min read

How They Wrike: Lead Express’ Scalability Journey

Lead Express needed a work management solution that could scale with their growing agency. See how they found flexibility and visibility with Wrike.

How Workflow Automation Software  Frees Up More of Your Time
Wrike Tips 7 min read

How Workflow Automation Software Frees Up More of Your Time

In part one of our “selecting the best CWM solution” series, we discussed that having a centralized project intake method and managing all your team’s work using a system of record are essential to working efficiently. Without these in place, you’re likely struggling to keep track of work, managing projects in multiple programs, and chasing down stakeholders to get project details. Part two highlighted the pain of slow asset approvals and siloed teams trying to collaborate. Today, we’ll focus on the advantages of workflow automation and working intelligently. Pain: You can’t automate repetitive tasks Most projects and tasks go through predictable stages before completion and always with some repetitive work. Assigning tasks to the correct teammate, advancing work to the next stage, and completing and archiving work. Administrative work translates to lost time on productive activities like interviewing customers for case studies or writing a new product announcement blog article. Why not use workflow automation software to auto-assign and notify the correct person when work is ready for their sign-off? There’s a finite time in the work day, and teams shouldn’t waste a second doing admin work that can be left to automation. Pain: The rate you scale is too slow  Business growth can often be a blessing and a curse. Blessing because revenues increase and teams grow but a curse because as organizations scale, projects and workloads increase, which could introduce resource availability constraints. As work demands escalate, teams don’t have time to dig through piles of data for decision-making insights. As a result, collaboration gets tougher and boundaries between work and personal time become blurred. With increased workloads, it becomes challenging for project owners and managers to manually track and analyze the progress of high-level initiatives and granular tasks. Assessing risk becomes equally challenging and determining risk levels based on intuition and experience is less effective and nearly impossible at scale.  Project owners and managers need an efficient way to identify at-risk initiatives at a glance and prioritize them without manually checking in with team members and digging through multiple project levels. Once a potential risk is identified, they need insight to accurately diagnose the cause and determine next steps, whether it’s notifying stakeholders, alleviating bottlenecks, adjusting resources, or updating timelines. Machine learning and AI continue to seep into our everyday activities and routines. Smart devices act as personal assistants to help manage calendars and set reminders. Help center bots are more prevalent to provide great customer service. Our most used applications provide auto-generated responses, such as Gmail, LinkedIn, and many phone messaging apps. All this technology is available at our fingertips to be more efficient, collaborate, and do more. Why should work be any different? Workflow automation tools free up teams to do their best work. As workload and collaboration ramp up, team members may sometimes get buried with notifications in need of timely responses. This is noteworthy because most work-related communications and responses are short and require simple decisions, but it takes too much time and manual effort. Plus, there’s pressure to respond quickly while juggling more responsibilities. Yet with notifications piling up, it can be overwhelming to respond without a quick way to answer. You need a workflow automation software solution that empowers you to act quickly and move work forward without much manual effort. Even in the digital transformation age, not all work is digital. Ever get a printed document or handwritten note from a colleague that the rest of your team should see? Even if you could digitize the file and upload it, the editing process would be painful. Physical document sharing, editing, and collaboration is unrealistic across distributed organizations and teams because members don’t have access to traditional office technology to digitize print assets. Common problems meet Wrike solutions Wrike Integrate, our workflow/process automation software add-on for all complex and multi-app workflows, has teamed up with our new Automation Engine to automate repeatable processes within Wrike. The Automation Engine can automate your most-used workflows to reduce operational busywork. Based on if/then logic, account administrators can build automation rules using triggers and actions to create custom reminders and notifications, move and organize work, update work status and assignments, initiate approval workflows, and take action based on project risk levels. No coding experience is necessary to create the automation rules.  There are many advantages of workflow automation. By removing repetitive tasks from a team’s workload, you can reduce errors, streamline processes, and save each team member hundreds of hours per year — another way of improving productivity. Project Risk Prediction Wrike’s built-in Work Intelligence™ features Project Risk Prediction, where we use machine-learning technology to predict potential project delays and alert project and team leaders of the possible causes. This allows them to take action fast to reduce or avoid delays. Our workflow automation software uses signals like start and end dates, tasks extending beyond project deadlines, and prior outcomes from similar projects to assess medium and high risks, and sends email digests to alert users. The predictions can be used as inputs to the Automation Engine to trigger actions that automate the activation of different scenarios based on project risk. Smart Replies To address the need for quick, short responses, Wrike’s Smart Replies allow users to take quick actions to move work forward by responding to notifications and activity with automated replies generated with machine learning. Each reply is based on the context of the conversation and allows users to select from up to three responses for each @mention received in their Wrike Inbox. Document Processing Teammates don’t have to fumble with physical documents anymore when they want to share with the group. Wrike’s new Document Processing functionality, an optical character recognition (OCR) technology, digitizes and converts printed documents and handwritten notes into editable text files. Just use your mobile device camera as a scanner, save the file as a task attachment, and upload to Wrike. House of Design automates their workflow Ryan Okelberry, COO/Principal at House of Design details how Wrike’s automation speeds up his team’s workflow to deliver results: “... [Wrike] has been simple enough to allow us to write recipes fairly quickly and easily without having a lot of programming experience. It is often the little things that we can write recipes and automation for that really enhance the Wrike platform.” Work smarter with automation Automate your workflows, identify at-risk work, respond quicker, and collaborate on physical documents. It’s all possible with Wrike’s Automation Engine and cutting-edge Work Intelligence™. Let Wrike show you how by starting a free trial today. While you’re at it, download our new eBook, Empowering Teams With CWM: 13 Common Pain Points and How to Solve Them to learn the four key areas to consider when evaluating a CWM solution, including the top 16 features for hypergrowth and enterprise teams.

5 Steps to Work Management Success for Marketing Leaders
Marketing 3 min read

5 Steps to Work Management Success for Marketing Leaders

Marketing leaders need work management software to handle the pace of digital transformation. Discover the steps for success with Wrike’s free eBook.

Raising the Bar Again: 3 Wrike Security Enhancements  to Protect Your Work
News 5 min read

Raising the Bar Again: 3 Wrike Security Enhancements to Protect Your Work

With hybrid work environments now the norm, it makes sense to manage and collaborate on all your team’s projects in a centralized hub, like a work management platform. But as teams begin to store more of their work in the cloud, at some point, they begin to ask, “who has access, and is our data secure?” It’s a fair question, and teams deserve to know that their sensitive work is safe and secure from those without permission. Wrike is committed to keeping your data safe. Today, we’re announcing the availability of three enhancements to Wrike security features that reset the standard for work management platforms:  Space Level Delegation Locked Spaces Customizable User Types As a bonus, we’ve passed another series of security and privacy audits, including recertifications of SOC2 and SOC3. We first teased the security updates in our Collaborate 2021 announcement wrap-up article, and these features are aimed at giving more control to the right people while protecting your organization’s confidential data. The big three Wrike security features For context, here’s why security continues to be a driving force in our platform, according to Senior Vice President and Wrike General Manager, Citrix, Andrew Filev: “Enterprise-grade security and manageability have always played a central role in how we innovate and advance the Wrike platform. Overall increase in security risks, in addition to remote and hybrid work environments, has made data privacy a top priority for organizations. We want to ensure customers have a feeling of total security when they use Wrike, no matter where they sit in an organization. That’s why we continue to make Wrike Spaces, which are hubs for teams to house information and focus on purposeful work, and are robust yet still user-friendly. Our commitment to doing both of these things is where we are unrivaled.” Space-Level Delegation Space-Level Delegation enables teams to better democratize and organize their work by putting full rights into the hands of admins at the Space level. Now, Space admins can quickly and easily provide the right control to the right people on a task, project, or Space.  This new capability not only lets teams accelerate work by building out their own workspace based on their needs and timeline, but it also lets Space admins take full ownership by choosing who has access to what, such as reports, dashboards, or calendars, in real time. They can also access and manage Custom Fields, define member lists and permissions, and create and manage Space-level request forms.  Space-Level Delegation is available to Business, Enterprise, and Pinnacle customers. Locked Spaces Next is Locked Spaces, which are restricted, secure Spaces used to collaborate on isolated work and get things done with complete data privacy and control. Wrike is the only collaborative work management platform to offer the capability of Locked Spaces, which allows users to take extra precautions aimed at protecting their business and eliminating risks.  Unlike Public, Private, and Personal Spaces, only members of a Locked Space will be able to locate or access Space-level items or tools in Wrike and interact with other members in that Space. Whether your executive leadership team is collaborating on a sensitive project, finalizing contract details with legal, or you’re an agency working with a client, Locked Spaces ensures only approved stakeholders have access to the work items and information isn’t leaked accidentally.  L​ocked Spaces is available to Pinnacle customers. Customizable User Types One of Wrike’s cornerstone abilities is its customizability — request forms, workflows, dashboards, etc. Now, add user types to the list. With Customizable User Types, actions like disabling status changes from collaborators or allowing external users to share tasks and folders are as simple as one click. Customizable User Types extends current Access Roles and Controlled Admin Permissions security settings and builds on Wrike’s robust user and admin controls with a new way of managing granular permissions. It provides Account owners and admins with the correct permission to set up what users can do in Wrike based on their license and role type.  Customizable User Types are available to Enterprise and Pinnacle customers. This collection of security updates is best summed up by Filev: “Over the past few years, concerns around data security and confidentiality have grown exponentially as companies look for new ways to allow employees to work flexibly and collaboratively without compromising information integrity. We quell those fears with a work management platform that is not only the most powerful but the most secure, as well. With this latest round of security enhancements, we give teams and organizations the peace of mind they’re looking for.” Very few work management platforms offer as much configurability and security control as Wrike. We’re confident that these enhancements will safeguard customers’ sensitive work and reset the bar for data security. New compliance certifications To round out our security announcements, Wrike also passed another cycle of Security and Privacy audits and recertifications. These include five international security standards with the British Standards Institution and the extension of its SOC2 compliance and SOC3 reports, following an audit by Schellman & Company. For more information, visit our press release here. Trust your sensitive work data to Wrike Not all work requires the same permission levels. When your team requires more than the average, don’t settle for the status quo. Uplevel and upgrade your team’s work with Wrike security features. Start a free trial today and experience unparalleled data security from the most intuitive and robust collaborative work management solution.

21 Unique PMO Use Cases Prove Wrike's Versatility
Project Management 5 min read

21 Unique PMO Use Cases Prove Wrike's Versatility

PMOs have a tough job as they have to play both the roles of quarterback and air traffic controller in determining project priority, when work can begin, where to allocate resources, and reporting on the team and department’s work. They are the go-to person to ensure project charters capture all requirements and impacts to the business before they’re approved to begin work. As work commences, PMOs must monitor and mitigate risks before they knock projects off course. Above all, it’s imperative they know exactly where projects stand and are able to give a comprehensive progress report on all progress at a moment’s notice. Similar to football, where a quarterback is only as good as his receivers, the same analogy applies to PMOs — you’re only as effective as the tools at your disposal. You need to connect strategy, planning, and execution, whether you operate within an Agile or Waterfall methodology. For too long, PMOs have relied on portfolio project management (PPM) tools to get by, but unfortunately, these only offer investment planning and portfolio management, financial planning, cost analysis, and maybe timelines. Traditional PPM setups don’t connect with project execution and collaboration. This is where Wrike shines, offering a combined CWM for PMOs, so they can do it all in one platform and connect strategy to execution to results. This eBook is divided into nine sections, comprising 21 use cases of how PMOs rely on Wrike to connect planning to execution and strategic impact. What’s in the eBook Inside the eBook, you’ll learn: The nine key areas in which PMOs rely on Wrike to get work done The 21 use cases Wrike is uniquely equipped to solve Visual examples of how Wrike enables PMOs to strategize, plan, and execute their work Wrike features that PMOs can use immediately Dynamic request forms: Trigger a pre-planned project from these automated intake forms and route the work request to the appropriate teammate. Customize each form so that you collect all the details upfront and start work immediately. Blueprints: These are especially useful for recurring work as they allow you to quickly create tasks, folders, or projects with attributes you’ve already specified. Create a Blueprint from scratch, save existing work as a Blueprint, or launch new work using a Blueprint you’ve saved. Resource management: With Wrike’s Workload view, project managers get full visibility into each team member’s schedule and workload, can adjust timelines, and reassign work as necessary to accommodate urgent requests or changing priorities. @mention functionality: Just like Slack and social media channels, Wrike’s @mention functionality lets you tag stakeholders as needed to request their feedback or inform them of project updates. Anytime you tag someone, they receive automated notifications in Wrike and email. Shareable dashboards: Get a detailed overview of work progress at an individual, team, and department level instantly. All stakeholders can track work progress in real time, visualize deadlines, and reprioritize as necessary. Critical path: In Gantt charts, focus on tasks that are crucial to completing a project and tasks that can cause work to fall behind. Via the Timeline, all tasks that are part of the critical path turn red, and those that don’t remain their original color. Project scorecard: With budgeting in Wrike, program managers can add custom fields to track budget spend for their entire program while also sharing real-time updates with their team and highlighting key milestones and KPIs. Work breakdown structure: Make large projects more manageable by breaking them down into smaller items, such as folders, subfolders, tasks, and subtasks, while organizing everything into programs that roll up into portfolios. RAID logs and project risk report: Identify and score potential risks based on severity during planning so that they can be mitigated along the way. PMOs can track and resolve these risks using the risk management dashboard. Finally, project managers can monitor risks from start to finish with Wrike’s weekly automated project risk report. Time tracking: Track resource spending against planned budgets in near real-time and lock time entries after approval, whether you prefer weekly, monthly, or a specified interval. If you forget to set a timer, you can even add time retroactively with a few clicks. Cross-tagging: Give full transparency to everyone into work items (those who need it) so they can track projects amongst their workflows. Cross-tag tasks, subtasks, folders, milestones, entire projects, and more. No other CWM can match Wrike’s cross-tagging functionality. Get all the PMO use cases here There are 21 great reasons why PMOs at Siemens, Walmart Canada, and Ogilvy trust Wrike — it’s the most robust CWM solution to help them connect strategy, execution, and results. Get the specifics by downloading the use case eBook here.

Project Forecasting Made Easier: Introducing Wrike Resource Bookings
News 7 min read

Project Forecasting Made Easier: Introducing Wrike Resource Bookings

Introducing Wrike Resource Bookings: an easy and efficient way to optimize your project forecasting and boost insights into project resource requirements.

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