How to Customize Wrike in 1-2-3!

September 19, 2021 - 5 min read

Wrike Team

Wrike, in its turn, is flexible by its nature and, therefore, can be easily modified to become truly yours. We invite you to take a walk with us through this short customization guide and quickly shape Wrike to both your personal and professional needs.

1. Adjust Wrike to your tastes

Come out of the dark

In Wrike, the avatar is a great way to make online communication with your team much more personal, and it also helps you instantly spot who is responsible for a task and who left a comment.

So go ahead, find your best photo and let your team get inspired by your broad smile and sparkling eyes. : ) To upload an avatar, simply go to your profile settings by clicking on your name in the top right-hand corner of your workspace.

Parlez-vous Wrike? (Oui!)

People from 55 countries choose Wrike to collaborate effectively and get more things done together. That's why it was so important for us to make sure that non-native English speakers also feel comfortable using Wrike. So now you have a chance to use Wrike in your native language! Just go to your profile settings and choose it from the “language” drop-down menu. If the language you need is not in the list yet, feel free to join our translation community and contribute to the translation process!

What time is it?

While you are in your profile settings, don’t forget to check that your time-zone settings are set correctly, as this may affect your tasks’ due dates and the time of receiving your daily to-do e-mails.

2. Adjust Wrike to your work habits

How much of a news-geek are you?

It’s always rewarding to be the one who learns the news first, isn’t it? That’s why Wrike constantly keeps you up-to-date with the latest changes in your projects by sending instant notifications to your e-mail.

However, if you prefer to get your news dose once a day, simply go to your profile settings and change the notification frequency from “immediately” to “daily digest.” And if it suits you better to follow the updates in real-time in the Activity Stream, you can always cancel the notifications by choosing “none” in the same drop-down menu.

Ready for your daily agenda?

Many of us start our workday with a quick inbox check to get a hold of the current situation. And to help you cover all the nuances of the coming workday, Wrike sends you a daily agenda, and what time to schedule it is up to you! No matter if you are an early bird or a night owl, just schedule your to-do lists to arrive at the time when you feel most productive! To do so, simply go to your profile settings, scroll down and choose the preferred time. And although it’s a very top-notch way to stay on track with your tasks, you can always switch it off by simply choosing the “don’t send” option.

3. Adjust Wrike to your expertise

Add custom widgets

Wrike’s dashboard conveniently gathers the most important tasks from across the workspace: tasks planned for today and this week, overdue tasks, etc. But what if you want to focus on a particular cut of information? You may want to monitor tasks within a particular project or your teams’ tasks for the current week. With Wrike, you can access the needed data with a couple of clicks, as you can easily create a custom widget to aggregate the relevant tasks in one spot and shape your dashboard to your expertise.

Pick your Favorites

Wrike makes it easy for you to handle even multiple projects. To quickly move between them, we recommend you to keep the folders you frequently use in a separate folder called “Favorites.” It’s also very easy to keep your most important tasks gathered from different folders there. This way, the needed tasks will be just a click away and, if you wish, no one but you will see them. ;-)

Slice-and-dice the latest updates

Wrike’s Activity Stream is the slickest way to not only stay up-to-date with the project progress, but also discuss tasks and issues in real time. Want to see what your team has been up to lately? Or maybe just want to check the updates in the tasks assigned to you? Simply apply different Activity Stream filters and see the news cut you need!

We hope that this short customization guide will not only make your work more efficient and pleasant, but also make Wrike feel truly yours!

To get a brief and visual version of our Wrike customization hacks download the ppt presentation. And don’t forget to share it with your team!

Wrike Team

Occasionally we write blog posts where multiple people contribute. Since our idea of having a gladiator arena where contributors would fight to the death to win total authorship wasn’t approved by HR, this was the compromise.

#Wrike Features

Wrike Tips 7 min read

Customer's Tip of The Day: How to Make the Learning Curve of Adopting Wrike Even Shorter

One of our customers, the Australian company Aduro Pty Ltd., is an expert in e-learning. Their platform enables teachers and managers to upload their learning materials online, so that students can play them on any device anytime. This is a great step forward in speeding up the lesson preparation process and a great way to save a lot of money on organizing training sessions. Whew, do you wish your school had adopted this platform a long time ago? Of course, we couldn’t help asking Aduro which ways of adopting Wrike worked best for their team. We believe their practices will help you bring newcomers on board even quicker and easier, whether you have just created a Wrike account, or you are planning to extend it to new departments or team members!One of our customers, the Australian company Aduro Pty Ltd., is an expert in e-learning. Their platform enables teachers and managers to upload their learning materials online, so that students can play them on any device anytime. This is a great step forward in speeding up the lesson preparation process and a great way to save a lot of money on organizing training sessions. Whew, do you wish your school had adopted this platform a long time ago? “For me, studying is all about the pleasure of learning and the passion to get better,” says Martin Schwall, Business Development Manager at Aduro Pty Ltd., “When it comes to bringing a new tool for the team, I always try to catch their attention by inspiring a personal interest in it. I also try to find the best ways of fitting it into the team’s current working practices, be it the workflow or the other tools and devices they use." Aduro's team at Brisbane bridge semi-marathon The tips Martin has shared with us are based exactly on these principles: 1. Make the benefits clear. Resistance to changes is natural for all teams, and it can be the main stumbling block when it comes to a new tool. That’s why it’s important to dedicate some time for the initial presentation and make sure that the benefits outweigh the inclination to stick to your team’s old habits. Getting prepared for the initial presentation is equally important. You need to focus more on “why” than on “how.” You don’t need to go too deep into details. Be ready to handle critical objections, and so on. You can find all these and many more useful tips in the 1-2-3 guide to cultivating a productivity habit with Wrike. 2. Use project templates. You might consider creating templates for all similar projects that your team can simply duplicate when needed. For your team members, this really facilitates the launching of a new project, especially during the first weeks of using the software. And once they see how much time it saves, they will be much more enthusiastic about the new project management tool! If you used MS Project to manage your projects prior to Wrike, you can easily import them into your new workspace. 3. Make the most of e-mail integration. One of the hardest things for a project manager is to make sure everyone regularly updates their tasks and informs the rest of the team about the changes. If your team uses e-mail a lot in their day-to-day work, e-mail integration greatly helps to develop this habit of regularly updating. With Wrike’s help, your team members can easily update and comment on a task, or create a new one right from their inbox! And with Wrike’s add-ins for Outlook and Apple mail, they can actually do it in the interactive Wrike tab while still staying in their e-mail client. This way, your team doesn’t need to change their habits to keep the project data up-to-date. 4. Ensure the work guidelines are easily accessible. If you need some special guidelines to fit Wrike into your working process, it’s handy to write them down and keep the documents online. You can create a special folder in Wrike for that and attach files to the folder description. This way, team members can always access the docs to freshen their memory and avoid potential misunderstandings. Also, you’ll save time on explaining the guidelines to the future newcomers. 5. Don’t forget about mobile apps. As Martin mentioned before, it’s always better to proceed from tools and devices that your team already uses. We bet most of your team members have either an iPhone or Android. In this case, they can easily stay on top of the projects and update tasks through their preferred gadgets, thanks to Wrike’s mobile apps. Now it’s easy to access their workspace wherever they are! We would like to thank Martin for sharing these wonderful tips and hope you’ll also find them helpful for your team’s onboarding. Check out one of our previous posts if you are eager to see more pieces of advice on how to adopt Wrike quickly and easily on your team. Why is it important to keep learning? As a small bonus, we’ve asked Martin to share his vision of continuous learning, a concept that is becoming a more and more popular nowadays. “I see continuous learning and development as a keystone of the organization’s growth and success. Today, talented people are getting more and more difficult to acquire and to keep. And in these conditions, the concept of continuous learning not only brings new competences to your organization, but also ensures your talents receive the necessary attention and keep contributing to your organization’s excellence,” Martin says. Interested to learn more about it? Watch our podcast with Martin! “The visibility Wrike provided us on projects and resources has dramatically changed our way of working. But what I love most about this tool is its flexibility. I have implemented Wrike 3 times in 3 different organizations, and every time I was able to fit my process by using folders,” says Martin Schwall, Business Development Manager at Aduro Pty Ltd.

Wrike Tips 3 min read

Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency

Scott Struber, the VP/Operations of Yamanair Creative, a full-service ad agency, deployed Wrike to his team in March 2012. Scott now runs easily 80% of the business in Wrike, effortlessly collaborating with a team of 20+ spread across the country. In my conversation with Scott, I asked "If your friend in another company or department was implementing Wrike, what advice would you give her to get up and running quickly?" His response was both insightful and helpful for any new or existing business using Wrike. Understand your Business Goals First, make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish and how Wrike helps achieve that goal. Then, become as well educated about Wrike as possible. Stay aware of what your people need to know and need to do in Wrike. The users need to understand how this will work within the organization and at their team level. Finally, lead by example. You got to use it yourself if you expect others to use it. Be an ambassador for Wrike. Position for Productivity Positioning Wrike appropriately is very important. Don’t say, “Here’s something you need to learn.” Instead, roll Wrike out and share, “We found something that’s going to boost our productivity and allow you to move through the day with less stress, and go home without worrying about what you may have missed." Wrike is a tool we use to help make our jobs easier. Put another way, we let the software do the heavy-lifting when it comes to remembering. Be Firm on Team Adoption When implementing Wrike, it’s important to be firm about team adoption. As I shared with my team, “If it’s not in Wrike, it didn’t happen.” Not using Wrike was not an option. Simultaneously, encourage and help your people to get past the learning curve and they’ll be happier and more compliant. Empower your Users Make sure the users know where to get answers. Wrike offers great support through a variety of channels. Inform and empower your users to be self-sufficient or you’ll end up answering all of their questions. Ask for Feedback Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Work to figure out how well Wrike is working overall and how it’s working for individual people. Don’t assume the way you set it up is awesome and perfect and the one and only way to do it. Be open and flexible to changing the process. We have revised the work flow many times over, always for the better, and often using suggestions from team members.

Wrike Tips 5 min read

Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: Find Your Power Users

Adopting a new software can be difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Last month I talked about the importance of habit-building during the initial stages of Wrike adoption. This month, I'll talk about our second Wrike adoption strategy: finding your power users. Power users are Wrike experts who have learned the ins-and-outs of the software and the accompanying best practices. Because they're comfortable working within Wrike, they can help answer questions from colleagues and provide training for other users in the company. Not that I'm biased (okay, just a little), but Wrike has one of the most helpful Customer Support teams around, available via 24/5 live chat, email, or phone. Though what would be even more helpful than contacting our amazing Customer Support team is having your own power user in the company. This approach has many benefits: 1. Power Users can Provide Perfectly Customized Help While our Customer Support team can help answer specific questions about Wrike, we are not necessarily familiar with your team's unique workflow. And since Wrike is a project management software, it's important to be able to customize it to fit your needs. Since a power user is a part of your team, he or she knows how your team operates. Every answer and explanation they give will be relevant and can focus solely on the essential features for the team's workflow, glazing over features that are less integral. For your other users, it means they won't be overloaded with unnecessary information, and they'll have an easier time learning how to use Wrike. 2. Power Users can Ensure Consistency in the Way Wrike is Used Because there are so many ways to use Wrike, it's important to have processes in place to ensure consistency in the way your entire team uses it. Power users can put those processes in place. This approach helps avoid compatibility problems, such as each user setting up his own folder structure or workflow in Wrike, only to find out later on that his folder structure is not compatible with the rest of the team. 3. Power Users can Provide 1x1 Training Last month I addressed our natural resistance to change. For some users, the thought of learning the ins-and-outs of a new software is unpalatable. They give up before giving Wrike a chance because they don't know how easy and intuitive the tool can be. In my experience, having someone sit down for five minutes with "resistant" employees to show them how to create folders and tasks is all it takes to demystify the software. This approach is more interactive than watching help videos, participating in newcomer webinars, or attending online training sessions. Face-to-face interactions eliminate communication barriers and facilitate the Q&A experience that comes with learning anything for the first time. Did you catch our productivity proverbs back in March? Number 9 reads: "Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand." With the help of power users, one-on-one training can be more hands-on, making it easier for your employees to adopt and internalize their new Wrike habits. 4. Power Users Spread the Habit But what if you have a large team and it's just not feasible to do one-on-one sessions with the power user? As power users train more of the team, some of these newly-trained employees will become power users themselves, armed with the ability to spread their knowledge. This extended network of power users expedites Wrike adoption throughout the company. If there is a technical support division in your company, it could be helpful to turn your own Customer Support agents into power users so that they can provide ongoing internal support for employees new to the system. There is no shortage of support material published by Wrike, and you are highly encouraged to take advantage of our resources. But we've found that the most successful Wrike adoption cases are the ones that have power users in their company. Interested in becoming a power user? Contact our Support team, and we will be more than happy to give you the tools to make your company's Wrike adoption a success! More adoption tips are on the way. Check out the third post in the series next month: setting defined goals.

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How to Customize Wrike in 1-2-3!

1. Adjust Wrike to your tastes

2. Adjust Wrike to your work habits

3. Adjust Wrike to your expertise

Wrike Team

Related articles

Customer's Tip of The Day: How to Make the Learning Curve of Adopting Wrike Even Shorter

Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency

Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: Find Your Power Users

How to Customize Wrike in 1-2-3!

1. Adjust Wrike to your tastes

2. Adjust Wrike to your work habits

3. Adjust Wrike to your expertise

Wrike Team

Related articles

Customer's Tip of The Day: How to Make the Learning Curve of Adopting Wrike Even Shorter

Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency

Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: Find Your Power Users

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