Project management is unthinkable without milestones and dependencies. Even if you occasionally plan tasks on the Gantt chart, these tools help you keep your product releases, website launches, editorial calendars, advertising campaigns and many other important activities on track and on time.
Project management is unthinkable without milestones and dependencies. Even if you occasionally plan tasks on the Gantt chart, these tools help you keep your product releases, website launches, editorial calendars, advertising campaigns and many other important activities on track and on time.
Creating "finish-to-start" dependencies on the Timeline (Gantt chart) has been a matter of a mouse move in Wrike for quite some time now. You simply hover on a predecessor task and drag the arrow from its right side to the left side of the successor.
Recently, many of our customers started asking for the ability to build more complex relationships between tasks in the same quick and easy manner. We've accepted the challenge, and starting today, Wrike became even more professional, allowing you to create all possible dependencies between your tasks!
New Types of Task Dependencies
Start-to-start (B can't start before A starts)
If you plan to publish some article with images, there is no use in making visuals unless you start writing. Here the start-to-start dependency will work the best for you. Join the left sides of "write article" and "make pictures" tasks with an arrow, and it is set!
It's not necessary for these tasks to start at the same time. Thus, if needed, you can easily move the second task forward this way, creating a task date constraint.
Finish-to-finish (B can't finish before A is finished)
If captions are the finishing touch on your banner, use the finish-to-finish dependency.
You can instantly create it by joiningthe tasks' right sides with an arrow.
Start-to-finish
(B can't finish before A starts)
This dependency type is often used for just-in-time scheduling. For example, you need to transfer paper from the warehouse to the printers in order for printing to start. However, the printers have limited storage capacity and you do not want the paper to arrive until it is needed ('just in time'), so the start of printing drives the delivery of paper. If the start of printing changes for some reason, so will the end date for getting paper to the printers.
Probably, you already know how to set up this type of relationship. Hover on the left side of the "start printing" task and movethe mouseto the right of the "deliver paper" one.
What dependencies are the most desired for your projects? Are any of them completely new for 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’s users benefit from the timeline feature that allows them to plan projects and reschedule tasks with drag-and-drop support. You can drag the task bar on the chart to change the task duration, start date, or end date. Once any change is made, your team members are instantly notified about it via e-mail, RSS, or iCal feed.
Task dependencies, an important project management feature, have been launched this week. Wrike automatically links tasks, so that rescheduling a top task cascades down to its dependent tasks, immediately displaying the downstream effects on the entire project. This results in a far more accurate and maintainable project plan.
How task dependencies work.
Log into your Wrike workspace.
Switch to the Timeline tab.
Expand folders if necessary.
Point the cursor over the top right corner of the task bar. A small triangle appears.
Create a dependency using the drag-and-drop support. Click on the triangle and drag the line to the dependent task.
If you are a Wrike user and you don’t have an Enterprise subscription, Wrike gives you an option to upgrade to an Enterprise subscription.
Task dependencies are available to you with an Enterprise subscription. We invite you to upgrade your account and instantly benefit from task dependencies. Read more about task dependencies in our Help center.
If you're keeping your plans in Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel, it is very easy to start using Wrike. You can simply import your MS Project files to Wrike, share them with your colleagues and work on the plans together, anytime and anywhere. Sign up for Wrike now and get a 30-day free trial.
News
3 min read
New Dependent Task Notifications: "Tasks Waiting for Your Input"
Are you linking your project steps using our task dependencies feature? It's a great way to keep track of every small advancement on the way to reaching your milestone event. But if someone else is responsible for the next step, what is the best way to let them know you've finished? @mention them in the comments? No need. You suggested a new notification to make life easier, and we've delivered.
Now, next time you mark your task as complete, the assignee of the next dependent task will automatically get an email notification letting them know it's their turn to work on the project!
Note: Users must turn on their email notifications in order to receive the email.
This new notification means you don't have to worry about letting the next person know it's time to start — Wrike will do it for you. So when you finish your work and mark the task as complete, you can rest easy knowing that the project will keep moving forward.
And if you're the next person in line, you don't have to stalk the preceding task to make sure you notice when it has finished. Once the email shows up in your inbox, you're good to go.
Just another way Wrike is helping you manage your projects smoothly and efficiently, from start to finish.
News
3 min read
Highlight Important Points In Tasks With the New Color Marker
Working on task descriptions in Wrike with your peers is easy and fun thanks to our lightning-fast Live Editor. In fact, the descriptions serve like online documents! They are saved in real time, can be edited by several people simultaneously, and have the essential formatting tools. And today, we enhanced the text formatting toolkit with a color marker to help you be sure everyone notices important points.
Another great way to use colors is creating your team’s secret color coding scheme ;-) For example, when you’re sharing ideas with each other in Wrike, you can mark your favorite in green, and give less appealing suggestions a red mark of disapproval.
The great news is that the marker is transparently integrated with other tools, like MS Word and email. If you paste text with color highlights from another source, it remains highlighted in the task. Since color palettes vary in different editing tools, the shade gets adjusted to its closest equivalent in Wrike. For example, pink becomes red, and brown is converted into black.
How about coloring up some of your Wrike tasks? :)
Get weekly updates in your inbox!
Start Enterprise Trial
Free 14-day trial, Easy setup, Cancel any time
Sorry, this content is unavailable due to your privacy settings. To view this content, click the “Cookie Preferences” button and accept Advertising Cookies there.