Customer's Best Practice: Consider Task Duration As the No. 1 Factor in Planning
24 hours a day is always not enough to do everything you want and spend the time with the ones you love. Today, Susan Serra, who runs a family design business, shares a great tip on efficient time planning, so that not even 5 minutes will be wasted! Customer’s background Susan Serra runs three brands and a blog at the same time, full of charming decoration ideas, dedicated to kitchen design and Scandinavian accessories for the home. This is a family business that she runs with her daughter. Susan Serra’s best practice Work and family responsibilities are always tricky to combine, but Susan uses a great approach to enhance her and her daughter’s productivity. Whenever Susan logs a new task in Wrike project management software, she instantly tags it with the approximate duration. This greatly helps to efficiently organize the time and make most of each minute throughout the day. This approach is especially helpful when you have to juggle multiple activities during the day. This is exactly the case of Susan’s daughter, who has recently given birth to a son and is struggling to nurse the baby and keep working at the same time. For instance, whenever she has a short break between baby feeding and an important call, she opens the “15 minute” folder and picks one of the tasks she can accomplish right away. When you know exactly how long each task takes, it’s also easier to plan your work day each morning. For instance, when there are several large tasks due tomorrow, Susan starts with them to make sure she has enough time to finish them, before switching to smaller ones. This practice ensures that you have time to concentrate on one task without distractions and thus makes you much more productive. Do you want to learn more about the challenges of running a family business? Watch our podcast with Susan Serra: More great tips from our customers coming soon! "With four brands to manage, endless details and always being short on time, I need speed, ease, precision and flexibility in my chosen system. I definitely have that with Wrike.” Susan Serra, President at Susan Serra Associates, Inc.
Build Task Dependencies to Schedule Projects
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.
Tackle Big Problems in Small Chunks (Work Management Roundup)
Welcome to the Friday Work Management Roundup, where we bring together the week's best reads on productivity and work efficiency. You can also opt to read these links on our accompanying Flipboard mag. This week, we have links for doing more, learning more, and simply being more awesome. Read on. Top Recommendations This Week Solve Problems by Thinking Small (Conversation Agent): Big problems? Find a small part of it and tackle that with a child's curiosity. Why Happy Employees Are 12% More Productive (Fast Company): It's no surprise that workers harnessing positive emotions are more collaborative and productive. Meanwhile, their unhappy counterparts are 10% less productive than the average worker. Want a Better Pitch? Watch This (Medium): Elon Musk shows entrepreneurs 5 things that you should emulate in every pitch you give, no matter who's in the elevator. Do More 16 Entrepreneurs Share 16 Tools They Cannot Live Without (Medium): A listing of 16 work management tools that entrepreneurs recommend. And they're not just the cool tools on the block. 15 Must-Have Apps for Those Who Spend All Day on a Mac (MakeUseOf): Seriously good list of tools and apps for the Mac-based knowledge worker. Monospace Is a Distraction-Free Text Editor For Android (LifeHacker) Learn More 34 Educational Resources for Aspiring Entrepreneurs (Bplans): Building your startup? Check out this list of 34 resources broken into useful categories. The Top TED Talks That Will Change How You Work (The Telegraph): Looking for work inspiration? These TED talks on leadership, motivation, career, and more will challenge how you think and communicate at work. Top 10 Productivity Books on Amazon (SumoHacks): Book recommendations for the avid reader and productivity enthusiast. Even More Must-Reads in Work Management How Long It Takes to Get Back on Track After a Distraction (LifeHacker) How to Work and Manage at the Same Time (PM Tips) Want to be Productive? Take Scheduled Microbreaks (Tech.co) 10 Guaranteed Ways to #Fail at Content Marketing (Kruse Control) Follow Marketing Speak on Flipboard If you enjoy this roundup, we compile links to marketing articles all week long on Flipboard. Follow our Marketing Speak magazine to access more must-reads. Image credit: Mountain Study 1-2 by Gordon Tarpley on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Image edited for use.
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.
How to Prioritize Your To-Dos When Everything's Important (Video)
We’ve all been there: you walk into the office, take one look at your inbox or to-do list, and immediately feel the urge to run away. You’ve got a million things on your plate and they’re all important — where do you even start? The more requests come flying in at you from all sides, the less time and brainpower you have to discern which are actually worth your time. So you end up scrambling to do them all, perpetuating the cycle of eternal busy-ness. Stop. Take a deep breath and use a few of these prioritization tips from entrepreneur Lauren Perkins, NY Times bestselling author Greg McKeown, and Wrike's own productivity coach Errette Dunn to organize your day, get the most significant work done, and still have time for your own high-priority tasks. First hit 'play' on the short video below to learn the most important prioritization tip Wrike's Errette Dunn picked up from productivity pro David Allen, then keep reading for more expert advice: Tip 1: Define your deadlines. Tip 2: Get some space. At least once a quarter, get out of the office for a day to clear your head and re-focus on the big picture. Where do you want to be in a year? Three years? Reminding yourself of where you ultimately want to go will help you gain perspective and identify the projects and tasks that are instrumental in getting you there. Tip 3: Pretend you have half the time you actually do. Cut your work hours in half when you sit down to plot out your day. It’ll force you to be extremely picky when it comes to the tasks you agree to take on or contribute to. Bonus: it’ll give you time to make sure these high-priorities actually get done on time — and done well — and you’ll have time to tackle your own important to-dos, instead of just helping out with everyone else’s. Tip 4: Keep priority singular. When the word “priority” first appeared in the English language, it was singular, as in the one most important thing — and it stayed that way for close to 500 years. Only in the last century did we start identifying multiple priorities. So take back the word’s original meaning, and choose one priority for each day. It's likely you'll always have several important things going on, but if you don’t have a hierarchy with one single priority at the top, you'll always feel unfocused and pulled in too many directions at once. Tip 5: Learn to let go. Let go of perfectionism and the inclination to micromanage. If you always get caught up in perfecting every tiny detail of the project you're working on, you're only making more work for yourself and eating up more of your time. Learn to delegate tasks that don't absolutely need your input, and give yourself limits on the work that does so you don't start down the rabbit hole of nit-picking. How do you prioritize your daily workload? Share your favorite strategies in the comments below to add your ideas to our list! Sources: Entrepreneur.com, Inc.com
Identify One Key Task Each Day (Work Management Roundup)
It's Friday once again! Time for the weekly Work Management Roundup where we pull together our favorite reads on productivity, the workplace, and strategies to work more efficiently. So grab your drink of choice and warm up your Wrike Chrome extension to bookmark the articles you'll want to read later on the train home. Here they are: How to Identify One Key Task Each Day to Make Consistent Progress: If you're drowning in to-do items and stressed over prioritizing them, identifying your “MIT”, or Most Important Task, the night before can help you move forward. How One CEO Achieves Inbox Zero Everyday: While Inbox Zero may be a dream for most of us, the CEO of PubMatic does it every single day. Here are his secrets to efficiently responding to and clearing out his emails. Handy List of Retrospective Techniques: Are you wrapping up a project? Then you may want to use one of these handy project retrospective techniques to look back, review what happened, and identify lessons your team learned. Coloring Books are Catching On for Adults: Looking to de-stress after a long day at work? Well, "coloring books for adults" are apparently all the rage right now, as they appeal to childhood nostalgia while allowing us to flex creative muscles using crayons, colored pencils, or markers. More Work Management Must-Reads: Our top pick! Hilarious Profanity-Filled Guided Meditation - Video (FastCo Create) — 2.5 minutes of letting the "horsesh*t of the external world fade from your awareness." Block Off Time Needed to Finish Tasks Instead of Just Setting Deadlines (Lifehacker) 6 Steps to Create a Project Plan from Your Mind Map (Project Management Tips) 16 Simple Motivation Tips to Get More Done - Infographic (Wrike) 5 Unique Ways to Jumpstart Your Creativity (Wrike) Follow Social Project Management on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then follow our magazine Social Project Management for links to project management technology, PM techniques, and tips on collaboration and team management.
10 Phrases that You Can Never Say When You Delegate A Task
Here are 10 phrases that team members should never hear from you: 1. “I know you haven’t finished that section yet, but this needs to be done right now!” Good delegation is about setting priorities. While emergencies do happen, having “emergencies” every couple of days won't help productivity. It will hinder productivity. All that multi-tasking and switching around just isn't good for team morale. A better approach is to think over the goals, priorities and deadlines right from the start and make sure your team understands them, so that people won’t randomly put off their other assignments in order to meet a deadline with one particular task. Try this instead: "We have had to amend the project schedule, and this task should be next in line when you've finished your current task." 2. "I know you've never done anything like this before, but I'm sure you can handle it." There's nothing to raise a team member's stress level like hearing this phrase. Everyone wants the chance to improve their skills, but is it really fair to put someone in that position without adequate preparation or training? Not really, and your project won't be run efficiently that way, either. Try to always delegate tasks from one area to the same people, so that they can perfect their skills, and also let them learn from a different person, if necessary. Otherwise, be ready to dedicate some of your time to brief them if you want to receive worthy results. Try this instead: "I've arranged for you to work with a colleague so you can learn this skill; in the future you'll be able to can handle it on your own." 3. "Well, this is actually a super-easy task to do; anyone can do it." Usually saying this is meant to make the assignee feel less nervous about the task ahead. That's commendable, but it often has an unintended side-effect. People could think that you're really saying that they don't have the right skills to handle something really complex and challenging – and that's not the message you want to send at all. There are two things to keep in mind: never minimize the importance of the task you are delegating, and don't doubt the skills of the assignee. Someone who feels appreciated and trusted to do something important will step up and do a better job. Try this instead: "This task is important to the project; that's why I'm trusting you to do it." 4. "Just come up with something, and we’ll see if it fits." The issue with this phrase is lack of clarity, and we all know how that ends up. If you don't have an idea about the result you want, then how can the assignee deliver it? Most likely, you’ll waste a lot of time going over the options he proposes, based on his standpoint and skills, and it is possible that none of them will fit. A better approach is put together a list of criteria for possible solutions and ask the assignee to come up with different options, so you can select the best approach. Try this instead: "I'd like you to come up with a solution. Here are the criteria to use to assess possibilities." 5. "That's not the way I would have done it." A “my way or the highway” approach leads you directly to micromanagement and discourages others from taking responsibility for tasks and achievements – and that's the whole point of delegation. OK, so you would have taken another route, but as long as the solution works, does it matter if your colleague did things differently? In the end, the project benefits because you now have two viable approaches to an issue. Try this instead: "I hadn't thought of tackling the task this way, but well done for coming up with such a great solution!" 6. "I’m going on a business trip for a week. By that time, things need to be done." We all have to take business trips, but disappearing right before a project is due to complete is not ideal, especially if you're going to be out of touch for part of the period. When crunch time is approaching, that's exactly when team members need to ask questions and clarify things – and you need to be available. The only exception to this rule is if you still can stay in the loop with assignees, tracking their progress and guiding them if necessary with the help of an online tool. Try this instead: "I'm going on a business trip, but I'll check into our workspace [into Wrike project management software] daily to answer any queries." 7. "You should have shown me it before the deadline…" Ever had a project delivered and found it was not what you expected? That's where the phrase above comes in, but using it usually means a failure to set up the project properly. Your goals might be crystal clear, but the only way to know if you're on track to meet them is to set up milestones and checkpoints with the assignee, so you are not disappointed on the project delivery date. Do this, and you can get rid of issues before they become major problems. Try this instead: "Is the project on track? We should have a meeting to see where we are before the ultimate deadline." 8. "You should have asked me first before making such an important decision!" Delegation is all about allowing others to make some of the decisions. But if people involved don’t know their responsibilities, authority and the chain of command, you may get some surprises that you won’t like. It should be clear what decisions the assignee can take on his/her own, simply reporting the results to you, and which ones require your permission. Try this instead: "Here's an outline of the project team and responsibilities so you know what decisions you can make." 9. "I've asked your colleague to handle the task, as well." Delegating the same task to more than one person is a classic mistake. Some people think of this as a way of inspiring healthy competition, but it usually has the opposite effect. Instead, colleagues become obsessed with being the one to win recognition for getting the project right. That means they don't share information, and they don't collaborate effectively – and that can hurt the overall project. Another possible outcome is when people start shifting their responsibility to each other, so that no one feels responsible for the result any longer. Either way, it’s not what you want to get, right? Try this instead: "I want you to work with a colleague on this, but you each have responsibility for a different part of the project." 10. "This is not exactly what it’s supposed to be, but OK, I’ll finalize it on my own." Finally, good delegation is about clear accountability and knowing the deliverables. If someone is supposed to deliver certain things at certain times, and the project has been on schedule, then there's no reason to accept the poor quality result. Only accept thoroughly done work, and your employees will know the standard they need to achieve. After all, if you have to finalize it, what was the point of delegation anyway? Try this instead: "This isn't exactly right; shall we have a meeting about how you can fix it?" Do you have any phrases to add to this "delegation black list"?
The Real ROI of Wrike
How much can Wrike save you in time, money, and productivity? To understand this fully, you’ll need to consider how much inefficiencies, process breakdowns, and poor collaboration can cost your business. In 2017, one study found that businesses lost an average of $11,000 per employee each year because of ineffective collaboration and communication. Yes, that means siloed email threads, outdated spreadsheets, lack of task accountability, and poor resource management can cost companies like yours thousands each year. Smart work management is critical as we enter the future of work. Research shows that many of us are looking for ways to maximize our workdays and eliminate the broken processes that make us less productive. In fact, 92% of workers say that having the tools they need to do their work effectively has a positive impact on their job satisfaction. An effective work management solution like Wrike doesn’t just make teams more efficient. It can speed up time to market, save critical project hours and budgets, streamline processes, and impact your company’s bottom line. The real ROI of work management solutions like Wrike is all about what they help you reclaim in hours, productivity, and even costs. How Wrike removes productivity roadblocks What are your team’s productivity killers? Does an unwieldy request intake process add hours to your workweek? Does the constant switching between apps make completing certain tasks time-consuming and inefficient? Optimizing request intake Making Wrike a centralized hub for information and collaboration has helped companies like House of Design save 1,100 hours annually. House of Design gave up “messy, overwhelming, and inconsistent” spreadsheets for work intake and started using Wrike requests. “Before Wrike, when up against the clock and determining which of his tasks to tackle, we’d speak to each engineer individually to understand which parts requests were critical. Spending hours of time and getting a dozen different opinions wasn’t up to our standards of efficiency,” Ryan Okelberry, COO of House of Design, explained. By leveraging Wrike requests, House of Design makes “strategic decisions” and reclaims 20+ hours each workweek. Here’s how: Get the complete story on tasks and requests by gathering information through a custom request form. Ask dynamic questions of your requester so your team has exactly the info they need to start (and complete) the request. Requests are then auto-assigned to the appropriate person or team, eliminating confusion over intake details and responsibility. Details such as due dates, subtasks, folder organization, and other custom information and automation can also be set up to streamline work. Streamlining feedback and cutting approval times There’s no getting around it. If you’re not using a work management solution like Wrike to streamline feedback and review cycles, you’re losing time in your approvals process. Whether that’s a messaging doc that needs approval, a design that requires feedback, or a webpage that needs to be proofed before it goes live. Take OSF Healthcare, for example, who used Wrike to get out of “messy” email inboxes and speed up asset approval by 50%. Similarly, Moneytree cut their average approval cycle from seven days to four using Wrike. Create an approval process that works for your team by using Wrike’s proofing features to reduce complexity and drive efficiency. Centralize and contextualize feedback in one location Mark up documents directly, so feedback is clearer Set approvers and make it simple to sign off quickly Collaborate with external stakeholders and incorporate their feedback No two teams are exactly alike. Wrike’s versatile proofing and approval features make it easy to create a review process that works for your team size and workflow. Cost savings, automation, and reclaiming billable hours As the team at Tipton Communications explains in their customer case study, “before we adopted Wrike, we were losing somewhere between 5% and 10% of billable hours to unnecessary project administration: chasing project statuses, getting people to fill out forms, looking for documents, etc." They’re certainly not alone. Over a third of managers say they spend three to four hours a day on administrative tasks. That includes processes that could be automated or otherwise made more efficient. Automation has been heralded as a critical component of work management, but what does that mean in practical terms? For telecoms company Arvig, automation of some HR processes unlocked significant time savings to the tune of an estimated 900 hours a year. In addition to that, Arvig also estimates an average cost reduction of 20% per project just by optimizing their resource allocation with Wrike. From automation to resource management, Wrike customers can optimize the way they work, reduce costs, and take back more of their time. Curious about how much Wrike could save your team? Check out our savings calculator to see where your productive hours are being lost and how Wrike can help you get them back. The ROI of Wrike: 360° work management that saves more across the board When businesses choose Wrike, they can address the inefficiencies that cost them time, money, and productivity. In their individual case studies, our customers told us how they reclaimed significant costs and hundreds of hours of productive time through features like our request forms, proofing and approvals features, automation, and resource allocation. Choosing a versatile work management platform like Wrike empowers teams to deliver value across any area of their business — from operations and creative to HR, sales, and marketing. Want to learn firsthand how Wrike can save you more by reducing complexity and removing productivity roadblocks? Try our free two-week trial and join the 20,000+ companies who trust Wrike to do the best work of their lives.
Getting Full Work Context: Easy with Cross-Linking Tasks and Projects
With every new update, we strive to make Wrike an even more convenient collaboration hub that connects all your data together, so that any piece of work is at your fingertips when you need it. Today we’d like to introduce a handy improvement that helps you easily weave tasks and projects into the context of other assignments.With every new update, we strive to make Wrike project management software an even more convenient collaboration hub that connects all your data together, so that any piece of work is at your fingertips when you need it. Today we’d like to introduce a handy improvement that helps you easily weave tasks and projects into the context of other assignments. Now when you paste the task link into another task description or the comment field, it will automatically appear as the task name. For instance, let’s say you want a designer to create a new mockup for the trade show, using the same outline she used the previous year. You simply insert the link to that task, and she understands the context of the assignment in one glance without even following the link to check what you are referring to. At the same time, if she needs to refresh her memory of the task details, she only needs one click to open it. Besides the title, the task status is reflected too. If the task has been completed already, the appropriate icon will appear next to the task name. In the same easy way, you can insert links to whole projects, as well. If the folders have color coding, you will see an icon of the appropriate color together with the folder name. See how neat it looks in the screenshot. This feature is particularly helpful when you need to cross-link several tasks or projects. As your project team will instantly see the titles, instead of links, there will be no confusion among multiple similar-looking URLs and no need to browse every single one in order to understand what the new assignment is about. This small, yet helpful feature makes it easy for you and your project team to put together the full context of a particular assignment. Just one more thing before you try this feature in action – make sure that the tasks or folders you refer to are already shared with the assignees of the current task.
Two More Ways to Easily Create Comments and Tasks in Wrike from Your Inbox
We’ve heard from many of you that forwarding your emails to Wrike and replying to notifications, as well as our unique Outlook and Apple Mail add-ins are extremely helpful in your day-to-day work. On our forum, you also shared some cool ideas for perfecting these features so that they suit your needs even better. As we are passionate about making you more efficient, we didn’t hesitate to bring them to life and generate new simple ways to create tasks and comments from your email account. We’ve heard from many of you that forwarding your emails to Wrike and replying to notifications, as well as our unique Outlook and Apple Mail add-ins are extremely helpful in your day-to-day work. On our forum, you also shared some cool ideas for perfecting these features so that they suit your needs even better. As we are passionate about making you more efficient, we didn’t hesitate to bring them to life and generate new simple ways to create tasks and comments from your email account. Emailing tasks into the required folder is now as easy as 1-2-3 There’s the good old way to email tasks into a particular folder by putting its name into the subject line, but what if there are several folders with the same name? To prevent any confusion or mistakes when emailing tasks, you can now use the folder’s unique ID number. Are you wondering how you will know the ID number? This is easy – go to “Folder info” and click on the permalink right above the folder name. Once you have the number, you can create tasks in this folder just by sending an email to [email protected], where 123 is the folder ID. If you add the folders that you use most often to your contact book, the process will be simplified to choosing a recipient. Add comments to tasks while skipping the “Re:” step Imagine the situation: you need to send an e-mail to your client and at the same time save it as an update to a task. In case you don’t want to confuse him with a long e-mail subject with brackets and other specific syntax, simply add [email protected] as a CC to your e-mail! To obtain the task ID, just copy it from the “Permalink” on the top left of the task pane. You then add the ID number into the address line, write your comments in the body of the email, and that is it! No need to dig deep into your inbox for a particular task notification in order to reply! We’d love to know what other things could make email integration even more convenient for you and are eager to read your ideas in our voting forum!
Set Hours in Task Duration
Besides project discussions, another feature often asked for by many of our users--estimation of task duration in hours--is now live in Wrike project management platform. To help you build a more precise schedule, we’ve added the ability to set task duration to minutes (1). Examples of valid entries in the duration field: "2h 30 m", "5d", "3h", "15m". In other words, you can use the following format to set tasks’ duration: "3d 4h 5m". The task duration feature allows you to enter the correct number of days, hours and minutes or to remove unnecessary parameters. If you enter a fractional number of days, like "0.5d" Wrike will turn it into "4h" to represent half of the working day. If you enter a fractional number of hours or minutes, Wrike will round it to the nearest whole number.
Customer Tip of the Day: Organize Tasks by Person and by Project
Qualitek Solutions provides software and systems for improving quality and productivity for manufacturers in the world-wide paper converting industry. Their engineering and software development teams, run multiple projects at once, each at a different stage of completion. Learn their tip on how to organize your workspace and deal with client resource management in an easy yet powerful way. Background Half the team is constantly on the road, communicating with clients, and observing the implementation of their solutions, making it difficult to keep everyone on track and meet deadlines. As the team brought all the tasks and project data into Wrike project management software, their data flow became 100% transparent, and it became easier to organize the work. Now they share and track all the important project updates from their laptops and smartphones on the go. This way, people who are out of the office and people who stay at the office are always on the same page, and tasks get properly scheduled with regard for people’s workload. Productivity tip from Qualitek Solutions "With the ability to put one task into several folders, we’ve organized our workspace in a very simple, yet powerful, way" says Brent Bowman, Operations Manager for Qualitek . "In our workspace, we maintain two main folders called Engineers and Projects, shared with everyone in the company." In the first folder, each engineer has a personal subfolder where they keep all the tasks he or she is currently working on and updates them. In that Projects folder, all projects and jobs are organized by the sales order. "This structure enables us to see tasks from different points of view – in the context of the team member’s personal schedule and in the general context of the project. An engineer tracks and updates his tasks in his folder, while the project manager stays on top of the overall project progress in the relevant folder. We also grant read-only access to the Projects folder to some of our clients, so that they can check on the project’s status themselves anytime they want." Each team member also uses his or her folder as a personal working space, creating his or her own tasks and attaching the necessary documents to the folder info. As a result, the team stays on the same page. "We also organize our work better, as we can take into account a person’s schedule. When we need to assign new tasks, it’s convenient to switch between projects and team members’ folders in the timeline view. Then we can see which engineers will be busy implementing the solution on the client’s side next week and assign tasks to the correct person. This prevents us from doubling up engineers on the same job or putting one person at different jobs at the same time. When you have multiple projects with each at a different stage, Wrike’s flexible structure is a boon!" “Wrike’s a very powerful tool, and I think it’s going to get more and more valuable to us, as it has made our interaction so much easier. We are able to give everyone on the team some insight into where each member is and what has been done so far. Now I really cannot imagine how we used to keep all these things in our heads and mark them on the calendars in our office!” Brent Bowman, Operations Manager at Qualitek Solutions
New Mass Action Options: Faster Task Handling
When editing multiple tasks at once, the Mass Action tool is a practical timesaver. It allows you to quickly change tasks: mark them completed, set them as backlogged, tag them, move them to a different folder, reassign them, reschedule them, or delete them. And now the mass-action panel has been updated with new options to save you even more time in your day-to-day task management. Today, we have improved the Mass Action menu to give you more options so you can batch edit tasks in one go. Taking your suggestions into consideration, we've upgraded the feature to allow you to do a few new things: * Reschedule: You have the option to clear all dates associated with the selected tasks. You can also choose to reschedule them for today, tomorrow, this week, or next week with one click. Advanced features allow you to set the exact start/due dates, or shift the original project schedule forward or backward. You can also indicate whether or not work is done on weekends. * Update status: Just as before, you can mark selected active tasks as completed and vice versa. And now you can also mark tasks as deferred or cancelled. * Change assignees: You can still assign or unassign tasks from team members -- just look for "change assignees" and select or deselect the right people. There's also a neat "swap user" option so you can select several tasks that once belonged to Alex and reassign them to someone else. * Change folders: Besides just moving a bunch of tasks to different folder, you now also can remove them from all folders at once. And all these updates also got a cool new design. We're sure that this expanded menu of mass actions will save you precious time when juggling multiple tasks at once. Let us know in the comments how this handy update works for you! Check out the Help Page for more details on the new Mass Action tool.
Task Dependencies vs. Custom Workflows: When to Use Each in Wrike
Wrike is an incredibly flexible tool, offering several ways your team can set up your projects, track your progress, and reach your goals. But have you ever had too many options? Using Wrike can be like walking into an ice cream shop with 20+ flavors and wanting to try all of them. One of the most common choices Wrikers deliberate over is "Should I track project progress using a Custom Workflow, or should I rely on a chain of task dependencies?" We're here with some helpful tips to help you decide. And keep in mind: this isn't solely an either/or case — you can leverage a combination of these methods to effectively manage your work. When to Use a Chain of Task Dependencies in Wrike Creating a chain of separate tasks linked together using dependencies allows you to show which tasks are happening at what times, by whom, and in what exact order. It's of enormous importance and value to any project-based and deliverable-oriented team (and if you think your team doesn't have projects or deliverables, spoiler alert: you're wrong). There are two reasons you should consider setting up your work in this way: 1. Auto-adjusting timelines Dependencies in Wrike tell you the order in which tasks need to happen. For example, you could have 5 tasks that must happen in a specific sequence (Task 1, then Task 2, etc.). Auto-adjusting timelines helps you automatically update due dates on linked tasks when plans move forward or backward. If Task 3 ends up taking a few days longer than planned, you can update its due date accordingly, and the start and end dates for Tasks 4 and 5 will be pushed back in kind. Alternatively, if we realize that Task 2 can be finished more quickly than anticipated, shortening its duration and moving its due date forward will automatically shift Tasks 3-5 earlier as well — no point in sitting around waiting to start your next steps! 2. Up-to-bat emails One of the biggest bottlenecks in a project is not realizing you're supposed to start on your piece of the project puzzle. Because unless you're keeping a close eye on your colleague's progress (which they won't like, promise), or they came to you immediately to tell you that they finished their task (which they won't do, pinky swear), you'll be waiting until your next status update meeting to learn that you could have started your part three days ago. Instead, you could use a chain of linked tasks in Wrike to get notification emails when someone completes the task you've been waiting on. Set up dependencies between the tasks and make sure you're assigned to the task you're responsible for in the workflow; as soon as Jack hits 'Complete' on Task 1, the assignee for Task 2 will get an email saying it's time to start work. Now your team won't have to hawk over everything to make sure work is getting done as quickly as possible. Just remember, setting up a chain of dependent tasks may be overly rigid for your team. If you aren't married to your original timeline, it's not as easy to manipulate your workflow as using the Custom Statuses & Workflow method. Anything non-standard that gets thrown into the mix (an extra step, unforeseen time off, etc.) will impact your timeline and need to be factored into your chain of dependencies, which can require some re-work. We strongly recommended that anyone employing this dependency-driven methodology spend some time taking at least a rudimentary course in formal project management to learn about things like critical path, scope creep, and risk management. Advantages of Task Dependencies: Laser-focused timelines with easily anticipated due dates and delivery milestones Crystal-clear delegation of responsibilities — everyone knows who is working on what, when, and in what order Layered visibility allows PMs to oversee complex initiatives, while individual contributors only have to focus on what they're personally working on that week Baseline Chart will show you how the team delivered on your project compared to the original estimation Great for linking just two or three dependent tasks when you want to get the up-to-bat email notifications Disadvantages of Task Dependencies: Reliant on strong project management practices and team agreement on timelines and responsibilities Requires ongoing monitoring by the project owner to ensure no changes to the plan are needed Does not easily accommodate projects with unforeseen back-and-forth such as approvals, reviews, or multiple rounds of edits When to Use a Custom Workflow in Wrike With Wrike Enterprise, you can leverage Custom Workflows for more flexibility in your workflow. There are two rationales behind moving a single task through a series of unique statuses in a Custom Workflow: 1. Preserving information If you're producing content and the final outcome relies on input from multiple people, you would hate wasting time using a chain of tasks. You'd attach your version of a file to a task, mark it complete, and notify the next person in line; then the next person would be forced to go back to the previous task, download your file, edit it, attach it to their own task, mark their task complete, and notify the next person, ad infinitum. Instead, by only changing the custom status and assignee of a single task, you can use Wrike's file versioning feature to consolidate all files and versions in a single location, thus streamlining your team's workflow. Similarly, any notes taken in the description field that need to pass from person to person will be easier to find, modify, and collaborate on when they're preserved in a single task, instead of being moved around and duplicated between tasks. You don't want people to spend (i.e. waste) time scouring through tasks looking for the most recent version of the information when you can easily consolidate it in a single task. 2. Non-linear processes When getting from A to Z, sometimes you hit A, B, C, and all 26 letters in order just once before finishing your project. More often, that isn't the case at all. You need to square dance around and switch back and forth between steps, people, etc. before reaching the final Z. That can be a perfectly normal and productive workflow, but if you've set up your chain of tasks to follow a prescribed path, it makes work messy. Instead, by relying on a Custom Workflow you can bounce between statuses, moving 'forward' and 'backward' with ease, passing off the "next step baton" to individuals as necessary. A great example is, again, generating content. Often, content generation will begin with an idea, then copy will be drafted, edited, designed, approved, and published. However, each piece of content can go through any number of revisions, edits, and designs, so it's nearly impossible to determine ahead of time how many 'Review' steps you'll need. If you use a Custom Workflow instead of a chain of tasks, your content can easily move from 'In Draft' to 'In Review' and back again as many times as needed, each time changing who is assigned and responsible for the current stage. Advantages of Custom Workflows: Amazing flexibility (as shown above) In-depth reporting, especially with Dashboards, shows exactly where a task is in a certain process, and managers can easily glean what is currently 'In Review' or 'Needs Approval' Color-coding to make task progress easier to ascertain at a glance Fewer tasks cluttering your workspace Clearer progress markers mitigate the need for extra status update meetings Disadvantages of Custom Workflows: Due dates are not tied to status changes, meaning that you need to continuously change the task's due date to reflect when the next step must begin Very minor, but worth noting: Assignees are not tied to specific statuses, meaning that if someone is responsible for writing and someone else is responsible for reviewing, you either need to (1) both be assigned to the task and know who is responsible for each stage, or (2) switch assignees every time you switch a status. Learn More on How to Use Custom Workflows & Task Dependencies That's why we built them! Relying solely on managing a long chain of task dependencies can be complicated without proper project management training. Don't forget that these two methodologies can always be combined for incredibly effective collaboration! Certain steps along a project timeline may need specialized statuses to best manage their progress, and they can sit within a longer chain of tasks connected by dependencies. Ultimately, different projects will have different needs and we are here to support however you work best. If you still can't figure out the best way to use Custom Workflows and Task Dependencies for your team and you'd like to learn more, reach out to our Support team or talk to us in the comments below! We're standing by to answer all your questions.
Checklists Make Your Tasks as Easy as 1-2-3
When tasks have multiple components, it can be challenging to track what has been completed versus what is still in progress, especially when different segments must be completed by different people. To help you make these tasks more structured and easier to track, Wrike added a new, useful feature. Now you can further break down your tasks into to-do lists or step-by-step instructions with the help of checklists in your task description. To take advantage of checklists, find the new checkbox button in the task description's formatting panel. This feature will add another level of depth to keep your tasks organized and clean. When listing the task's components in the description, it's up to you to order your list to suit your preference, whether that be by due date, assignees, importance, or simply as ideas come to mind. Once a component is completed and you check its box, the item turns grey to fade out of focus. With checklists, all collaborators can easily see what has been finished and what needs to be done before the entire task is completed. One of the cool things about the checklists is that they can help you avoid confusing scenarios when a task is assigned to several employees. Before, one employee would mark an entire task as completed when only his or her individual contribution was done. Now, when you create one task and assign that task to five different people, add a checklist to your task description for clearer workload distribution. Use this feature and kindly remind John to go to the checklist within the task to indicate that he has finished only his portion. When everyone has checked off their separate line items, the last contributor or task author knows to mark the entire task as completed. Have you heard of small wins? Psychologists say that completing several smaller tasks one after another has a powerful motivating effect when you're in the middle of a large assignment. See how that works for you and your team with the new feature! And for additional benefit, we hope checklists can serve as your convenient alternative while we continue working hard to bring subtasks to your workspace.
