Templates Help You Plan Recurring Projects in Wrike
If you manage projects that consist of typical tasks, then project templates can save you a lot of time. The templates help you quickly add frequently recurring tasks to your projects. Besides, Wrike allows you to fully customize templates for your convenience. For example, if you have a Web site project, you always have design, coding, menu structure and content steps. So you can create the following template in Excel: Login to your workspace in Wrike, choose a folder where you want to create the new project. Then click on the "Import" link and upload your Excel file. After the import process, you will be asked to associate users from your contact list in Wrike with the names found in the imported file. Then you get your project organized in your workspace: It is very convenient to use project templates because you can save time on every project that you manage. Templates can be generated in two ways. If you have already organized a project in Wrike, you can export it and use the file as a template afterwards. You can edit the file, if necessary, then import it and insert it into any part of your plan. Alternatively, you can download a sample project template, adjust it to your needs and then import it to your workspace in Wrike. Each way is rather simple and will bring you a significant productivity gain.
Navigate through Wrike Workspace Even Easier, Thanks to the New Folder Search and Task Tagging
One of the key things that make Wrike unique project management software is its fantastic flexibility and efficiency in handling multiple projects. Today, we’re releasing a couple of very handy updates that will make your experience in a multi-project environment even more comfortable! Wrike’s folders can be used as tags and categories to build a neat structure for your tasks. Here’s an easy and intuitive way to implement this: now you can drag a folder as a tag on a task. All the task’s tags will be listed in its description in the “Included in” field. When you have overlapping activities across multiple projects or folders, tagging is an extremely useful feature to help you accurately organize your tasks with just one move of your mouse. To include a task in several project folders, you also can drag-and-drop it while holding Ctrl button on your keyboard. Or you can choose the appropriate folder from the drop-down “Included in” list in the task description. You can pick any of the options at your convenience. The second update we’re releasing will help you stay focused and save time you’d otherwise spend on scrolling down the folder hierarchy. If your folder tree has grown way longer than your screen shows, you’ll definitely enjoy the quick folder search feature. Just type the name (or part of the name) of the folder you need in the field above the hierarchy, and the list will be narrowed down to the folders with this word in the name. This happens instantly. You even don’t need to hit “Enter,” just like in Google Instant. To switch back to the full folder hierarchy view, click on the “x” sign to the right of the search field. We hope these updates will add some extra points to your productivity! Any feedback on the new project management features is welcomed in the comments to this post.
Export Your Data at Any Time
Today we are glad to tell you that we have implemented the ability to export your data. At any time, you can export all your tasks with their statuses, priorities, responsible parties, start dates and due dates to Excel (xls) format. Your exported tasks will be structured the same way as in your workspace, so you will have a hierarchy of tasks in your Excel file. To export all your tasks from all folders and subfolders, you need to click on “My Folders” in the left pane; then click on the “Export” link. Go ahead and plan your projects in Wrike, at any time, you can export your data. It is risk-free, and a FREE 14-day subscription to Wrike's professional version is included.
Selected tasks are at your hand
Dear fans of Wrike, Sorry for the long silence. Now we are ready to please you with several new tools. The best ones are filters. In a couple of clicks you can create a list of tasks for which Mary Smith is responsible and that are overdue; or select tasks that were created by you, and that Rob Brown is currently working on. Now you can quickly display and work on lists of tasks that are chosen by several criteria. It might be done by date: those tasks and folders that are due today, overdue or due this week. You can also select tasks by people: by the author or responsible party. Of course inside of any filter (or filtered folder) you can filter tasks in the traditional way in the horizontal top panel by responsible party, status and due date. The filters are in the bottom of the left panel. By the way, the system now works faster then ever before.
Table View Improvements for Better Executive Reporting
Managers, rejoice! We've just updated our Table View to make it even easier to export summary reports on the status of all your projects. With our improved Table View, you'll notice a few changes: —You can hide or unhide columns using the gear icon in the upper left-hand corner of the table. —You now have the option of exporting exactly what's visible on your screen into Excel so you can format reports with just the information you want to include. —We've incorporated time spent on tasks into the Table View. To display the total amount of time your team tracked using our timer, click the gear icon and select to show the "Time Spent" column. These values are read-only from the Table View, but you can modify them via your time logs and task details. Report Red-Yellow-Green Statuses and Actual Time Spent with our Table View Improvements If you're creating reports for your manager or executives, the new Table View will help you share exactly what they need to see. When you want to provide a summary report with row per project, you can roll up all individual tasks and export only the high-level information to share in your updates. With the help of Custom Fields, you can now report on your projects using "Red-Yellow-Green" statuses. Create a Custom Field for "Project Status" with a dropdown list of the three colors. When you have rolled up all your tasks to show just the project-level information, you can mark the status of each project before you export the file to share it with your executives. If you need to compare actual time spent versus how much time you planned to spend, Custom Fields in your Table View can also help you track your hours. Choose to show the new "Time Spent" column, and create a Custom Field for "Planned Time". Once you enter the amount of time your team estimated they'd need to complete work in your "Planned Time" field, comparing those numbers to your "Time Spent" column will quickly reveal if you went over or under your target. Extra time spent on projects is money lost, so you'll be able to see if your hours are putting you over budget. Stay tuned for more Wrike updates That's just the latest — Wrike is always innovating. Stay up-to-date with all Wrike news by subscribing to the Wrike blog or checking back regularly!
Improvements in the Daily To-do Emails
We received a lot of customer feedback about desired changes in everyday to-do e-mails, and today we are glad to present the improvements to you. To help you focus on the most important tasks for you, now tasks that are overdue by more than 5 days are not shown in your daily to-do emails (1). If a task was not completed or rescheduled while it was overdue for 1-5 days, it is considered non-important to you right now. However, each to-do email contains a reminder about your tasks that are overdue by more than 5 days (2), and you can reschedule them at any time (3). As always, the to-do e-mail also contains your tasks that are planned for today (4) and overdue tasks assigned by you to other people.
3 Enhancements to Custom Fields for Better Work Management
In December, we introduced the ability to add Custom Fields to folders in Wrike. We've now added three new capabilities to help you get more from Custom Fields. 1) Duplicate data from Custom Fields — To make it easier to use Custom Fields in project templates, we've added an option to copy the values in custom fields when duplicating a folder. 2) Rollup Custom Fields in summary views — When viewing a parent folder, you can now display custom fields from subfolders. For example, inside your Marketing Team folder there is a subfolder for Marketing Campaigns, where you've have added a custom field called 'Priority'. When viewing the parent Marketing Team folder, you can now select to display the 'Priority' field that is part of your Marketing Campaigns child folder. 3) Join and merge fields — Sometimes users will create the same custom field in different projects. Originally, when these projects were combined into one view, each of these custom fields would be shown side-by-side even though they're intended to be the same field. For example, a budget field could be added independently to three projects and when combined into one view there would be three separate fields for budget. Now: If the fields have identical names, Wrike will now automatically join these fields into one, combining the data from each. If you don't want to merge these fields, you can easily undo the auto-merge. If the fields have different names (e.g. Budget, Planned budget), you can also manually merge fields into one column by highlighting each of the fields you want to merge and then selecting 'Merge field' from the column drop down menu. If there are values for the same task in both fields, none of the data will be lost. The data from the first field will be shown and you'll see an alert indicating the value from the second field and if you wish you can undo the merge or overwrite the data from the first field. We hope these enhancements help you get even more out of your Custom Fields. Stay tuned for more improvements to Custom Fields and Table View — coming soon!
How to Complete Your Student Projects on Time with Wrike's Timeline
If you're a university undergraduate or graduate student, you should know that we recently announced our Wrike for Students program. We want to give you a Wrike account to keep track of all of your assignments, group projects, and random to-dos completely free — because you're already spending enough on your education. Student projects, especially group projects, have unique requirements. You have to figure out how to collaborate effectively, which is even harder when you can't meet in person every day. Using the Timeline in Wrike is one way to make sure you're getting all your work done on time. Basic Organization for Your Group Project To get started, create a new Project and share it with all the members of your team in Wrike. Inside that project, create individual tasks for every piece of work required to reach your end goal. Assign each of those tasks to the responsible group member(s) in your Wrike account, and set the durations and due date for that piece of work. For example, say your project is to write a group report. If you want to finish basic research six weeks before your final deadline, your task called "Complete basic research" should be due six weeks before the task, "Print & submit the final report." Check the Timeline to Review Your Project Schedule Once your group project is in Wrike, with due dates set and individual assignments doled out, everyone can use the Wrike Timeline to view and track the overall progress. The Timeline will show you what tasks are completed (green), overdue (red), and what deadlines are coming up (blue). Set Key Dates as Milestones Any project-related date that absolutely cannot be shifted should be set up as a task with a milestone date. Examples include final deadlines from your professors and presentation dates. Once you set a milestone, that date cannot be automatically adjusted by the rescheduling of other tasks. Create Dependencies to Automate Task Rescheduling If you have a series of tasks for your project that depend on one another (e.g. You can't start "Write first draft of paper" until "Complete basic research" is done), set them up as dependencies on your timeline. There are four common types of dependencies: Task B can't start until Task A is completed. (Most common scenario.) Task B can't start until Task A has started. Task B can't be completed until Task A is completed. Task B can't be completed until Task A has started. By linking all your tasks together as dependencies, you'll be able to reschedule everything (except milestones) with one drag-and-drop movement on the Timeline. This is helpful if work gets pushed back or moved forward. When you drag one task three days either direction, every dependent task will be shifted accordingly. Add Missing Tasks in the Schedule If you've built your project but missed a key step, you can create a new task right from the Timeline to set the due date and dependencies immediately. Then, click to open your task and you can assign the new task to a group member. More on How to Use Wrike for Student Projects If you want to learn more about how to use Wrike for your student projects, check out these other helpful articles: The In-Depth Guide to Using Wrike’s Online Gantt Chart Maker Achieve fast, easy, efficient project management using Gantt charts 4 Common Mistakes New Wrike Users Make, and Tips to Avoid Doing the Same If you're a student and you'd like to take advantage of Wrike to manage your classwork, sign up for your free student account now.
Forget About Downloading: Document Editor Now Supports PDF, PNG and JPEG images
Collaborating on documents in Wrike is already a breeze and today it just got better. With Wrike you can simultaneously edit text with your colleagues in real time, track changes, manage file versions, and our handy document editor lets you edit documents without downloading them - saving you time and space. Now we've added the ability to annotate and edit PDF files and images as well. Reviews just got faster and easier. Say goodbye to version control issues. Watch this short video to see the new document editor in action: Whether you're part of marketing team preparing visuals for a new campaign, design agency uploading new mockups, or simply reviewing and providing feedback on team's documents, this update will save you time and cut out unnecessary steps. Instantly open images and PDFs, add your comments and hit save to automatically create a new version which is auto-attached to your task in Wrike. Install the latest version of the document editor from your Wrike workspace now and accelerate your review process. *Wrike's document editor will open files using the default program for such files on your computer. Editing capabilities depend on your default program.
Keep Your Peers Up-to-Date with Important Tasks’ Progress
You definitely know that Wrike project management software aims to eliminate as much routine administrative work as possible. The Twitter-like “Follow” feature, introduced in Wrike’s new social version, plays an important part in making this happen. Thanks to this feature, you don't have to spend time collecting updates on each task from disconnected emails, phone calls and IM tools. This week, we’ve enhanced this project management functionality with one more helpful update – an invitation to follow. Now you can not only control your own preferences, but also make sure your colleagues keep an eye on a specific task that relates to them, even though they’re not the assignees. When you click on the “Follow” button in the task description, you see the avatars of the people who are getting notifications about changes in this task: If someone who is involved in completing this assignment isn’t on the list, you can send him or her an invitation. Click on the “+” icon and type this person’s email address in the field that appears, or choose the name from the list of users with whom the task is shared: Instead of assigning the task to multiple users to make sure they’re in the loop, you can subscribe them to all the updates when you’re creating the task. Every subscribed person instantly receives an email notification that he or she is now following a specific task. In a similar way, you can control these settings on the folder level and subscribe your colleagues to the updates made to all tasks in a certain folder. This new feature is a very helpful tool for managers who are in charge of many projects. With a few clicks, you can ensure that the appropriate people stay up-to-date on specific tasks, and important data doesn’t get lost in the workflow. Do you find this update useful? Leave a comment below or email your ideas to our Customer Care Team.
Office Timeline & Wrike: Quick, Visual Timeline Maker for Project Plans
In today’s fast-paced work environment it has never been more critical for teams to communicate effectively and visually. In fact, the project schedule is one area that needs visibility not just with your own team, but also with stakeholders and teams working with you on cross-functional projects. While sharing your detailed Gantt charts may be beneficial for your immediate team, what happens when you need to customize your project schedule for the executives who prefer a high-level view instead of a view including every last task in your massive project? This is why you need a timeline maker online. And today, we're announcing Wrike's integration with Office Timeline. Office Timeline's Interactive Timeline Maker Office Timeline is a PowerPoint timeline maker that transforms Wrike projects and tasks into beautiful Gantt charts — giving you clean and compelling visual representations of your project plans in Wrike. Office Timeline is a plug-in that works directly inside of Microsoft PowerPoint. While in PowerPoint, you can use the Wrike import wizard to import all (or portions) of your project plan and instantly create a timeline or Gantt chart slide. The project details are imported in just a few clicks, and our online timeline maker generates an elegant project visual that you can use in your next presentation. Because the timeline is built within PowerPoint, colleagues and teams can easily edit, share, and update the slide. How to Get the Timeline Maker Here's how to make use of the Wrike + Office Timeline integration: Office Timeline runs on Windows. Mac users will have to run a Windows virtual machine. You will need Microsoft Windows Vista or later, running Microsoft Office 2007 or later. Download and install the free version from the Office Timeline download page. Open Microsoft PowerPoint and navigate to the Office Timeline tab. Click New > Import from Wrike to create your first PowerPoint timeline or Gantt chart. * Note: Premium features are available for free for 14 days. Purchase Office Timeline Plus edition after the trial period expires to continue using the timeline maker to showcase your project plans in Wrike! See Office Timeline Support for any questions or help with the download.
How Wrike's Live Editor Makes Collaborating Easier
The core of Wrike's purpose is to help teams work better together. Part of that means simplifying the collaboration process for teams when multiple people need to contribute written content for a project. In the past, teams had to pass documents around through email. Person A writes their version; then Person B adds their ideas; finally Person C makes their edits and leaves additional comments. The process was slow, and Person C could be waiting days or weeks to see any work cross their desk. That is no longer good enough in today's Agile environment. With Wrike's Live Editor, teams can work faster. It's more than just a description, it's a live workspace for collaboration! Keeping ideas and documents in Wrike tasks means a few things for your team: 1. Several people can edit work at once The task description in Wrike updates and saves changes automatically. That means you and your colleague(s) can all make edits simultaneously, allowing for real-time collaboration. You'll see what others are typing as they're typing it, so you can immediately modify your own work accordingly. 2. You always have the latest version of work As soon as an email is sent, it's outdated. Plans change. New ideas blossom late in the night. By relying on email, you run the risk of a colleague opening your email a few days late, only to start building their work on an obsolete version of your project. When you keep work in Wrike tasks, everything is updated in real time. There is always one true version of your project, with no chance for colleagues to build their work on an outdated communication. Your colleagues see revisions as soon as you make them, and if they open a task right when you're in the process of updating it, they'll be able to watch as you make changes. 3. All changes are automatically tracked Wrike's Live Editor means you can stop manually tracking changes. Every task includes a time slider, so you can review all previous versions of the work. This is especially helpful if someone removes information from the task description field that you still need. Use the time slider to go back in time, find the missing info, and then copy and paste it back into your task. In another situation: If someone edits your task, but you don't like the changes they've made or your team decides they preferred the original, you're able to completely revert to a previous version using the time slider. 4. Your team improves results To become a market-leading company — and stay there once you've made it — being a fast-paced Agile organization is a must. When work is happening in real time, your team can iterate quickly and improve campaigns in minutes instead of days. No more downtime as you wait for a document to get passed to you, and you can see the latest updates instantly. Using Wrike's Live Editor means your team can get work out the door faster. More Features of Wrike's Live Editor The Live Editor can be found in three places: task descriptions, project descriptions, and high-level folder descriptions. When looking at a task together, a colored cursor with your colleague's name will appear in the place where they are making changes. You can use rich text formatting like bold text, lists, checkboxes, hyperlinks, header fonts, simple tables, and more. You can paste images to the Live Editor in a minimized format to save space in the description, or expand it to a larger view. Read more in our Help Center. Improve the Way You Work with Wrike's Live Editor Wrike's Live Editor enables you and your team to work together and share project updates as if you're in the same room, even when you're in different offices or across the world. It's also a great place to keep meeting notes and brainstorming ideas. Read our post on How to Run Effective Weekly Meetings in Wrike. If you love Wrike's Live Editor, share your success story in the comments below. When was the last time the Live Editor helped you complete work faster?
Educational Projects in Wrike: The Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education’s Experience
Numerous governmental organizations efficiently manage their projects in Wrike, and newcomers often ask us about the best practices of doing this. That’s why today we want to share with you the experience of the analysis and design department of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education – NCEI – Application GD. The team looks for the best software solutions for department tasks and projects in a ministry that has more than 5 million students and around 500,000 employees, including teachers. After they tried more than 20 different project management solutions, Wrike finally has enabled them to easily organize their collaboration within several departments, get more visibility into the work progress, and, finally, get everything done in time. Want to learn how? Numerous governmental organizations efficiently manage their projects in Wrike, and newcomers often ask us about the best practices of doing this. That’s why today we want to share with you the experience of the analysis and design department of the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Education – NCEI – Application GD. The team looks for the best software solutions for department tasks and projects in a ministry that has more than 5 million students and around 500,000 employees, including teachers. After they tried more than 20 different project management solutions, Wrike finally has enabled them to easily organize their collaboration within several departments, get more visibility into the work progress, and, finally, get everything done in time. Want to learn how? Selective data access at the department and project levels Such a large organization, like the ministry of education, requires different confidentiality levels for different departments and employees. This was easily achieved with the help of Wrike's selective sharing. In their Wrike workspace, the team organizes data and tasks by department and section. For example, they have an Analysis and Design folder for the corresponding department, with Analysis and Design subfolders for the two sections. For each project the team is currently working on, they create a subfolder in the section’s subfolder. Different users have different access to the information stored in the folders. The head of the department has access to all the tasks in the main folder (Analysis and Design), while the heads of the sections and project managers see the tasks in their subfolders only. Tagging tasks for better context & faster access Some tasks require special attention from the employees, and Zaki Ali Bayashoot, the analysis and design department director, puts them into different categories, such as “Exceptional Tasks,” “Management Tasks,” “TFU” (tasks to follow up on later), etc. Thanks to having the ability to put one task into several folders at once in Wrike, navigating and checking any group of tasks that are important for the team members is a matter of one click! At any time, team members simply click on the particular folder to see how many active tasks are on the list and look through the recent updates in the folder’s Activity Stream. Accountability for the top management A detailed folders structure and Wrike’s advanced filters make it easy for the ministry to create monthly reports for the top management. “I usually filter completed tasks by department, section or particular employees, using different timeframes to measure the team’s efficiency. I’ve also created widgets on my dashboard for the overdue tasks in particularly important projects that help me keep things under control,” Zaki Ali Bayashoot says. The task list can be quickly narrowed down by a particular project, completion date, task author or other criteria. This way, Wrike’s flexible folder structure, selective sharing, advanced filters and other project management features make the work of such a large organization easier and better coordinated! ”Our productivity has significantly increased since we’ve started using Wrike, and now I don’t have to worry about tracking and managing tasks. We would like to thank the Wrike Team for their excellent work that makes our management life easier,” concludes Zaki Ali Bayashoot, analysis and design department director.
Tag Your Tasks Created Via Email in a More Natural Way
When you create a task in Wrike via e-mail, you use tags to set the task due date and put the task in to the right folder. Now, there are more tags at your disposal: • To set the task’s due date, type it in the "by MM/DD" format at the end of the e-mail subject. Or, “by MM/DD” if you set another date format in your account. If the year is not specified in your email, the task will be scheduled for the current year. When you need to schedule a task for another year, you can explicitly specify it in the subject in the following format: “by MM/DD/YY” or “by MM/DD/YYYY” or in the international format, if you set it in your account (“by DD/MM/YY” or “by DD/MM/YYYY”). • To set the task’s start and due dates, type them in the “by MM/DD-MM/DD” format at the end of the e-mail subject. Or, “by MM/DD-MM/DD” if you set another date format in your account. Based on the start date and due date, Wrike automatically calculates the task's duration. • To put the task in to the right folder, separate the folder name from the task name with a double-colon. If you want to put the task in many folders, you can separate their names by commas or by a double-colon. As previously, you can use square brackets for the task’s due date and folder names.
Redesigned File Panel: Document Management Made Even Handier
Can you imagine collaborating on your tasks and projects without regularly sharing and iterating on documents, images, spreadsheets and presentations? Neither can we! With plenty of options for attaching files to tasks (from your computer, Google Drive and Dropbox), we decided it’s high time to make document management in Wrike even handier. So starting today, you can enjoy the new look and feel of the file panel in Wrike tasks. Let’s see what we’ve improved.Can you imagine collaborating on your tasks and projects without regularly sharing and iterating on documents, images, spreadsheets and presentations? Neither can we! With plenty of options for attaching files to tasks (from your computer, Google Drive and Dropbox), we decided it’s high time to make document management in Wrike even handier. So starting today, you can enjoy the new look and feel of the file panel in Wrike tasks. Let’s see what we’ve improved. While redesigning the file panel, one of the top priorities we had in mind was making it more compact, yet more visual: 1) Now, even if there are dozens of files attached to a task, they don’t push recent discussions out of the screen. You can see just the latest attachments, while the rest of the list is collapsed. And if you need to focus on files, simply click on the “more” button to the right of the attachment list. 2) In the expanded view of the file panel, all images have previews, so it’s much easier to spot the one you need. By hovering over a file, you can see its previous versions and attach a new one. Just like before, you can see who is editing a file (if this is an MS Office or OpenOffice document) and, therefore, avoid version conflicts. Check out the redesigned task attachments panel and share your experience with us!
New Option: View Tasks From Subfolders
From now on, you can also work on tasks from a particular folder and its subfolders as well. To do so, you simply click on the "Show descendant tasks" option. Then, as usual, you can apply filters to tasks by priority, title, responsible party, status and date.
How to Automate Marketing Project Creation with Duplication
It's Friday afternoon and a new project has just landed in your lap: a new banner for SXSW must be submitted by Tuesday, and yet you're still dealing with your backlog of work from this week. To get the banner done quickly, you'll probably have to copy and paste all the information from the tasks you used in the most recent banner project, right? Wrong. With Wrike you have the power of templates and duplication at your fingertips. What are Templates, and Why Use Duplication? Quick Recap: Templates are easily duplicable projects that include all attachments, tasks and subtasks, text descriptions, assignees, time durations, and work dependancies — all of which can be included or removed. If you find yourself constantly repeating the same multi-step projects over and over, then you will greatly benefit from creating a batch of project templates. This will mean you can easily pop into your 'Templates' folder in Wrike, bring up the banner design template, and quickly duplicate it for your 11th-hour project. Beyond mere speed and convenience, templates also help your team be thorough in your work. Using an existing, tested template ensures you don't accidentally overlook crucial steps which could have led to delays, errors, revisions, and general confusion (e.g. who is working on which part of the process). Easy Duplication Using Project Templates in Wrike Here's the step-by-step process for quickly duplicating projects from templates: FIND IT: Head into your template folder in Wrike and find the "Banner design template" folder/project that your team created in the past. DUPLICATE IT: Right click on the "Banner design template" folder/project and choose "Duplicate." With Wrike's latest update, you can immediately select the destination folder for your duplicated project. CUSTOMIZE IT: Name your duplicated project (e.g. "SXSW Banner Design"), and specify the appropriate prefix to include before the name of every task and subtask (e.g. "SXSW"). Prefixes will help you create Reports or Dashboards, and they'll keep your work organized and concise — instead of creating an ambiguous "Design draft 1" task every time you duplicate, using your prefix you'll create "SXSW - Design draft 1" for easy identification. You can also specify whether you want to copy tasks with or without their descriptions, attachments, assignees, custom fields' values, and more. Once created, the new project will be highlighted within your folder tree. Learn more about creating project templates in Wrike Check out our blog post for more info on creating and duplicating project templates in Wrike. And as always, if you have any questions feel free to get in touch with our Support team.
Microsoft and Wrike Integrate to Enhance Team Productivity
Today, we're happy to announce Wrike's new integrations with Microsoft as part of our mission to provide our users with easy collaboration, increased time-savings, and visibility into work. Microsoft provides customers a platform to create and publish a wide spectrum of content — from spreadsheets to documents and everything in between. Wrike provides users a system for organizing work — from individual tasks to discussions and deadlines. Together, Microsoft and Wrike enhance your creativity and productivity, providing a collaborative experience that is seamless. In the first phase, Wrike users now have the ability to upload their documents and presentations into Wrike using the Add-in for Office 365 right from within Word and PowerPoint. You no longer need to switch windows/tabs and search for your files. Simply add your files to Wrike right from the favorite Office apps you use everyday. In addition to Wrike’s Add-in for Office 365, the second phase of the integration supports any files stored in OneDrive for Business. The Microsoft integration will allow you to easily attach your business files directly to Wrike tasks and gives you access to the most up-to-date version from one central location. Check out this feature in Wrike Labs! The final phase enables Enterprise users to integrate their Microsoft Azure Active Directory or Office 365 account to log into Wrike and interact with tasks directly via Single Sign-On. Azure Active Directory is the world’s largest access and identity management solution. Wrike’s integration with Azure AD allows IT administrators to easily perform access and identity management tasks to secure company data and documents stored within Wrike. Wrike’s Integrations with Microsoft are available for all Wrike subscriptions. Ready to give them a try? Download them here: Add-in for Office 365 Active Directory & SSO If you’re not a Wrike user yet, begin a Free Trial. More great integrations are coming soon, so stayed tuned. Subscribe to our blog to stay up-to-date with all the latest product news.
Build Even More Accurate Plans with Task Date Constraints on Wrike's Timeline
This week, we released an important update to Wrike’s Dynamic Timeline™ – task date constraints. This feature is familiar to those of you who switched to Wrike project management software from Microsoft Project. In this post, we’ll tell you about this new functionality and how you and your peers can benefit from using it. From time to time, we all have to deal with tasks that are closely connected to each other in the project workflow. In such cases, a project management tool with dynamic timeline allows you to quickly build a precise plan, considering the connection between tasks and the contingency time. Wrike lets you connect tasks with dependencies within one project, as well as set cross-project dependencies. Now, with the release of constraints on the timeline, the dependent tasks can have a time lag between them, so that you can build even more accurate project schedules! Let’s simplify this real business scenario to an exemplary situation, where only two tasks are involved. Say you plan to interview one of your most loyal customers and publish a success story on your website. First, you need to prepare the list of questions. Only after the questions are ready can you proceed to the interview. However, you find out that your customer is going on a 3-day business trip and can’t have the interview on the day you initially planned. You need to reflect this delay in the project schedule. In this case, you can connect these two tasks on the timeline, considering the date constraints. Here’s how: point the cursor over the top right-hand corner of the task bar for “Prepare questions.” A small triangle appears. Click on the triangle and drag the line to the dependent task, called “Interview the customer.” This way, you can create a strict dependency. Then drag the dependent task on the timeline to the proper start date to create a task date constraint, as shown in the screenshot below. Here’s an example of a Gantt chart with dependencies: Task date constraints on Wrike’s timeline will help you build an accurate project plan that’s shared with your peers. If we look at it on a wider scale, this will keep your project workflow perfectly organized in a multitasking environment and help your team avoid any slips in the schedule.
Announcing Video Proofing, Advanced Markup, and Extension for Adobe<sup>®</sup> Premiere
Now, you can use the Wrike Proofing & Approval Add-on to review and approve all of your video assets, use more advanced markup tools, and seamlessly connect your video editors to your workflow using our Adobe Creative Cloud Extension for Adobe Premiere. The P&A Add-on is included with Wrike for Marketers or available as an add-on feature to Pro, Business and Enterprise accounts.
Wrike's Gantt Chart Goes Mobile! The Beta Version is Already in Your iPhone and Android Apps
Have you already checked out the latest version of Wrike’s app on your smartphone? If not, then it’s high time to have a look at it ;-) There is an awesome, must-see update: the dynamic mobile Gantt chart is now available in beta. Have you already checked out the latest version of Wrike’s app on your smartphone? If not, then it’s high time to have a look at it ;-) There is an awesome, must-see update: the dynamic mobile Gantt chart is now available in beta. The new mobile Gantt chart enables you to quickly browse your project plans on the go and… adjust the plans with a tap! Just like in the web version, you can drag task bars to reschedule the tasks.Don’t waste a second and give it a try now! In case you don’t have Wrike's app on your smartphone yet, install it from the App Store or Google Play right now. It’s free for all Wrike users. P.S. By the way, now you can also set when you’d like to receive push notifications on your smartphone from Wrike’s app (go to Settings->Preferences->Notifications).
Enjoy Powerful, Integrated File Sharing With Microsoft SharePoint and Wrike
The key to success moving forward is choosing digital collaboration solutions that integrate with your organization’s most essential tools. With SharePoint and Wrike, you can enjoy effective file sharing and collaboration.
Build Extended Reports in Wrike
It has become possible, thanks to the new field that allows you to specify the date filtering criteria. Now you can filter tasks not only by the due date, but also by the creation date, start date, completion date and the date when last changes have been made. Remember that you can combine such sorting criteria as dates, responsible party, task status and priority to get clear visibility of a particular part of your plans. In other words, you can create a report that tells you what high-importance tasks John Smith has completed by today, tomorrow or any other date. Or what tasks Mary Brown has completed since the beginning of the week. Or what tasks created by you start on the next Monday. Your partial reports can be created in each folder, as well as overall reports across all your projects can be created in the special “Reports” area. The “Reports” area has one more advantage: you can select tasks by the author. Now it’s your turn to benefit from Wrike’s easy-to-customize reports and evaluate your organizational productivity. There is always room for improvement in successful businesses. Very likely, you will be pleased with the opportunities for growth of your team's overall performance.
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.