It's Time to Have Fewer Papers on Your Table: Keeping Memos in Wrike
There's a better way to send memos. Send them to your staff via Wrike, and use built-in tools to track who has read it, send reminders to those who haven't, and even field questions to ensure comprehension. Find out how.
How to Be Available Even When Out of the Office (Work Management Roundup)
It's time for the Friday Roundup once again. Today also marks 14 years since the tragedy of 9/11. We wanted to put together an especially heroic collection of links to the best articles on work management, productivity, and work. 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 ride home. Here they are: How-To Articles: Successful Entrepreneurs Are Never 'Out of the Office' (Entrepreneur): Entrepreneur and sales expert Grant Cardone suggests 2 rules so that you're always open to opportunity, even when you're technically offline. And no it's not a recipe for becoming a workaholic, rather, it's a plan of action for never turning away new business. To Become a Leader, Think Beyond Your Role (Harvard Business Review): Excellent read on defining your role broadly and how thinking like an owner can actually help you lead more fruitfully. Design a Pitch Deck: Lessons from a Seasoned Founder (Medium): The founder of men's fashion app Mylo explains the dos and don'ts of creating and designing a pitch deck. Bonus tip: even Slideshare says bullet points are bad. Find the Cheapest Flights With These 5 Travel Apps (DailyTekk): Forget the days of the mega-sites that promised cheap tickets but never really delivered. This list of 5 travel apps will transform how you shop for flights. Just, be warned that frequent business travel is bad for your health. Get New Content for Your Site (Audience Bloom): Yep, you constantly need new content for your company blog. Marketers know the struggle is real. But here are 7 ways to get new content for your blog from guest posts to interviews and more. And they're all free. Master Twitter Like a Boss (Medium): Buffer put together a guide for Twitter newbies which condenses and combines their best advice on this social media platform —all in one blog post. More Work Management Reads How Can I Leave at 5 P.M. Without Looking Like a Slacker? (Fast Company) The Project Management Guide for Beginners (Wrike) Digital Sabbaticals Don’t Make Sense (Cal Newport) 24 Life Changing Productivity Tools (Medium) 15 Habits That Will Change Your Life (Devious Gentlemen) The Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Meeting (Wrike) Looking for more Startup Advice? Follow our Flipboard magazine Startup Spark Up for links to articles on emerging businesses, founder advice, and best practices for entrepreneurs. Image credit: alone by Giorgio Montersino on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Changes made.
Introducing the New Wrike Community & Help Center
The Wrike Help Center has a fresh new look — and a brand new user forum! Looking for someplace to talk Folder structure, creating real-time Reports, new user training, and more? Join the new Wrike Community and connect with other Wrike users. You can: Ask questions. Post your question in the user forums to get a quick answer from either a fellow Wriker, or from a member of the Wrike Team. Find answers and advice. Simultaneously search Knowledge Base articles and Wrike Community posts to quickly find the information you need, without having to submit a support ticket. Learn best practices. Communicate directly with other teams like yours to find out how others are using Wrike, share templates and reports, and get the most out of the tool. Stay up to date on the latest Wrike news. Read all about the latest features and fixes in weekly Release Notes. To get started, simply visit the Wrike Community. Check out the newly redesigned Help Center now, and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Tips from 123 EDI on Improving Customer Satisfaction with Wrike's Help
How can you achieve customer service so fine that clients actually comment on it and spread the word about your company? Learn from the benchmark experiences of other companies, and benefit from the latest technologies to facilitate your work. , a leading provider of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), has been offering a variety of robust, cost-effective EDI solutions since 1991. Projects of 123 EDI are typically complex and require coordination between sales, accounting and programming departments to ensure the company meets and even exceeds customers' expectations. According to Bernie Murciano, President at 123 EDI, the following principles, supported by Wrike's features, help to achieve top-notch customer service: Attention to detail Being thorough in performing clients' requests, minding the details, no matter how small they are, is crucial on the road to customer satisfaction. But can you take the load of remembering too many things off your brain and still deliver everything and more to your clients? Yes, you can! Wrike stores all the short-term and long-term commitments of 123 EDI, providing "a view of the big picture without losing sight of the many details" says Bernie. Thus, 123 EDI stays ahead of the game and ensures that even minor customer needs are not overlooked. "Positive customer feedback doubled in a couple of months after we adopted Wrike," shares Bernie. Seamless collaboration To achieve excellent customer service, a unified effort of all the organizational departments is required. 123 EDI chose Wrike project management software for teamwork with its enhanced collaboration features: real-time discussions, handy ways to follow tasks, and a cross-project newsfeed to track progress with ease. What makes Wrike especially convenient for collaboration is easy data-sharing on project progress with everyone involved. If you wish to connect remote teams, external partners and clients to the project, you can easily do so – the number of external viewers is unlimited. Bernie confirms: "Wrike's user-friendly web application keeps everyone on the same page." Commitment to timelines When you deliver a project on time, customers appreciate it and come back for more. With Wrike's automatic reminders about tasks and updates, you never miss a deadline. Scheduling tasks is simple and can be done from list, table and timeline views in real time. Bernie Murciano values this ability "to more effectively prioritize tasks by revising due dates." Thus, 123 EDI quickly reacts to the ever-changing business conditions, so that no customer is disappointed by a missed deadline.
Keep Your Team Members on the Same Page with Wrike
Adoption of Wrike brought quick improvements both to managers and team members. “Wrike has been the most productive tool we have added to our arsenal since I started this business nearly five years ago,” says Dan Tipton, president and CEO at Tipton Communications. Read the whole interview with Dan to find out why Wrike turned out to be the best match for the company’s needs and how the workflow at Tipton has changed since it adopted this project management software.
4 Tips to Improve Your Next Meeting
Meetings. We love them. We hate them. And let's be honest: mostly the latter. For a lot of workers, meetings are synonymous with: "A boring, pointless waste of my time." To change that mentality, we need to change the way we approach our conference calls and boardroom gatherings. Here are four best practices to make sure every meeting counts: 1. Get rid of status update meetings FOREVER Allow me to start by being bold — status update meetings are a waste of your time. 10, 15 years ago, they may have been necessary to make sure everyone was on the same page. Today, we have team collaboration software like Wrike to share updates freely. No sitting in a cramped room at an inconvenient time of day. Everyone can check on the status of projects when its most convenient for them, and they'll never forget who said what. Ask questions and leave comments or feedback online instead of repeating yourself or getting incomplete answers during a conference call. Make your next meeting perfect: Only hold meetings if you want instantaneous, person-to-person collaboration and brainstorming. 2. Only involve the necessary people The biggest drain on your colleagues' precious time is to ask them to join a meeting they don't need to attend. If you set a precedent of only involving necessary parties, your colleagues will stop dreading "useless" meetings. Which means their engagement in your meetings will rise because they will always go in knowing they need to contribute to the gathering for work to get done. Make your next meeting perfect: When you create your list of meeting attendees, also write down tangible reasons they need to attend. More than just: "They're on the marketing team." Try reasons like, "They have prior experience with this type of project." 3. Create a goal-oriented agenda — and stick to it! Decide in advance what you want to accomplish by the end of the meeting — finish a customer email, come to a decision about the next website design, brainstorm ideas for a new conference. Turn those goals into an agenda and do not allow people to deviate in their conversation. Once you have accomplished all your goals, blow the whistle! The meeting is over! This will keep your meetings focused and purpose-driven. In line with only involving the necessary people, goal-oriented agendas make sure you don't waste anyone's time. Make your next meeting perfect: Focus! Go through your agenda in order, creating one solution after the next until you hit the bottom of the list. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Successful meeting. 4. End your meeting with "role" call Don't let the momentum die once you have left the (possibly virtual) room. End your meetings by creating next steps for everyone involved so they walk out of your meeting and jump right back into work. Before you adjourn your session together, ask each person for their action plan. You've just accomplished two things: created accountability by publicly confirming responsibilities, and made sure everyone ends the meeting on the same page. Make your next meeting perfect: As soon as the call is over, send out the list of next steps for every person involved in your meeting. After implementing these four tips, no one should walk out of your meetings thinking they have wasted their time. Have you rid yourself of status meetings and created goal-oriented agendas? Or do you have more advice for creating the perfect meeting? Help us out! We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Read next: 4 Problems with Virtual Meetings that You Can Fix Read next: Managing Remote Meetings
8 Lessons in Increased Productivity from Wrike Customers
Crafting the perfect business pie requires a list of ingredients. A great idea, an awesome team, and an actionable plan. But the most important, do-or-die ingredient to make your perfect pie is productivity. Putting the proper thought into hiring the most productive team and creating an effective plan will keep your business from crumbling. So why not learn from those who are proving they can get things done day after day? Here are 8 quick, valuable lessons we've learned in increasing work productivity from our awesome Wrike fans. 1. "Divide complex tasks into smaller ones." — William Fetter, Director of Marketing and Communications, Hexagon Metrology Hexagon Metrology was struggling with the fast pace of work and tracking the progress of their tasks. They found it easier to break larger tasks into manageable — and more trackable — pieces. [Learn more] 2. "Don't waste time on micromanagement." — Daniel Schneider, Senior Project Manager, Secondred Secondred was wasting time with routine tasks like sending daily to-do emails and updating the team on task status. Instead, they turned to a software tool to automate these tasks. [Learn more] 3. "Clearly define your goals." — Kat Holt , Head of Marketing, The Huntercombe Group The Huntercombe Group started every project by stating specific objectives and goals they wanted to accomplish. It helped them complete their work in a clear and concise manner. [Learn more] 4. "Assign tasks to each other and report to the whole team on what you have done." — Laura Roeder, Online Marketing Strategist and Social Media Expert, LKR Social Media With their small, non-traditional team, LKR Social Media found that the best way to get the most done was to hold one another accountable for every task. Sharing and creating together saved precious time. [Learn more] 5. "Create unlimited projects within one single workspace." — Nick Doherty, Managing Editor of Television, SBS Online Nick Doherty found a space where he could place every project and every task so that he didn't have to jump back and forth between various tools. Now he doesn't worry about forgetting to check up on multiple different tools, and work never slips through the cracks. [Learn more] 6. "Keep everyone informed in real time." — Gunter Hildebrand, Managing Partner, Hildebrands GmbH On a distributed team with an overwhelming amount of information changing between hands, it was critical for Hildebrands GmbH to keep everyone updated in real time so no one accidentally worked with old information. [Learn more] 7. "Eliminate the e-chatter and focus on the next step." — Erin Blakemore, Co-founder and Director, VOCO Creative VOCO Creative was swimming in updates and to-do emails, without gaining a true sense of priorities. They now use online project timelines to clear the fog and stay out of their inboxes. [Learn more] 8. "A good collaboration and project management solution is essential for getting things done in a team, especially in a distributed team." — Rurik Bradbury, Chief Marketing Officer, Unison Technologies Unison Technologies was having problems because every team member wanted to organize and approach projects his or her own way. Now they rely on flexible software that fits each user's needs, creating a shared workspace to organize all their work and a productivity time tracker to monitor tasks. [Learn more] What do you think of these productivity tips? Agree? Disagree? If you have other productivity tips that help you at work, share with us in the comments below!
Top 5 "A-ha!" Moments When Using Wrike
Wrike has a lot of great functionality to discover. Some are in your face and easy to explore. But I argue that some of our best features are the ones you haven't noticed yet. Whether you're working on your first Wrike project or your 100th, make sure you experience these 5 awesome "A-ha!" moments while using Wrike. 1. Show descendant tasks — If you've ever selected a folder and seen the "27 tasks in this folder but nothing close to your needs" message, then you probably haven't discovered descendants. This message generally means that the folder has all its tasks stored in subfolders. Click "Show descendants" to reveal all of the tasks in the descendant subfolders. If that doesn't do the trick, hover over the "active" filter and click the "X" that appears next to it (more information in #4). 2. Select several or all tasks — When you hover over a task in the list view, you'll notice a small box to the left of the user avatars. Clicking this box selects the task. You can select as many tasks as you like in a given list. If you want to select an entire list of tasks, hover your mouse just above the top-most box. With one click, you can select all. From there, use mass actions to edit your chosen tasks. 3. Dragging folders to tag tasks — In Wrike, a folder or task can live in multiple locations. An easy, often overlooked method to tag a task is to drag and drop the folder on top of the task to add the tag. 4. Clearing filters when searching for information — It's our goal to make it easy to focus on the work that needs to be done. By default, Wrike displays tasks that are "Active" and assigned to anyone. You know this by the blue text filters under the folder title. When searching for completed tasks, you'll need to clear the "Active" filter. Simply hover over "Active" and click it to switch the filter to "Completed." This will display only completed tasks in your search results. Alternatively, click the "X" that appears next to the word "Active" to clear this filter and display all tasks in the folder, regardless of status. 5. Quoting text in comments — The description section of a task is often detailed or lengthy. Quoting makes it easy to ask questions and provide feedback on specific sentences. To quote part of the description for your comments, highlight the text and click the quote icon that appears on the left. This will pull the text into the comments section where you can add your feedback and share your ideas with the team. Want to see these features in action? Check out this short video for a quick overview. Do you have other favorite Wrike tricks that you think your fellow Wrikers will love? Help everyone out by mentioning them in the comments!
Tips and Tricks: Tag Your Tasks to Find Them Later with a Mouse Click
Imagine your marketing department is going to run a customer satisfaction survey. To have quick access to this task, you may want to put it into several categories, like "Surveys", "Favorites" and "Approved." Wonder how you can do it in Wrike? Create and attribute multiple tags to a task The function of tags is assigned to folder names in Wrike. So to tag a task, just create a folder with the corresponding title and then drag it from the folder tree onto a task. That’s it: the folder name becomes the task’s tag. The task also gets included in this folder and shared with the team members with whom the folder is shared. All of the task’s tags are listed under its title. In our example, the tags "Surveys," "Favorites" and "Approved" will appear under the "Customer Satisfaction Survey" task. To see all tasks in the category, just click on the appropriate tag, so tasks get displayed in the task list. Change and remove tags As you work with the task, the set of attributed tags might need an edit. It can be easily done in the “Included in” field in the task description. To add more tags to the task right there, click on any tag and type the folder name in the entry field that appears. Removing a tag from a task also takes a matter of seconds: click on the tag name and then click on X near it or hit “Delete” on your keyboard. In case you need to delete all the tags, click on the X to the right of the tag list and that’s it! Build neat folder structure by tagging folders Just as easily, tagging folders will help you structure your data. For example, if you create a "Banner ideas" folder, you may tag it with "Ideas" and "Marketing" by typing the corresponding folder names in the "Included in" field. After tagging, "Banner ideas" becomes a subfolder of both "Ideas" and "Marketing" and gets shared with all team members that have access to these two folders. Tagging may be efficiently used in many cases. For example, tags come in very handy when you need to apply custom statuses to tasks, so you may want to create tags called "waiting for approval," "approved," "rejected" and "pending." Or you may categorize your tasks by the action required to complete them: "call," "e-mail," "read," "brainstorm," etc. Use tags to mark the stages of your product life-cycle or the development phases of software release versions. As you see, there are no hard-and-fast rules in tagging your tasks, so feel free to create tags for everything you need! And don’t forget about the "Favorites" tag to bring your most important tasks together.
How Aerotek’s Marketing Team Accelerates Planning Cycles by 1.5 Weeks
We recently caught up with Matt Andrews from Aerotek, a leading recruiting and staffing firm, to learn how his team has streamlined marketing requests, shortened planning cycles, cut email by 90%, and much more.
Focus on Your Goals While Wrike Takes Care of the Project Communication Routine
Read the whole interview with Gunter to find out how Wrike helped his company to save 25% of time spent on routine project communication tasks and to organize effective project collaboration with numerous external partners distributed all over Europe.
Tip: Use Wrike in Side-by-Side Windows for Easy Referencing
Have you ever needed to work on a Wrike task while referencing another task, and had to navigate back and forth between two tabs? Or have you ever had to implement edits to a task description based on comments at the very bottom of the task, forcing you to scroll up and down endlessly? Then this simple tutorial should make it easier for you. As a marketing copywriter for Wrike, I use our tool for word processing every day to create and edit everything from longer webinar scripts to medium-length blog posts to ultra-short website copy. Because the tool is so stable, I can have multiple tabs of Wrike open side-by-side without overloading my browser or RAM. In fact, I often work with 2 browser tabs of the same task open side-by-side — and I haven’t broken anything yet. This is how most of my editing sessions go: people leave feedback and suggestions in the comments, and instead of me scrolling up and down in a cycle of reviews and edits, I simply open two windows of the same task and place them side by side. One for viewing the comments at the end, one for editing the text up on top. Here’s a quick and easy tutorial on how to go about it: How-to for Mac OS: Download the open source tool Spectacle. This is a free tool that allows you to move and resize windows easily. Now open the same Wrike task in two different windows of your browser. If the three pane setup of Wrike makes the main content unreadable in smaller screens, then use the Wrike keyboard shortcut on both windows to make the view fullscreen: Control + Shift + F. Once you've set up your windows, forget manually dragging them to the position you need. Instead, use Spectacle's keyboard shortcuts: Option + Command + Left Arrow/Right Arrow: This resizes the window you’re working on and positions it on the left half or right half of your screen. Option + Command + F: The selected window is enlarged to fill the screen. How-to for Windows: Open the same Wrike task in two different windows of your browser. Make the tasks fullscreen in each window using the Wrike keyboard shortcut: Control + Shift + F. To automatically resize both windows and position them side by side, just use the built-in keyboard shortcut for both Windows 7 and Windows 8: Windows key + Left Arrow/Right Arrow And that's how I do it! Do you have an awesome tip or unique Wrike professional services usage you’d like to share? Hit the comments. We’d love to hear from you.
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"?
How Wrike's Content Marketing Team Manages Projects in Wrike
Here at Wrike we eat our own dog food—or drink our own champagne, as we like to say—so we were able to quickly adapt our workflow to meet our evolving needs and increase our momentum. Let’s dig into how we manage content projects in Wrike!
The Top Challenges for Creative Teams
We surveyed creative teams of all sizes and asked about their biggest challenges, struggles with collaboration, and how they manage their work. We found that generally, most requests are given at random, too much feedback is a hindrance, and clients are the most difficult to collaborate with.
New Folder Colors Come to Wrike!
For some time, one of our highest-volume requests has been: "We need more folder colors!" Today, we have brought a rainbow of colors to everyone's workspace. Make your workspace easier to navigate by color-coding your most important folders so they'll catch your eye immediately as you scan your folder tree. From red to purple to sea foam green, you can now color coordinate all your folders to brighten up your workspace and delight your inner child. How to pick your new folder colors: It couldn't be easier: right-click any folder to go to the color selector and then have fun making your decision! You'll see the new color appear to the left of your folder name. You can also select the silhouette icon instead of a color. And if you want even more color in your life, check out our two Wrike Party Themes to decorate your workspace! You can activate them in the Wrike Labs.
How to Create an Approval Process in Wrike
There are a few concrete business elements that remain consistent across all organizations, regardless of industry. Emails and meetings generally fall in that category. One element that is often overlooked but almost always takes up time is the approval process. Documents, deliverables, content, purchasing requests, etc. all need to go through an approval process to make sure they adhere to the expectations and quality guidelines the company upholds for their staff and customers. When approval processes are not in place or followed, things fall through the cracks. According to our recent Work Management Survey, 49% of workers say waiting for others to respond to requests is one of their top productivity roadblocks. Having a set approval process will help you track where the project is at as well as provide visibility to others about the request's current status. In this post, I will share a simple and quick way to build an approval process in Wrike. 1. Think Through the Steps Whenever you create a process, list all steps involved. Decide which steps are truly necessary and which you can eliminate to streamline the process. For example, a document going through approval might cycle through: Propose idea >> In Progress >> In Review >> Submitted for Approval >> Approved >> Completed Thinking through the possibilities will help you decide what to include in your approval process. 2. Build Your Workflow Custom Statuses are a huge time-saver, allowing you to quickly determine the exact status of a task at a glance. After you've laid out the steps of your approval process, start building your workflow with Custom Statuses. Only include the statuses that are actionable. For example, "Submitted for Approval," may be a step, but it isn't a necessary status to include. Here are the statuses I would recommend: 1. Proposed 2. In Progress 3. In Review 5. Approved 6. Completed 7. On Hold 8. Deferred 9. Cancelled 3. Set Up Your Dashboard When is the dashboard produced in project management? Now, in this final step. Lastly. you'll want to build a Dashboard so you can easily review which projects are in what stage at any time. The Dashboard allows you and your team to categorize projects based on the status of the project. Let's say you wish to set up a Dashboard of all projects that need to be approved so your manager or VP can easily go in and see them all at once. Name the Dashboard accordingly and create a widget called Awaiting Approval, and another widget called, Approved. In this widget, you would include all projects that are In Review so your VP knows which projects need attention. Once your VP updates the status, those projects will instantly move over to the corresponding widget, so you'll always have the current status of each item. Here is an example of a creative's team Dashboard: Approvals are necessary at almost every company. Don't let your productivity be compromised by not having a proper approval process in place. Looking for a good approval process for content? Check out this approval process we use ourselves for content. How do you set up your approval processes in Wrike? Take us through your workflow in the comments section.
Collaboration to Configuration: How Connecting Workflows Impacts the Customer Experience
Behind every successful cross-functional relationship is a set of tools to advance communication and productivity. Here are 3 workflows every company should connect to optimize the customer experience.