Star Your Favorite Folders to Keep Them on Top
Like a lot of us, you probably have two or three folders in Wrike that you use most often. Accessing them might take several clicks, especially if you have a lot of folders in your account. Today, we're introducing a Starred Folders section where you can quickly access your most commonly used folders. With the new Starred section, your favorite folders and projects are always just a click away. How to Add Folders to Starred When you hover over a folder, you'll see a star icon appear on the right. Click it and the folder will be added to the "Starred" section on top of your folder tree (in much the same way you add a task to "My Work"). Now, no matter how many folders you have in your account, you'll have instant access to the ones you use most often. Save time searching for key work items by keeping them "Starred!" As always, we looking forward to your feedback in the comments.
Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: Define Your Wrike Goals
Wrike is a tool that helps make your project management process more efficient, but it's not enough to just know about all of Wrike's features. Without a clear process in place, things will still fall through the cracks. In order to help your team successfully implement Wrike, you need to create a clear picture of your end goals, determine how certain features will be utilized, and communicate new processes with your team. Define Your Goals for Wrike Because Wrike has so many features, it's especially important to have a clear plan for what you want to get out of the tool. So make sure you get a good idea of the specific goals you want to achieve using Wrike. Do you want to boost work velocity and get things done faster than before? Do you want to increase visibility and collaboration between team members? Whatever your goal, having a defined objective will help you ensure Wrike is doing its job. Clear goals also make it easier to gauge how Wrike has contributed to your team's productivity and overall success. One of our customers — a project manager leading her team — used Excel spreadsheets before coming to Wrike. She wanted to increase the number of tasks the team completed on a weekly basis. Having a defined goal made it very easy for her to measure the success of their Wrike implementation: she simply compared the number of projects done with Wrike to the number of projects completed when they formerly relied on Excel. She showed this tangible benchmark of success to upper management, and they were very excited to see the jump in productivity. Decide How Your Team Can Maximize the Features This is generally true for most software, but with with a tool as flexible as Wrike, it becomes crucial that you figure out and really define what certain features mean for you and your team. For example: Wrike lets you mark tasks with a "deferred" status, but what does "deferred" mean for your purposes? Are you reactivating that same task later on, or giving up on it completely? In the same vein, when do you use the “Cancelled" status? And when do you simply delete a task that is no longer needed? Deciding ahead of time will save confusion. And when it comes to rescheduling tasks, should it be standard operating procedure for your team members to @mention the person responsible for the project, or can they simply reschedule the tasks on their own? Furthermore, how will you use milestones? Will you only set milestones for the final due date of a big project, or will there be multiple milestones along the way? Will the people working on the project come up with the tasks in between? Spend some time considering the best processes and most helpful features to enhance your team's everyday work. Creating some standard usage guidelines will give them direction and help establish consistency to prevent them from feeling overwhelmed by unfamiliar software. Communicate Processes with Your Team Once you've figured out the best working processes and most helpful features for your goals, communicate them with your team and get everyone on the same page. Here's an example: Let’s say your goal is to encourage your team to share knowledge with their colleagues, so you're setting up a company knowledge base within Wrike. Instead of actionable items, each task represents a piece of information that your team can use for reference. Since you want each piece of information to be easily accessible, you don't want these "tasks" to be marked as complete. If you’re setting this as the rule, communicate it with the team and explain the reasoning. For larger companies, consider distributing a reference guide, (e.g. a PDF file listing all rules) especially regarding features in Wrike that are the most beneficial for your team. And if there are features you won't be using, be sure to communicate that as well. Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way to use these features. Since you are the one most familiar with how your team works, you must put some thought into creating an intelligent way to integrate Wrike with your team's habits and workflow, culminating in a holistic process. Only then can you truly adopt Wrike and attain the overall goal of increasing your team's productivity. NOTE: This is the third in a series of posts I’ve written regarding adopting software in general, and Wrike in particular. For more adoption tips, here is the first in the series, and here's the second.
How Wrike Uses Wrike Requests to Deliver Content
Wrike Requests now allows us to standardize and prioritize content suggestions that come from other departments. With customized fields and templates, people are able to suggest their ideas and provide all the necessary info we need to execute it.
20 #ProjectManagement Gurus to Follow on Twitter
Twitter is a fantastic resource for keeping up with the latest trends and connecting with leading figures in project management. But the sheer number of voices can often be overwhelming, especially when you’re new to the world of tweets and hashtags. We’ve sifted through the crowd and collected 20 inspirational and informative Project Management Gurus you should follow on Twitter to stay in the know, develop your PM skills, and further your career. Here's the list in alphabetical order: 1. David Allen @gtdguy You know him as the father of Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. As an author, speaker, and productivity guru, David helps bring focus, clarity and confidence to workers facing overwhelming to-do lists. Why you should follow: David's feed is full of productivity tips, motivational aphorisms, and easily applicable advice to help you get more meaningful stuff done at work and in life. 2. Craig Brown @brown_note Craig's blog, "Better Projects," collects his musings on Agile, Lean, and general collaboration. He has over 15 years experience managing projects, as well as training and coaching other PMs. Why you should follow: Craig tweets thought-provoking commentary on the current state of Agile, community, and collaboration. 3. Elisabeth Bucci @elisabethbucci Elisabeth is the popular author of "The Passionate Project Manager" blog. She publishes communication tips, team building techniques, and management advice inspired by her 20+ years as a PM. She also finds everyday project management inspiration in her hobbies, life as a mother, and pop culture. Why you should follow: Elisabeth's tweets reflect her vibrant personality, and she engages in a lot of conversations with other PMs and thought leaders, so her feed is a great way to keep up with what’s buzzing in the industry. 4. Luis Seabra Coelho @lseabra Luis is an experienced software developer and project manager. He posts videos, interviews, podcasts, and other PM resources on his Ah-Ha-Moments.net blog. Why you should follow: Follow Luis for a friendly resource on interesting articles, interviews with thought leaders, and a mix of hard and soft PM skills to master. 5. Rachel Feintzeig @rachelfeintzeig Rachel is a seasoned reporter who covers management and executives for The Wall Street Journal’s "At Work" leadership blog. Why you should follow: For insight into what's newsworthy in management and the general business landscape, Rachel's feed is sure to keep you plugged in to important conversations. 6. Cornelius Fichtner @corneliusficht You may know Cornelius as the host of "The PM Podcast," where he discusses project management methodologies, PMOs, and training opportunities. Why you should follow: Cornelius tweets the latest industry news, career advice, book reviews, and other helpful resources to further your career. 7. Seth Godin @ThisIsSethsBlog Seth is a well-respected entrepreneur, marketer, public speaker, and the founder of Squidoo. He's written 15 worldwide bestsellers, including: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us and Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Why you should follow: Get instant notifications of Seth's new blog posts, with forward-thinking insights into cutting-edge business trends, strategies, and advice. 8. Heidi Grant Halvorson @hghalvorson As a prominent social psychologist and Associate Director of Columbia Business School's Motivation Science Center, Heidi has the inside scoop on the science behind motivation. She's also a bestselling author and a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes, among other top news outlets. Why you should follow: Don't miss Heidi's insights into human nature, motivation, productivity and creativity--they're sure to make you a better manager. 9. Elizabeth Harrin @pm4girls Elizabeth is the force behind the award-winning blog, "A Girl's Guide to Project Management." She's also the author of Shortcuts to Success: Project Management in the Real World; Customer-Centric Project Management; and Social Media for Project Managers. Why you should follow: Elizabeth's feed provides friendly commentary on a range of PM topics, from productivity tips to newsworthy articles. 10. Jim Highsmith @jimhighsmith With 30+ years as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer, Jim Highsmith knows his stuff. He's written several books on Agile, including co-authoring The Agile Manifesto. He also co-founded Agile Alliance and Agile Project Leadership Network. Why you should follow: If you're interested in Agile, Jim's the ultimate resource for advice, strategies, and implementation tips. 11. Ed Laccohee @edlac As the founder of Controlled Projects, Ltd., Ed works to improve business practices by assisting with projects, improving frameworks, and analyzing methodologies. Why you should follow: His hilarious videos, articles, and commentary on his experience as a PM, along with tips and resources, make for an educational and amusing productivity break. 12. Susanne Madsen @susannemadsen With over 17 years managing multi-million dollar projects, Susanne serves as a consultant, coach and mentor to helps managers develop valuable leadership skills. She is the author of The Project Management Coaching Workbook: Six Steps to Unleashing Your Potential. Why you should follow: Susanne shares a steady stream of useful resources and wisdom to help develop your leadership style, skills and confidence. 13. Jena McGregor @jenamcgregor Jena writes a daily column for the “On Leadership” section of The Washington Post, where she covers management lessons and leaders in today's headlines. Why you should follow: Jena's focus on executives and CEOs plugs her followers into what's newsworthy, current hot-button issues in business, and what makes great leaders effective. 14. Shawn Murphy @shawmu Shawn is the brains behind the website "Switch and Shift: The Human Side of Business" and host of the podcast, “Work that Matters,” where he muses on the human element of business, creating optimism at work, and connecting with others. Why you should follow: Shawn is a self-proclaimed optimist that makes you feel good about your career and future. He shares insights on how to meaningfully engage with others and tips to make your workplace happier and more productive. 15. Project Management Institute @PMInstitute The Project Management Institute is the leading not-for-profit PM association. They have provided tools, certifications, research, advocacy and career advancement opportunities to millions of project managers since 1969. Why you should follow: If you're not following PMI already, you're missing out on a great resource for articles, research, tools, trends and general professional development opportunities. 16. Ron Rosenhead @ronrosenhead Ron boasts over 15 years of experience in training, consulting, coaching, and speaking on project management. Why you should follow: Ron's feed is a reliable source for timely articles, resources, news & commentary--all from an industry veteran. 17. Anne Samoilov @annesamoilov Anne is a respected independent consultant with over 10 years experience helping teams pull together to create big things. She's also the host of "The Fearless Launching Show" podcast, where she advises leaders and entrepreneurs in successfully launching new projects, businesses, products and ideas. Why you should follow: Be sure to follow Anne if you're starting a new project and looking to lay the groundwork for success. She tweets useful articles about planning and launching projects, handling any bumps in the process, and tips on developing essential skills. 18. Peter Taylor @thelazypm Peter is the "productive laziness guru." He's a speaker, consultant, coach, and author of The Lazy Project Manager and The Lazy Winner. Why you should follow: If you want to “work smarter not harder,” Peter is your guy. He also attends major conferences, events, and learning opportunities-- and shares helpful videos, slides, and webinars. 19. Laura Vanderkam @lvanderkam Laura is the author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast; All The Money In The World: What The Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending; and 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. She's also a blogger for CBS MoneyWatch, and her work has appeared in publications like The Wall Street Journal and on Fortune.com. Why you should follow: Laura's feed is full of insightful tips on getting the most out of your day-- from productivity tricks and helpful habits to words of encouragement. 20. Neil Walker @PPMpractitioner If you read the popular "PPM Practitioner" blog, you know Neil. He's a consultant and author with over two decades' experience leading projects, programs and portfolios. Why you should follow: Follow Neil for tips on improving leadership and social collaboration, plus news and commentary from a trusted PM authority. Go ahead and follow these industry experts to start filling your feed with thought leadership, helpful tools, and the latest industry buzz. Or if you want to follow them all in one go, we've made your life easy by pooling these gurus into a Twitter list: subscribe here. Do you know of other great PM gurus on to follow? Let us know in the comments. Talk to you on Twitter!
How to Set Up an Editorial Calendar in Wrike
Wrike is introducing more and more features to help marketing teams manage and track all their work in one centralized place. Our marketing team completely relies on Wrike to collaborate and get work done, so we're doubly passionate about making Wrike the best workspace for Agile marketers. One of the many ways we use Wrike is to track our blog's publishing calendar. For example, this post has been on our editorial calendar since March, and we've been tracking its progress from just an idea all the way through the publishing date today! Now we want to show you how we use Wrike as an editorial and marketing calendar, so you can efficiently manage your company blog, too. 5 Steps to Set Up Your Marketing Editorial Calendar with Wrike 1. Create a folder to hold every post that you'll publish on your blog. Our folder is called "Blog Posts". Every time you create a new task to write a blog post, make sure it's tagged into this folder. 2. Create a Custom Workflow that accurately reflects all the different stages that your blog posts go through on their way to being published. For example, at Wrike our Custom Workflow for our blog calendar looks like this: Sometimes, posts jump back and forth between "In Review" and "Writing", if the author has received feedback on their post for additional edits, and Wrike makes it easy to adjust your task to that back-and-forth workflow. 3. Create a Shared Dashboard to give your team visibility into the publishing schedule. We call our Shared Dashboard "Editorial Calendar". It will look like this when you're done with every step: 4. Now you need to create the two widgets for your Dashboard: a. One for all posts that have yet to be scheduled, e.g. "To Be Scheduled". These will be tasks in your folder without due dates. i. Create the widget by filtering inside your Blog Posts folder for tasks that are BACKLOGGED. ii. Also select all Custom Statuses you care about for this widget. At Wrike, we filter for 'planned', 'writing', 'in review', 'in design', and 'ready to post' because we want a list of everything that is definitely going to be published at some point. We leave out 'idea', since those ideas may never make it to the publishing calendar. iii. Once you've filtered for tasks to show only what you want to see in your widget, add the widget to your Dashboard! b. Now create a widget for your current publishing schedule, e.g. "Publishing Schedule". These will be tasks in your folder that do have due dates. i. Create the widget by filtering inside your Blog Posts folder for tasks that are PLANNED and MILESTONE ii. Also select all custom statuses you care about for this widget. At Wrike, we filter for 'planned', 'writing', 'in review', 'in design', and 'ready to post' because we select publishing dates before posts are fully ready. We choose NOT to show posts that are already 'published', but you can decide to show them if you'd always like to see previously published posts on your Dashboard. iii. Finally, make sure you organize your task list "By Date" to make sure the widget lists your tasks in the correct order, and then add your widget to your Dashboard! 5. Now you're all set up! When you're looking at your Dashboard, you can click the quick scheduling button on your task card to choose publishing dates. If you've set up your filters as described above, your task will automatically move from the "To Be Scheduled" widget over to the "Publishing Schedule" widget once you've selected a date. You can use the same button to quickly rearrange posts in your publishing schedule, in case new posts need to be added into the mix and things need to move around. It gives your marketing team the ability to stay agile. Note: Because our Editorial Calendar system uses task due dates to set publishing dates, we cannot use due dates to note when we'll be done writing, when editing needs to be completed, or anything except the final publishing date. If your team relies heavily on due dates to move work through every stage of your workflow, you will need to modify our process described above to fit your needs. More Tools to Make Your Marketing Team More Agile Learn more about how today's marketers are using Agile techniques in our survey report: How Marketers Get Things Done: The State of Agile Marketing in 2016. Then, start a free trial of Wrike to get your Agile marketing team running at peak performance.
Kill Your Inefficient Tools and Processes Before They Kill Your Company
We've compiled 6 of the most common threats organizations face because of inefficient tools and processes, along with specific ways to fix them based on our experience with over 19,000 leading organizations worldwide.
An Easy Way to Skyrocket Wrike's Speed
Wrike’s project management software works in any popular web browser, be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari. But just as the engine from a Fiat can slow down a Ferrari, the older versions of these browsers rob Wrike of its natural power. That’s why, in case you prefer Internet Explorer, we recommend you use IE version 9 or higher. And the same goes for the other browsers – the newer, the better! You’ll notice how much faster Wrike and your other favorite online apps become and how much more enjoyable it is to work with them. Some of our customers find Google Chrome the most comfortable option for using Wrike. “I knew from prior communications with the Customer Care team that Wrike performed well in Google Chrome, but I simply had no idea how much faster it is. I never thought to try a different browser. Now I know it makes a huge difference,” says Tom Day from CBIA, a long-standing Wrike customer. In case you don’t want to permanently switch to Google Chrome, but still want use some of its benefits, try out its plug-in for Internet Explorer. So update your browser to the latest version and don’t deny yourself Wrike’s full productivity power!
How to organize several projects if each contains overlapping activities
You deal with several clients, and hence you have several project teams. Or your responsibilities imply co-operation with people from different functional directions. You start with a couple of tasks to explore how Wrike works. The next day you want to structure all your activities and manage them further with the help of Wrike. Here is an example of how you can organize projects and introduce your associates in Wrike. Different projects Let's say you have a marketing department (where Alice and Mary are managers) and a development department (where Bob and Greg are developers). You create two folders: "Marketing" and "Development". You then share the "Marketing" folder with Alice and Mary. From now on, Alice, Mary and you see everything that is going below "Marketing"(tasks, folders, changes). You also share the "Development" folder with Bob and Greg. In this scenario, Alice and Mary do not see the "Development" folder, just as Bob and Greg do not see the "Marketing" folder. Different projects, a common activity Let's say Alice wants Bob to put a new logo on the Website. Alice assigns the task "put a new logo on the Website" to Bob and shares it with Greg. She is able to do that. Alice, Bob and Greg will see the task (each in the folder "My Folders"). If Alice does it under the "Marketing" folder, then you and Mary will also see this task. Nevertheless, Bob and Greg still don't see the "Marketing" folder. If Alice does it in another folder that is not shared with you, then you will not see it. Regularly overlapping teams and activities Different teams may often have overlapping activities. Let's say there is a joint project between Marketing and Development called Web Site. So you create a folder named "Web Site" and include it in "Marketing" and "Development." This way you, Alice, Mary, Bob and Greg can all collaborate on tasks for this folder. Another possible option for doing the same: Alice creates "Web Site" folder under "Marketing," and she shares "Web Site" with Bob. He includes it under "Development". The view of the personal workspaces is following:
Prevent Unwanted Changes to Your Projects with New Folder Permissions
Working on a project together is all about balancing collaboration and control. You want to enable everyone to contribute, but at times you may want to limit who can add others or move the project. For example, if you're working on a confidential new product launch you need the launch team to be able to collaborate, but you want to keep the information on a need-to-know basis. We've added a new level of folder permissions allowing you to control who can move, share, or delete your folders so you can keep both collaboration and control. Now, besides full and limited (read-only) access to folders, you can also choose an Editor role. This is an interim permission level between the two already existing. Editors have all user capabilities to collaborate and make changes to tasks, except for deleting, sharing, and moving the tasks or folder. They also cannot change the parent folder for your project. With this setting, you can prevent people from making unwanted changes or sharing sensitive information with others. Enjoy the power of collaboration while staying completely in control of your plan! The new feature is available with Enterprise subscription.
How to Set Up Your Folders in Wrike
One of the most common questions we get asked by new users is: how do I set up my folders so I can use Wrike effectively? It's a valid question, because when you first start out in Wrike, you are given a blank slate to organize as you wish. For some, this freedom can be a minor roadblock resulting in questions like, "How do similar companies set up their folders?" or "How do you suggest we organize our Wrike account?" Here's some guidance for setting up your account.
Are You Making the Most of Wrike?
Now we’ve prepared some efficiency tips for you from a project management professional — and, of course, a devoted Wrike user! Francesco Mangone, with 15 years of experience in the business consulting field, shares how he saves time and makes the most of our cloud-based solution. Here’s an overview of Francesco’s main ideas: #1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally Of course, you already log all important tasks and milestones into Wrike project management software. But we bet there are some minor tasks or personal to-dos that you still keep in your head, thinking they aren’t worth logging. The devil is in the details, for sure. No matter how tiny they are, they still take away some of your attention and make you wonder whether you have forgotten anything or not. Francesco suggests taking them off your brain completely so you can perfectly concentrate. Don’t spend even a few seconds thinking of whether the task should be logged or not – log it right away. “My memory is as long as my pencil. Basically, as all things are logged into the system, there’s no chance I can forget anything,” Francesco says. By the way, with our quick task creation feature, logging all the assignments you have on your mind takes just a few seconds: [caption id="attachment_460998" align="aligncenter" width="461" class="center"] Wrike's Quick Task Creation feature helps you get everything off your mind[/caption] #2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment Thanks to Wrike, you have a 100% transparent picture of all your current projects. Let everyone else have it, too! Grant user (or viewer) licenses not only to your team members, but also to all your clients and contractors, and don’t forget to make sure they see just as much as needed. The goal is to save your precious time on keeping the team on the same page and answering status requests from customers. “Now I can avoid all those e-mails about the current state of things or the schedule. [My clients and teammates] simply log into Wrike, and they can instantly see what’s going on,” Francesco Mangone shares. #3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks The task activity stream is a powerful tool both to brief a new person on what’s going on and to keep others in the loop. [caption id="attachment_461011" align="alignnone" width="772"] Wrike's Task Activity Stream provides a complete history of updates[/caption] Don’t keep your team’s brainstorming ideas and interim file versions locked in the assignees’ inboxes or buried in the history of instant messages. Instead, simply put Wrike in the CC field when sending them to each other. See our cheat sheet to learn all the great things you can do in Wrike project management software from your inbox. Lately, the full task history may be very useful to make the final decision. “[Keeping the conversation within a task] is a huge time-saver and helps eliminate a lot of e-mails. You no longer need to search for the related e-mails by subject. You just look through the task newsfeed and tap your comment – that’s it!” Francesco comments. #4 - Don’t waste time downloading files Nowadays, people are moving a lot, and it no longer makes sense to keep your important data on numerous PCs. Make the most of the ubiquitous power of the cloud and attach all files you create through Google Docs or MS Office to tasks in Wrike. [caption id="attachment_461018" align="alignnone" width="831"] Wrike can keep documents in the cloud, attached directly to the relevant work[/caption] As your team edits them online without downloading from wherever they are, all stakeholders automatically see the up-to-date version. Finally, confusion over file versions is left far behind, along with all those additional clicks to save, attach, and send files. We’re sure your time is worth so much more! “I chose Wrike primarily because of its integration with Google Docs. You can attach a file and collaborate on it with a team no matter where they are. This feature makes Wrike so powerful!” Francesco shares. #5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports Now when you have all tasks, task details, and docs in Wrike, running reports and supervising the progress is simply a piece of cake. To get a complete picture of the project progress, use your advanced filters in the right pane of your workspace. Here you can flexibly combine any criteria to create reports by different time frames, number of assignees, particular projects and much more. Any tiny detail can be easily retrieved. And don’t forget to check on your personal efficiency as well, using the “Tasks completed by me” criteria! “I have to confess I like to push things forward a little bit. And Wrike’s reports are a really big feature for me. They are super-fast, easy to use, and they make me instantly see what has been done so far,” Francesco comments. Want to know Francesco’s insights into how you can improve your team’s performance with the help of Wrike? Tune in to our podcast now: [audio m4a="https://www.wrike.com/blog/content/uploads/2012/05/interview-with-Francesco-Mangone.m4a"][/audio] "Back then, when I just started my business, I was heavily using spreadsheets and Outlook for e-mails and building task templates. What can I say? Of course, there’s nothing that you cannot do with the help of these tools, but Wrike offers an absolutely different prospective … It’s simply an evolution of project management! The technology is here, and it’s time to move on and make the most of it!” — Francesco Mangone With his IT and business consulting experience, Francesco Mangone loves to teach just as much as he loves to learn. He helps small and medium businesses customize their task management systems for different types of organizations and efficiently manage up to 80 projects at once, in groups and individually.
Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: Find Your Power Users
Adopting a new software can be difficult, but it doesn't have to be. Last month I talked about the importance of habit-building during the initial stages of Wrike adoption. This month, I'll talk about our second Wrike adoption strategy: finding your power users. Power users are Wrike experts who have learned the ins-and-outs of the software and the accompanying best practices. Because they're comfortable working within Wrike, they can help answer questions from colleagues and provide training for other users in the company. Not that I'm biased (okay, just a little), but Wrike has one of the most helpful Customer Support teams around, available via 24/5 live chat, email, or phone. Though what would be even more helpful than contacting our amazing Customer Support team is having your own power user in the company. This approach has many benefits: 1. Power Users can Provide Perfectly Customized Help While our Customer Support team can help answer specific questions about Wrike, we are not necessarily familiar with your team's unique workflow. And since Wrike is a project management software, it's important to be able to customize it to fit your needs. Since a power user is a part of your team, he or she knows how your team operates. Every answer and explanation they give will be relevant and can focus solely on the essential features for the team's workflow, glazing over features that are less integral. For your other users, it means they won't be overloaded with unnecessary information, and they'll have an easier time learning how to use Wrike. 2. Power Users can Ensure Consistency in the Way Wrike is Used Because there are so many ways to use Wrike, it's important to have processes in place to ensure consistency in the way your entire team uses it. Power users can put those processes in place. This approach helps avoid compatibility problems, such as each user setting up his own folder structure or workflow in Wrike, only to find out later on that his folder structure is not compatible with the rest of the team. 3. Power Users can Provide 1x1 Training Last month I addressed our natural resistance to change. For some users, the thought of learning the ins-and-outs of a new software is unpalatable. They give up before giving Wrike a chance because they don't know how easy and intuitive the tool can be. In my experience, having someone sit down for five minutes with "resistant" employees to show them how to create folders and tasks is all it takes to demystify the software. This approach is more interactive than watching help videos, participating in newcomer webinars, or attending online training sessions. Face-to-face interactions eliminate communication barriers and facilitate the Q&A experience that comes with learning anything for the first time. Did you catch our productivity proverbs back in March? Number 9 reads: "Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I’ll understand." With the help of power users, one-on-one training can be more hands-on, making it easier for your employees to adopt and internalize their new Wrike habits. 4. Power Users Spread the Habit But what if you have a large team and it's just not feasible to do one-on-one sessions with the power user? As power users train more of the team, some of these newly-trained employees will become power users themselves, armed with the ability to spread their knowledge. This extended network of power users expedites Wrike adoption throughout the company. If there is a technical support division in your company, it could be helpful to turn your own Customer Support agents into power users so that they can provide ongoing internal support for employees new to the system. There is no shortage of support material published by Wrike, and you are highly encouraged to take advantage of our resources. But we've found that the most successful Wrike adoption cases are the ones that have power users in their company. Interested in becoming a power user? Contact our Support team, and we will be more than happy to give you the tools to make your company's Wrike adoption a success! More adoption tips are on the way. Check out the third post in the series next month: setting defined goals.
Too Many Meetings? Here's How You Replace Them With Wrike
We've all had unproductive days. Sometimes it's because we're preoccupied with a big project, sometimes it's from trying to multitask — which (shocker) doesn't actually make you more productive. And then there's the most common culprit of productivity loss: meetings.
Managing the Availability of Online Tools is Easy with User and Collaborator Licenses in Wrike
Key Lime Interactive runs studies in usability and user experience optimization. Among the products they evaluate are eReaders, video games, mobile wallet solutions, and entertainment apps. The team usually runs multiple concurrent research projects while having many more in the pipeline. For their studies, they use several online research tools with licenses for a limited number of users. That’s why managing the availability of these tools has always been a critical issue. And since their business has recently grown and the project work has become more intense, they also faced higher risk of having schedules of tools usage overlap. Fortunately, apart from solving Key Lime’s project management challenges, Wrike helped them to take most of the available licenses without increasing costs.Key Lime Interactive runs studies in usability and user experience optimization. Among the products they evaluate are eReaders, video games, mobile wallet solutions, and entertainment apps. The team usually runs multiple concurrent research projects while having many more in the pipeline. For their studies, they use several online research tools with licenses for a limited number of users. That’s why managing the availability of these tools has always been a critical issue. And since their business has recently grown and the project work has become more intense, they also faced higher risk of having schedules of tools usage overlap. Fortunately, apart from solving Key Lime’s project management challenges, Wrike helped them to take most of the available licenses without increasing costs. The solution was simple. They added all tools they use as collaborators to their account. Whenever Shan Hoyt, Operation manager at Key Lime Interactive, schedules new tasks, she adds not only the team members to task assignees, but the necessary tools as well. With the help of the “Assigned to” filter, combined with a certain time period, Shan can quickly see how actively a certain tool was used last month, for example, or how many tasks there are in the pipeline for the next month. If there are a lot of tasks ahead for a certain app, the number of users will be extended in time. On the contrary, if the team no longer needs a tool, Shan can downgrade their account there. It’s also a handy way to evaluate how much the team uses a new tool. If you pay per hour for using a certain tool, you also can benefit from the time-tracking feature. Simply ask your team to add the number of hours spent on the task with the help of this tool. Then you can easily run time reports for this tool for any period and see how long it was used. This way, it’ll be easier to calculate your costs. If you have spare user licenses, upgrade your tools to users to see the schedule of each tool on the Workload graph. If there are tasks that require the same tool at the same time, the conflict is easily resolved with one mouse motion by dragging and dropping one of the task bars. Thanks to this approach, it has become much easier for Key Lime Interactive’s team to efficiently manage the licenses of different tools and report on their availability in time. Watch the podcast with Shan Hoyt and Eugenio Santiago, Director of user research at Key Lime Interactive, to learn other helpful tips on organizing your projects in Wrike. What about your team? Do you use Wrike’s licenses not only for users, but for something else, as well? “After sampling several online project management tools, we agreed on Wrike. It provides us with all the necessities of project management software, while accommodating our virtual and reporting needs. Today, our team uses Wrike on a daily basis to track deliverables and validate the ability of our resources. We needed a tool that was flexible, accessible and intuitive, so it does not bog our team down, and Wrike met all those demands,” Shan Hoyt, Operations manager at Key Lime Interactive.
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.
Wrike Adoption Tip of the Month: The Basics of Building a New Habit
It is true that people are naturally resistant to changes in the workplace. But often times, a project management software is more than just a tool - it's a new habit people must learn. And when consciously building any new habit, there is always some time when it is difficult to fully embrace the change. Making a new habit stick requires an average of 66 days, or roughly 2 months. For those who are not tech-savvy, the idea of learning the ins-and-outs of a new software might seem even more unpalatable. If your team has strong opposition to anything new, there are efficient ways to make Wrike easy to adopt. As you try to get your team onboard the pro-Wrike train, you need to be firm in the stance that nothing is "real" unless it's in Wrike. This is one of the most common successful adoption strategies we found with our interviewed customers. Unless you are unwavering in your determination to get everyone onboard, some projects will be put into Wrike while others will stay scattered throughout email exchanges, excel spreadsheets, and personal desktop folders. Lead by example and rely on Wrike completely for all of your project comments, work at home policy, and updates. Your model will let your team know that from here on out all projects should reside in one place - and that place is Wrike. If one of your team members sends you an email asking about a task, this is the perfect opportunity for a gentle reminder. Prompt them to put their questions into Wrike before you respond. One of our interviewed customers went as far as letting a contractor know that he simply couldn't respond to the contractor's comments because the email "didn't exist." The contractor got the hint and turned to Wrike to continue the conversation. Now, I'm not advocating that you also start "overlooking" task-related emails, but it does make a point. Taken a hard stance and still facing adoption troubles? If your team members are committed to working out of their email client, they can continue this practice. In fact, that's why our easy-to-use email integrations exist! For one of our customers, most of their users don't even log into Wrike directly - they work from within their inbox. The key to this method is using our smart email integrations, including our Gmail widget or interactive add-ins for Outlook and Apple Mail. Team members can simply reply to an email when they want to comment on a task they follow, or even turn their emails into tasks for project discussion and updates. Management can check into Wrike to get progress reports and receive real-time updates, while team members can work where they are most comfortable. Remember: using new software means forming new habits. Stay strong through the process and give your team the time and support they need to fully make the switch. Have you had a successful experience implementing Wrike with your teams? Did you use a similar method, or something completely different? Let us know in the comments below! And stay tuned for the next two success trends we found: finding power users and creating clear usage goals.
Need to Coordinate Multiple Teams? Wrike's Flexible Tagging Can Help!
When you prepare and execute the launch of a new product, service, or a website, there are so many things to take care of and details often fall through the cracks. The challenge is magnified when responsibility is shared between multiple teams and you need to coordinate them in the most succinct way. If a deadline is missed or a task is forgotten, your team can quickly disintegrate into a blame game, e.g. "I thought they were handling it!" To avert such miscommunications and seamlessly track all of the small pieces for your launch, Wrike comes to the rescue. One of our customers recently shared the success story of his company, which relied on Wrike for launching their new site - read further and see if this situation is familiar to your team. Sync the Efforts of Several Teams Only-apartments is a Spain-based company providing global apartment rentals. Once they decided to relaunch their website, they had to coordinate the efforts between many different departments in order to deliver good results on time. Moreover, they had to adapt all of the marketing activities for eight individual marketing teams to reflect the new branding on the website. They tried Trello, Zoho, Asana, and other tools, but they felt more comfortable with Wrike since it facilitates both planning and collaboration. One of the reasons Only-apartments chose Wrike (and it's actually one of the key features that helped them with the website launch) is the flexible folder system. "Project management over several marketing areas has never been so easy. Hands down, the most useful feature is the ability to access one task from multiple folders," says Ramon Glieneke, the Marketing Director at Only-apartments. As an example of leveraging Wrike's flexibility for cross-functional teams, let's say you have one a task for your new website launch: "Write a new company description." In this case, your Content marketing team needs to write up the initial draft. Later, the Product and SEO marketing teams need to contribute to the messaging. You'll probably also need approval from Executives once the write-up is finished. One more step: send the task to Designers so they can create a cool image to fit your new description. Tagging this one task to place it in 4 different folders - one for each team - helps each contributor track progress on shared work. The same exact task will be accessible from every folder it is included in. Content will start the task, Product and SEO will review when they see that Content has made headway, and Design will know to start once Executives have left their approval. Your project coordination becomes significantly easier. To take flexible folders to the next level, you can also share a sub-folder within multiple larger folders. This gives you the ability to share an entire project - instead of just a single task - with multiple teams. If you are worried about wasting time and losing track of important work before your next launch, use our folder system to track updates and progress. What other challenges has Only-apartments solved using Wrike? How do they use Wrike to avoid meetings? Find out all the details in their case study we just published!
Tips and Tricks: How to Create Favorite Folders in Wrike
Even though you have dozens of folders and subfolders in your workspace, most likely you use only some of them on a regular basis. If this is the case, you may want to pick out the most important items and keep them in a separate folder named “Favorites.” In your Wrike workspace, it will take you only a few mouse clicks to make that happen! First, create a folder called “Favorites” wherever you want. We believe that the most convenient solution would be to create it right in your parent folder. Now you can add your most important project folders to your Favorites folder. To do it, just open them one by one in your workspace,then go to "Folder info and click on the "+" button underneath the folder title. Type in "Favorites" and hit "Enter". That’s it! These project folders will instantly appear in your Favorites folder, and you won't need to scroll down the folder tree and unfold them one by one to find the specific one you need. You can do the same with some of your tasks and enjoy fast and easy access to the most important items in your workspace. Your Favorites folder will be visible only to you, unless you decide to share it with someone. As always, when you include an item in several folders in Wrike, it is still the same task or folder, not a copy. So any change you make to a task or folder in your Favorites folder will be instantly applied to this item in all other locations. We hope that today’s tip will help you keep the most important project information close at hand. Do you have your own tips and tricks to share with other users? Leave a comment to this post!
How you can run Wrike in Internet Explorer 8
If you use IE as your primary Internet browser and have already upgraded it to version 8, you may face a problem with the correct loading of your Wrike project management workspace. While we are working on compatibility with IE8, let us share a nice workaround with you. In IE8, there is a button by the address bar that allows you to revert back to the older versions of reading a web page by IE7. Once you click on that button, Wrike loads correctly and works fine.