Tasks: Change order of a new task in list view

Hi Valerie! I have a couple of suggestions to share, which could potentially help achieve those sorting goals:

• Adding a numeric prefix to a task ensures that it stays in the correct order when you have "By Title" sorting enabled. For example, 001. Build Frame, 002. Add Walls. Check out this great Community post about Numbering Tasks for some great tips from other Wrike users.
• When "By Priority" sorting is enabled, you can drag and drop tasks to have them appear in the required order. All users will see tasks in that same order, but the sorting option is available only in List View:

Let me know if you have any questions about this! :)

I agree with Valerie on this! When entering a list, it's nice to have it stay in order. I am desperate to avoid adding numbers at the beginning of tasks, because while I want them to stay in the order I'm entering them in, I also want to be able to rearrange them without having to renumber everything. It would be amazing if this was a setting within your account so you could select your own preference...though I'm really not sure why anyone would ever want the list backwards!

I agree with Emily and Valerie. As an IT Project Manager, that is one of the things I get asked by my Team Leads, almost on a weekly basis. As you can imagine, our projects are extensive and constantly evolving, almost daily sometimes, and it would be great to not have to renumber an entire project, to add a task.

Hi Emily and Darlene, thanks for sharing your thoughts here! It's great to hear info about different use cases, as it helps us understand how different teams use Wrike. @Emily, although priority sorting (via drag and drop) is available for List View only, you mentioned entering tasks in the List, and I wanted to ask whether this sorting option could work for your use case?

Thanks for responding Anastasia! That does work, and is what we currently do. But with our company currently onboarding, we are creating a large volume of new tasks. It can be tedious and time-consuming to have to click-and-drag every single task rearranging them into chronological order. We are absolutely able to work with what Wrike currently has, but this is definitely one of the bigger pains that we have all noticed and would love to see a change in. Is there a benefit to having your list appear in the opposite order you're adding things that we're not seeing?

Thank you Anastasia for the feedback.  I agree with Emily that yes, that does work, but it can be a bit time consuming.   It would just be a great feature to have your tasks/subtasks stay in the order that you are enter them in.   Or perhaps even have the option of both alphabetical and/or chronological.  Maybe a in future enhancement?   :)

Yes! If I enter tasks in the order I want to complete them, or the order I want them to be shown, they end up in reverse.

I type:

Test Design [enter]

Testing [enter]

Analysis [enter]

and Wrike gives me:

Analysis

Testing 

Test Design

This becomes more annoying when you're in a meeting and adding 10, 20+ items and then have to drag each of them individually into the correct order.

I agree it would be nice to have your first task entered be the first in the list.  Just to throw another thought out there: If you are entering a large list of items where sequence is important - you are probobly pulling those items off of a list or flowchart of some sort.  For me, its post-it notes off of a whiteboard (swim-lanes).  I just have to remind myself to start entering items into my list from the last to the first.  Inconvenience? yes.  Do I forget every-time and then remember when I am on my 3rd or 4th item?  yes. 

I've also imported from a spreadsheet when I have a large list of items that came from some other source.  It's fairly easy with a basic understanding of excel to sort and renumber the left hand column titled "Key."  I also find it a bit easier to analyze the sequence in excel.  

All that being said,  when I am entering tasks via the Android Widget "on the fly" - the reverse order thing is counter intuitive. 

...But then again wouldn't it be annoying if you added a task to a list of 200 and had to go ALL the way to the bottom to edit it? 

This should be fixed as soon as possible.

Entering more than three tasks and then manually reshuffling them is not reasonable.

Prefixing the tasks with numbers is definitely not an option - imagine adding a task in the middle of a numbered list with 50 items - you would need to manually change 25 task numbers!!!

Btw: it would be nice if the order in list-view and board-view would match.

Hi all, thanks for your feedback on this. Our Product Team refer to this feedback and use cases when discussing future developments for their roadmap so the information here is very valuable. For anyone visiting this page, please make sure to vote for the original post if you like it and add any additional information by commenting. Thanks again!

Without knowing all of the complexities behind the scenes, or the ramifications of this change, you may want to consider the following: 

A more appropriate term for “priority” sorting is “sequential”  When I convert from “date” sorting” to “priority” sorting – I am doing so because I have a predetermined order of operations.  I don’t put dates against these tasks because I have dozens of folders with dozens of tasks.  I don’t want them all appearing in my “planned tasks” filter.

Generally, these tasks correspond to a process. 

I suggesting adding a sorting method called “sequential” and allowing the user to toggle between “ascending” or “descending”

We find the priority offers some challenges when using Wrike to do the initial planning.  In the list view, we want to just start adding the tasks.  once added we'd sort them and assign due dates, etc.  We do have some users that prefer the table view when organizing tasks because, as accountants, we are used to the excel look and feel of that view.  The priority sort in the list view doesn't follow into the table view, which would be helpful when starting out with entering all tasks and then working to assign and schedule with different stakeholders. Again like prior people, we don't want to be adding, changing and removing numbers all the time as we are working on project planning.  

Is there maybe a possibility to create a planning view that would lead itself to that task specifically?

1. add all tasks

2. organizer tasks by priority 

3. assign tasks (without sending updates)

4. assign due dates (without sending updates)

5. Go back and change or adjust

6. Commit project, assignees, and dates (send updates now)

** would be nice to be able to assign and reassign before people were notified they had a task to complete, so if you changed it or updated before committing the project, then only the actual users would see the assignment and due dates.

I have the same requirement as the original post i.e. I would like tasks to list in the order they were created. This is a huge annoyance for my team and notably not an issue in products such as Basecamp. Having to number tasks is not an option as frequently tasks are added during a project. 

Looks like the last time this thread had an update was last June. I'm new to Wrike, and running into the same issues as reported here. Was there an update released that allows me to add tasks so that "crawl, walk, run" stays in that order, versus defaulting to "run, walk, crawl"?

I have the same problem when switching from list view to Gantt. I'll get everything ordered correctly in List (after manual sorting), and then when I switch to Gantt, it reorders everything in alpha by automatically. 

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your input here!

I don't have any updates to share at the moment; please make sure to +1 the suggestion if you haven't already. Once it reaches 60 votes, we'll add a Product status to it. The votes help our Product team estimate the popularity of suggested features. I'll try to refer more people with similar suggestions here to upvote.

Thanks for posting 🙌

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

I want to add to this. Having the Gantt chart alphabetize my list makes zero sense.

Hi,

I am evaluating Wrike alongside several other project management tools. I am very disappointed to discover that the functionality described here is missing from this product. The current task creation flow is unintuitive and cumbersome to manage. I appreciate that you need to get 60 votes to make this issue visible to the product team, but aren't some things so obvious and important that they shouldn't need to be requested by the user base?

For example, when buying a car, is it reasonable to expect the customer to specify that the car has wheels? No, of course not - this is such a fundamental feature of a car that it must be included by default without being specifically requested by the end-user. The task management features requested here are analogous to wheels on a car. Please implement them in your next product release. Wrike has dropped the ball here.

Apart from that, I like what I am seeing in the product thus far. I will continue my testing and hope that dependency management and resource management are intuitive and satisfying to use, unlike task management.

Regards,

Gerard Phillips

I agree with the comments here.  It's very frustrating that priority ordering doesn't propagate from one view to another.  That seems really basic.

We've been using Wrike for a couple of years, but this functionality is incredibly frustrating.

Asana and Monday.com appear to be good alternatives that don't exhibit this problem.

As Gerard Phillips, I'm evaluating the software as well.

I was evaluating Asana (to find a solution to migrate to from Trello) and decided to abandon it due to basic functionality missing. But, mostly, because of the development team taking years to address these issues. You'd find customer requests and complains in their forum dating 3 or more years. 

2 days ago I found Wrike. The first thing I did was to check the forum and feature requests. I saw the team was more responsive.

Today I tried creating a list of tasks. I typed in: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3... wait... what's going on? Ah no worries, it should be some misunderstanding on my end (why else step 1 would be placed in last?).

10 minutes later I was googling the solution, and.... voilá:

This 2-year-old thread of people complaining about this ridiculous behavior! 🤦‍♂️

And the solution given? Drag and drop or, if you want the team to pay attention, you better vote people! hahaha...

Let's see, it took 2 years to get to 20 votes, so in four more years you can expect Wrike to bother and look into this. Give it a couple more years for implementation, and...

We need to wait 6 more years to implement the super feature of Making Step 1 show first. 

@Mark Lindsey Don't bother with Asana. It's threads like this everywhere for tons of features that Wrike already has had for years. I haven't tried Monday yet, but for videos I've watched, I don't like their UX. Wrike's the best I tried so far... even with this weird behavior. 

Sorry if I come through as grumpy, but after dealing with stuff like this for some days of research, it becomes frustrating.

I agree that we need to see tasks created in the order they are typed. This very natural. I create a new folder, project, etc. and as we're discussing tasks to go in it, they are simply added, which should be the way they appear. I don't want to add a number to the front of it, prioritize it, etc. We're just doing initial brainstorming. 

Once the list is in place, they will be placed as subtasks of other items, rearranged, etc. 

I'm hoping this is a high priority. I've been using Wrike since 2012 and would love to see this finally get fixed. 

Actually as probably a simpler fix is to just have a sort order of "Date/Time Entered" since Wrike tracks all changes we know it already has this information so it's just a sort order addition (I hope). 

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your feedback here!

There's a similar thread on the Community, it got past the 60 upvotes mark already, and the status there is currently "Not Planned". https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360000344809--Status-Not-Planned-Sorting-tasks-in-List-view-with-Ascending-or-Descending-

I understand this might be disappointing, but please rest assured that all your input is passed on to the team, and we also check with the team regularly on any updates that they can provide. Once I have any news, I make sure to let our Community members know.

The 60 upvotes threshold is there to make sure that all popular suggestions are discussed during the internal conversations - here's a detailed post on what happens with Product Feedback: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360019106654--Read-Me-What-happens-with-Product-Feedback-

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts - your voice is definitely heard even if we can't implement what you're asking currently. 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

The constant re-ordering of tasks makes wike much less useful, (MS Project Online does not have this problem). The fact that this has not been addressed since this software project was started makes me wonder if Bain Capital really knows how their money is being spent.  Wrike, Please think like a user and fix foundational bugs before adding new features. You will eventually drive our organization to solutions that are perceived as higher quality. 

Thank you for your feedback, Chuck Raymond! I'm passing it on to the team now. Any updates - I'll make sure to let you know 👍

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

I have just started using Wrike just today and after 10 minutes creating first project and tasks... I am already reading this thread because I have the same problem with task order.

Every time I add a new task, Boom! all of them automatically reordered. And if by mistake you order by any other column, just forget about getting things right again.

And adding a prefix with number type 001 or drag and drop is not a solution.

Hello Susana Fernández, that doesn't sound right. Our Support team is in touch with you regarding this issue via email. Please let me know if I can help you with anything else. 

Hi Wrike team - has any further development gone into customizing the task entering force filter? We do not want to have additional steps to create the same experience of the proper order our tasks can be in (i.e. priority column options etc).  Is there a way Wrike can auto pre-fix 01, 02, etc to give us control of the order without having to manually do it?

Hi Shannon Reed, apologies for the late reply! 

The way we recommend setting this up is using sorting by priority - that way, the tasks will appear in the order you created them in, and you can also drag and drop them in the order you prefer. You can set priority dorting as default for Table view. 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa,

Many times people build task lists based on discussions and linear thinking, not a priority. 

For example, I'm discussing how to role out a small project to build a shed and I start typing the Titles only. I'm not moving over to other fields while I'm doing this

Determine the size of the shed I want and the price range

Find out what local stores have them in stock

Plan when to visit the store to look at the shed

Get plans to see if we can build it ourselves 

Get cost estimates for the final list of sheds (materials only, assembled, delivered)

Determine where in the backyard the shed will go

Determine what yard prep will be needed for the shed

... anyway you get the idea. This was literally me thinking through the project right now. Later I might want to move them around, make some tasks subtasks of others, etc. Nothing in the above has anything to do with priority (yet). 

Wrike already stores a created date and time per task. Simply add a sort sequence by created date and time and your work is done. Nothing more, nothing less than that.