[Duplicate post] Subtask dates and duration roll up to parent tasks

Hi Jeni,

Your use case - subtasks for granular task assignments - is great! Thank you for the feedback about rolling up dates from subtasks to parent tasks, I've passed that on to our Product team.

One thing I want to mention: Projects have their own date attributes, but if no start/end dates are added to the Project, then on the Timeline View, the Project will take its start and end dates from the tasks in the Project. I wanted to mention this in case there are some situations where that could come in handy. 

Would love to hear from other teams if they have a different way of approaching this situation! 

I'm also looking at this as I have overarching phases of a project (Tasks) with a number of subtasks - the task dates really should move if any one of its subtasks has dates that fall outside of the main task window.

As a developer,  I would approach this use case by writing an outside application that utilizes the new webhooks api and modifies the parent tasks whenever a child task is created.  Webhooks are bound to folders, thus limiting this "extension" to tasks within a folder.  That could actually be a plus.

Wrike has a fantastic set of APIs that would allow you to accomplish this feature and the documentation is great.

You can read up on it at https://developers.wrike.com/documentation/api/overview

Hi Ansel! Thank you for mentioning Wrike's API - I think this topic will be interesting to many users, and it's great to have an API pro on the Community :) It would be amazing if you could share some use cases and the tips and tricks you've learned in the Best Practices topic, I'd love to keep this discussion going there!

I appreciate Ansel's comment from a developer perspective.  That would be great option if we as a Company had justified the purchase of Wrike as a development platform.  But we look at it as a COTS (Commercial off the shelf) solution. So we need to rely on Wrike to provide these features out of the box and will eagerly await any enhancements around this.  Of all the solutions we evaluated, Wrike was the most feature rich, simplest to use and quickest to implement without the overhead of managing internal infrastructure and/or customized solutions. There are just a few enhancements like this one that would make it even more user friendly. 

@Jeni and @Al, I wanted to let you know that I've added your votes to the feedback we've passed to our Product Team about rolling up dates from subtasks to parent tasks. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this!

It would be great to be updated here on the outcome of this petition as we are implementing Wrike within a PMO, with several project managers, and not having subtask dates and duration rolling up to parent tasks adds extra work to a Project Manager's day to day when handling several big projects with a high rate of change management. This has an impact on reporting too.

I understand that for small projects this can be sort out one way or another but for bigger projects it is a real issue.

This is a workaround I use - I use dependencies to make the parent task reschedule based on it's subs.

     Example 1 - http://screencast.com/t/afzuH9mi1mj

     Example 2 - http://screencast.com/t/CUmeR8b7

One downfall (sometimes) is that dependencies only "move" the linked task, maintaining it's duration.  They don't independently alter the start date, or end date.  In Example 2, when the subtask extends past it's parent, the parent keeps the same duration, but reschedules.  This is good/bad depending on your use case, though.

If you want the parent's start/end dates to independently adjust, you should use folders/projects, as that's how they function.

Just adding my vote for sub task roll up of duration.  

Also - as I am looking to use this for Agile planning, would love to be able to enter a time estimate and have that in the timelog next to actuals.

Let me know if any questions.  

Hi Craig! Thank you for the feedback, I've added a +1 to this suggestion on your behalf :)

In regards to viewing time estimates - this can be achieved in the Table View and Reports. Some illustrated step-by-step instructions on comparing allocated/estimated time with the actual amount spent can be found in this Community post.

I'd add a +1 to this. We prefer to breakdown tasks and estimate on smaller components, but it means that we have to tally them up every time we make a change.

Hi Jonathan! Thank you for your input on this, I've added a +1 to the feature request :)

Hi!

My vote for this proposal.

In any case, we would like propose the possibility to add an option "per Account" where we could SWITCH ON - roll up duration of parent task based on their subtasks duration, or SWITCH OFF (current behaviour).

Thank you!

@Miquel thanks! If you haven't already, could you click the +1 button under the initial post? That will help us keep track of how many people are asking for the feature. 

I can't believe that this is not an option!  Please consider adding it ASAP.

Hi everyone! I wanted to let you know that @Megan posted a request for this in our new Product Feedback section, so going forward upvotes can be added there: Allow Subtasks to Update Start and End Dates of Parent Tasks. Happy to hear about any other ideas/suggestions in the Feedback section!

Consider me a +1 as well.  I'm a new user with a lot of experience with Microsoft Project which is the gold standard for Gantt charts in my book.  Correcting this is essential in my book. 

it's not allowed to have a project management tool without this option.

there's no management this way.. very disappointed.. 

Hi @Yannis, if you haven't already please make sure to add a +1 to the original post in this thread: Allow Subtasks to Update Start and End Dates of Parent Tasks. While I don't have a concrete date, I'm happy to share that the team is actively working on updating the functionality related to dates rolling up between parent and subtasks.

Add my +1 for adding this functionality. Would like the option for subtasks to automatically extend/reduce the duration of parent task and automatically sequence dependencies, flowing one into the next as ordered top to bottom in the subtask list. This way a user could select the option for automatic dependencies, perhaps in the parent task, and add subs with their durations, then drag and drop subs into the appropriate order, with the parent updating duration with the overall sum of subtask durations. Again, all of this as a user option only, not required.

Will +1 and glad to hear team is working on it.

I also agree with this! I created my own ticket, not realizing a similar one already existed. Below is what I wrote:

----

I view the Parent Task more as a "Summary" task, with the sub tasks making up the whole of the Parent Task. However the Parent task doesn't really auto sum all of the work in the sub tasks. In essence, the Parent Task is a mini project in the overarching project.

[Parent Task] Website Launch

[Sub] Wireframe meeting

[Sub] Write copy

[Sub] Design

[Sub] Develop

[Sub] Launch

So the Parent Task duration should be the sum duration of the sub tasks, and time allotted should be a sum of the hours allotted for the sub tasks.

In the Gantt Chart, this would be reflected as the Parent Task represented as a solid bar across the top of the chart for the total duration of the summed up sub tasks (below the bar representing the project as a whole). By clicking on the bar, all of the tasks on the gantt chart associated with the Parent task could be highlighted while the other tasks fade.

For example (also attached as a file, in case text alignment is lost):

|------------------------------------------------Creative Project------------------------------------------------|

          [--------------------Photography------------------------]

                            [--------------------Logo Creation-------------------]

                                                                              [----------------Videography---------------]

                                                               [-----------------------------Website--------------------------]

This approach to Parent Tasks would also make it easier to keep track of actual time spent, and actual budget spent for the mini projects that make up the larger project. For example, "The logo creation budget is going over, so we're going to have to revise the scope for the videography tasks in to keep the project as a whole within budget."

One might say that each of the above mentioned Parent Tasks should their own project, but this won't work for us. Sub tasks within different parent tasks have dependencies on one another (ie. the videography "planning" tasks can start before the logo is completed, but the video graphics can't be designed until the logo is finalized.)

@Sven Great to hear that you added a +1 here. The idea around automatic dependencies between tasks based on their order is interesting! Do you think you could create a new post for that idea? Adding it in our Product Feedback section would be great, that way others can upvote it and we can more easily draw attention to that specific request. 

@Keeley Thank you for posting! I went ahead and replied to your comment in the Allow Subtasks to Update Parent Tasks post.

Hey Wrike team, how many more feedbacks you need in order to prioritize this feature (subtasks get start/end dates automatically from parent task)

Hi Wrike team,

This flaw in the task sub task feature, parent tasks driven by sub-tasks is very frustrating. 

There is this amazing function, waiting to be employed, but is broken due to this one, single flaw.

Please update ASAP. 

Hi Paulo and Dexter! There's a feedback request for this feature in the Product feedback section, and that's the thread we've been updating with roadmap information: Allow Subtasks to Update Parent Tasks. I'm going to copy @Stephanie's latest comment over to this thread too, so anyone looking at this post would have the latest info available as well:

"I still can't share exact dates (Wrike is an agile company and things can sometimes change or there could be unexpected delays), but we did go to the Product team this morning (showed them this thread) and it's definitely on the team's short-term roadmap. I just can't narrow down dates for you any more than Q4. You will of course be the first to know if/when we can give you more information."

Hello Anastasia, thanks for your update. 

I also have the need that subtasks get start/end dates automatically from parent task in Wrike. May we take Q4/2017 as your commitment then?

Hi there, Maurizio! Right now we're working hard on this to be able to release it in Q4, but being an agile company we are commitment phobes here, so that's as concrete as I can be :) As things stand right now, we're putting a lot of work and effort into achieving this goal. 

My issue is with sorting by Due Date. In these instances, when you have a subtask set for say October 6th, but the larger task isn't due until later in the month...then in the Dashboard for what's due October 6th that subtask will not show up. This means I can't use this as a to-do list, which is key for a program management tool. The only exception is for "today" and "overdue" in Dashboard (but then I don't know what's on my docket for tomorrow...very difficult to function that way). All other days will not show when a subtask is due that day.

Fixing this would be  HUGE help. Otherwise, it would be great if you could share some workaround that would allow me to have a to-do list that, when sorting by date, actually includes all things that would be due on a given day. The fact that something is a subtask should not make it disappear from our view when sorting by date.

Thank you so much for helping with this issue! 

Hi Katherine, thanks for your comment! At the moment it's not possible to show a parent task and its subtask separately in the Dashboard widget if both of them meet the widget criteria. It would be great if you could upvote a similar request, it will help us track the number of requests in one place: "Assigned to Me" Dashboard.  

Anna G Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Erfahren Sie mehr über Wrikes leistungsstarke Funktionen und lernen Sie Anwendungsbeispiele kennen

Anna G Wrike Team member Erfahren Sie mehr über Wrikes leistungsstarke Funktionen und lernen Sie Anwendungsbeispiele kennen

Any updates on this from Wrike?  For what we do, we need the parent task to update in accordance with the subtasks.  We look at all of our projects and folders from a macro and micro perspective depending on the audience.  If we only show the macro/parent tasks, we run the risk of providing misinformation.