Prevent a task from being updated as completed if all subtasks have not been completed

Hi Eric Sayasene, thank you for reaching out! It's not currently possible at the moment, so I can move your post to the Product Feedback forum 👍

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'd prefer a warning message instead of prohibition in such a case. Maybe this would be a good task for the automation!

Thank you for sharing this idea Florian Kislich!

Is there a solution yet for this request? 🤔 I am stumbling across this all the time in our projects where parent tasks are closed out while buried child tasks are still open. We need a "Sub-Task Blocking Condition" on the parent task workflow to prevent this from happening.  Anyone who has taken any type of Project Management training knows that you never close out a parent before all child tasks are set to a finished/cancelled/deferred state. We constantly see work being missed because Wrike doesn't prevent the closure of the parent. The pop up that asks the closure question only stays up a few seconds and users often move on without reading it. 

Hi Michael Kelley, we have recently announced a feature in our automation that enables you to automatically complete all subitems in case the parent item has been marked as completed. Would that be helpful? 

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 - Good morning - thank you - however, we would not want the bot to auto close subtasks, as it will not know if the works was actually been completed.  99% of the time, the parent task owner has failed to check to see if all subtasks, many buried several levels, are completed prior to closing the parent task. Our parent tasks in projects are often overseen by one person (sometimes managers) and the subtasks are assigned to other assignees on their teams.  We need a stop/check that prevents the parent task from being closed by accident.  The popup that closes in less than 10 seconds isn't working.  People become rushed and miss the popup.

A suggestion: 1) modify the popup - make it more prominent - and make the user click a button to "confirm" they want to close the parent without closing the subitems.  If they do not click the confirm, the parent remains open.  This is likely the best option, as others in this thread have mentioned they would like to not prevent closer without subitems being closed.  But this is not a standard/typical Project Management procedure.  We need a safeguard to make certain work gets completed.

If you can think of another suggestion that can help us, I am all ears.  I always appreciate your thoughts and ideas.

I understand Michael Kelley, and I really appreciate your detailed feedback! I'll now share it with Alina who owns automations in Wrike 👍

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'm checking to see if this has been addressed by Alina?

Hi Kristy Schaan, thank you for your comment, at the moment, this is not possible. However, I've passed your comment on to our Product Team and we will keep you updated in case there are any changes implemented 👍

Just reviewing the above, is there any progress on the availability of this function? I've read the suggestion that completing the main task should be contingent upon the completion of all its subtasks. Has there been any progress on implementing this? It seems like a very useful idea? 

Hi Spencer Wilby, welcome back to the forums 👋

We don't have updates at the moment, but our team is aware of this feedback. We'll let you know if there's any news on this in the future. 

Is there anything else I can help you with? 

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

That is it.  Thanks.

Lisa any updates on this one?

Hi Austin Needham! 🙋🏻‍♀️ Thank you for checking in. Currently, there are no updates regarding this. We will keep you informed of any developments.

You might consider using Automation rule to manage the status changes of the main project instead of doing it manually. For instance - When all direct subitem statuses change → then change item status. Let me know what you think! 😊

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

Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Erfahren Sie mehr über Wrikes leistungsstarke Funktionen und lernen Sie Anwendungsbeispiele kennen

Hey Austin,

I don't know if Eric is still monitoring this as it was posted a while ago, but here are some thoughts. 

This can be a bit tricky but there are a variety of ways to get around the process, depending on the logistics of your process.  Do these things happen in a straight order (where you can't get B done until A is done), or does your task just require all the subtasks to be completed but in no particular order and subtasks aren't dependent on each other, is the quality check done before people can move on or is just something that is happening all over and this is causing you a lot of headaches running around and putting out little fires on sloppy work, do you have one person coordinating the process who is responsible for all subtasks being done before the project moves on to the next task or do you have a lot of different group or people doing their own tasks but someone is not taking responsibility for checking the items to make sure they are done and it could cause a major project upheaval if one thing wasn't done and no one quality checked it before the project got close to the end of the project?  

For instance, last year, this was a big problem for me.  I couldn't use the auto bot notifications because they kept prompting people who did the last task to mark the task complete, when it hadn't been reviewed.  This year, the status of the last subtask will be a Active Status - Ready for Review.  This means the staff member has added their part and after they send an @mention to the coordinator, the coordinator will confirm it is complete and mark the subtask as Reviewed (Completed) This will prompt the system to send an auto bot notice which can be used to close the task.    

I would encourage you to make a new post and line out your logistics.  I'm sure that some of the great people who work at Wrike or other members of the community will give you advice on workarounds for this problem that might fit your situation.

Kristy