[From Wrike] Space Workflows are Here ๐ฅ
Hello everyone ๐
We are very happy to announce another exciting update to Wrikeโs functionality - Space Workflows ๐ฅณ Starting today, our team will begin to roll out this functionality to all accounts on our Business or higher plans.
What are Space Workflows?ย
Space Workflows is a new Space administration capability enabling fully independent customization of how each team or department works. Space Workflows empower team leaders who own the day-to-day processes, to seamlessly build and manage workflows for their team.ย
Why Space Workflows?ย
Using Space Workflows increases productivity. With Space workflows, you can delegate process management to each space admin, without the involvement of the account admin, who typically isnโt as familiar with each teamโs specific processes and process changes.ย
How to Create Space Workflows?
Space admins can now create them right from the space settings:ย
- Switch to the Workflows tab.
- Click Add or create workflow button under the corresponding section.
- In the drop-down that appears, click Create new workflow.
- Here, you can name the workflow, add and edit statuses, add transitions, assignees, and approvals upon status change, and move statuses in-between status groups.
- Click Save to create a workflow.
How do Space Workflows help your Team?ย
Challenge: Processes can be rigid and may not fit every team's needs.ย ย
Solution: With Space Workflows, your workflows can be catered to the specific needs of a given space, ensuring that team members are selecting the right status options available to them and effectively moving work forward. Space workflows provide more flexibility, allowing each team to utilize a workflow that uniquely fits their needs. It also helps avoid confusion around which workflow each team should use.ย ย
Challenge: 'Process changes can only be executed by account admins.ย
Solution: Space Workflows empower space-level admin ownership to build and manage their teamโs workflows based on their teamโs custom needs.
Challenge: Team members may choose the incorrect status or workflow which can impact accurate reporting.
Solution: With Space Workflows, you can accurately assess the statuses of each task and project and trust the consistency of reporting to make strategic decisions.ย
๐Please note that the rollout of Space Workflows starts today and will take several weeks, so if you donโt see them in your account yet, you will soon have access to them ๐
Share your thoughts and feedback on Space Workflows below, we are looking forward to discussing this new functionality with you ๐
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
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Hello,
I have checked and I dont have an option to create a space workflow in the space/workflow settings. I have checked permissions and admin rights to the corresponing space. Can you please check it on your side?
Thanks.
I will keep an eye out for this, and looking forward to testing use cases for this!
This will be very helpful! Looking forward to this roll-out.ย
Perfect! We will be putting this into place as our spaces are vastly different.
As our organization rolls out Wrike this will be very helpful! Can't wait.
Thanks! Much appriciated.
Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your feedback ๐ค
MB The rollout of Space Workflows started yesterday, and it will take several weeks, so if you donโt see them in your account yet, you will soon ๐
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
This feature looks promising.ย
Will it allow us to restrict the visibility of Workflow as well?
Right now, all the users can see all the workflows we have in our account.
Is there a way to add an existing workflow into a space? I have the same question in regards to automations.ย
Will it be possible to convert a account workflow into a space workflow? It would be very important for the existing workflows.
Thanks for explaining - I love the idea of being able to customize workflows. Now I need to start creating my own workflows!
Roxane Carrier For space-level workflows, if a user is not in a space, they will not be able to see the workflows of that space.ย
Melynda Willis, Sven Passinger The Product team is currently working on allowing to convert account-level workflows to space-level ones ๐
Heather Hernandez Great to hear that!ย
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
Nice!!!
Our team's workspace has their own default workflow. I have teammates that will create a project in their personal space, a different default. When they add it into the team's space I wish that it would auto convert to the defaulted workflow instead of having to manually change it.
Thank you for the feedback, folks! Our Product team is keeping a close eye ๐
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
So much of our work starts from a Request Form that uses a Blueprint to automate the Project/Task creation.ย In it's current state, Space Workflows won't help as they can't be used in Blueprints and you can't "Set Status To" use them from Request Forms (only Account-wide Workflows are accessible from Blueprints and Request Forms).ย Is there a future release planned to expand the functionality and use of Space Workflows?
cc: Kristen Diegert
Hi Meredith Selden! Apologies for the late reply; I needed to check this with the respective team. There are plans to introduce new functionality in the future which will help with this use case. I don't have the timeline for this at the moment, but we will keep you posted as soon as we know more.ย
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
This is great - functionality that was very needed!
Are there any limitations on max number of workflows allowed?
Also, +1 vote for converting existing Account Workflows into Space Workflows!
This should definitely include not only ability to do a straight conversion to a single space, but also ability to duplicate into multiple spaces, to significantly speed up process of distributing our generic one-size-doesn't-quite-fit-anybody account workflows, for Space Admins to tweak and perfect for their specific needs.
And also, a +1 for the Request Form functionality Meredith mentioned too!
100% this will be needed by our teams to be able to make full use of Space Workflows in conjunction with our request forms.
Hi Angela Kennewell, thank you for your feedback! You can create no more than 20 custom workflows per space.
I have another couple of questions on this - is there a way to copy/duplicate a Space Workflow to another Space?
Adding account-level workflows into a specific space via the search function works fine, but I can't see how to add/duplicate a space workflow over to another space.
Also, if a workflow was created as an account-level workflow (ie. in the days before space workflows existed), but is really only needed by a specific space and has now been added to that space, can it then be deleted at the account level?
Will it continue to exist in the space level only? Or would doing this delete all instances of the workflow across the whole system?
Use Case: I want to move "legacy" account-level workflows made for specific spaces to their respective spaces only, then delete from account-level to de-clutter the list of account-wide workflows...
I understood that a future release was coming that would enable the ability to "convert" an account-level workflow to a space-level workflow (similar to custom fields).ย In the meantime, you only have the ability to re-create as a space-level then you'd have to update all tasks from the old workflow to the new one (and update any dashboards, reports, analyze boards, and calendars that use workflows as a filter).ย Once you re-create at the space-level it can be deleted as an account-level workflow, but it will delete it for anyone who is using it.
Meredith Selden we are looking at a workaround for the lack of functionality in blueprints to be space-specific and take space-level workflows, as we are ramping up our planning for the coming year and cannot wait for blueprints to catch up!
This is the workaround I am are currently looking at implementing - but would really appreciate feedback on this idea from everyone, and especially from Wrike Support!
Context:
We operate globally with dedicated a Wrike Space for each global office/entity, and have numerous blueprints labelled depending on entity it is meant for eg. MTD NDL Small Event, MTD USA Single Venue, MTD Intl. Single Venue, MTD Intl. Major Event (multi-venue) etc etc.
We are in the midst of planning/building a number more - all of these must be entity-specific to take advantage of automations like approvals to specific people in their respective entities.
All of these right now use account-level workflows named things like NDL Tankering, BNLX Sampling, USA Transportation etc etc, but workflows are getting out of hand and confusing for users and adds risk of human error as well...
Desired Outcomes:
Entity-specific blueprints use space-level workflows, CITs, Custom Fields etc wherever needed/possible.
Return/give control of these elements to respective entities.
Reduce account-level clutter - keep end-user access rights/visibilities as entity-specific as possible.
Better harness the power of Automate and the API.
!! Issue:
Blueprints cannot use space-level workflows at this time (side question for Wrike Support - where on the roadmap is this?)
Workaround:
1. Create a dummy "blueprint" project from an existing project blueprint, into a zBlueprints folder in the relevant Space
2. Switch workflows etc in this "blueprint" to space-level workflows etc as needed
3. Generate a project (in our case, from an RF) from this new "blueprint"
Result:
Using the RF, we can control needed elements like setting start date, project title, prefixes on all tasks/folders.
Space-level workflows are set on relevant tasks as expected.
Dependencies, where they have been set up, appear to be preserved.
Task initial statuses are set to whatever state in a workflow it was in the blueprint our new "blueprint" was created from.
Summary:
It seems to work as needed -ย so I am looking for feedback on what limitations/flaws to this approach I cannot see myself right now - what am I missing?
What makes this dummy "blueprint" approach different from an actual Blueprint besides obviously that it must reside in a specific space not at the account-level?
The only thing I can think of is that each of these dummy "blueprints", because their tasks statuses will be a "live" status rather than a "deferred" status, will appear in, and muddy, reporting/dashboards etc unless we were to somehow explicitly exclude the zBlueprints folder(s) from such?
What say you, Community? What flaws to this workaround am I missing here?
Hi Angela Kennewell, thank you for sharing your use case and a workaround here! I'm happy to connect you with our Support team to discuss this with them too. One thing I wanted to mention is that there are plans for space-level Blueprints. I don't have an ETA for that yet, but we'll be keeping you posted ๐
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
Angela Kennewellย Looks like a solid plan to me!ย I'd be careful if you use Wrike Analyze that you manually exclude the Blueprints since they're not in the Blueprints section of Wrike.ย Excited to hear Space Blueprints coming and that will likely solve for this exact use case (and many of mine!).