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Step 3: Prepping the Workspace (For Account Managers)

Tip

This step covers account administration basics. If you're not tasked with managing your Wrike account, you can skip to Step 5: Start Working and Collaborate.

Overview

Now that you've learned how to navigate your Wrike account and how the variety of core Wrike features can help improve your work processes let's review some tips and best practices of preparing your account before inviting team members.

Organize your work with spaces and folders

Set up spaces

Spaces are hubs that store all work items related to one topic. By default, your account has a public Team space that can be accessed by all members of your account and your Personal space where you can keep your private work.

To get started, use one of these rules of thumb for setting up your space structure. You can always change it later to fit your team processes better:

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  1. 1 If you have one small team, they can manage all their projects inside the Team space.

  2. 2 If you have several teams, set up a space for each of them. For example, marketing, design, HR, IT.

  3. 3 If your work is organized by client, then set up a space for each client.

  4. 4 If you have dozens of clients, group them by region, size, or importance and create a space for each group.

Set up the folder structure

Folders help you categorize your tasks and projects in spaces, such as by region, type of work, sprint, etc. Also, folders can be used as tags 1 to categorize your tasks or projects for quick access, since they can be placed in several folders at once. You can color-code folder names 2 so that your tags stand out visually.

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Tip

We strongly recommend adding the following folders to your account:

Archive folder: Use this folder to store completed or outdated work items. Additional tip: Name the archive folder zArchive to have it displayed at the bottom of your space's folder structure.

Knowledge Base folder: Fill this folder with tasks containing rules of using Wrike and answers to the most frequent questions your team may have. For more info, read the first-hand testimony on how Wrike users successfully streamline all team member training by having their knowledge base within Wrike.

Templates folder: Add folder and project templates here. Create a subfolder to store individual task templates.

If you are on a Business and above subscription, you can use Blueprints. Blueprints let you build out projects and tasks without interrupting ongoing work.

Basic account administration

Update the account setting that will affect all your team’s workspaces:

  1. Upload your company logo for branded workspace and email notification.

  2. Add your country's public holidays to the team’s default Work Schedule.

Advanced account setup

Note

The features described in this section are available for accounts with Business and Enterprise subscriptions.

Each team follows unique processes – so does yours! Wrike has a set of powerful features to help you organize work processes that fit your team’s work style and needs.

Analyze your team processes and implement advanced features to help you manage your team and projects more efficiently.

Custom workflows

Set up custom workflows to map your processes. Your account has one default workflow that includes five statuses: New, In Progress, Completed, Deferred, and Canceled. You can set up additional workflows to better track what stage the work is in.

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Request forms

Create request forms to streamline the intake process. Request forms help you receive incoming work in a structured way without juggling emails with additional questions.

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Custom fields

Use custom fields to track KPIs like budget, goals, expenses, etc. If you want to dive even deeper, use calculated fields and color-code results.

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User groups

Add user groups for enhanced communication and data sharing. Instead of sharing data or @mentioning one person at a time, use user groups to quickly share information with groups of people, and make group announcements.

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Blueprints

Add project templates to save time on launching repetitive work. Employ Blueprints to manage your project and task templates and plan your work while keeping it separated from ongoing work.

What you can do using Blueprints

  • Separate work to manage planned content in a dedicated workspace section.

  • Create content preemptively without sending notifications.

  • Assign tasks and projects without sharing and sending notifications.

  • Create actual work from Blueprints with notifications (launching work in bulk sends smart mass notifications).

  • Control availability of preemptively created work via sharing and permissions.

  • Plan future work without having to work on projects and tasks right away.

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Integrations

Connect Wrike with your favorite apps to automate your workflows and sync data with prebuilt integrations or create custom integrations with Wrike Integrate add-on or Wrike API.

Most popular integrations:

  • Wrike for Gmail: Increase productivity and save time by capturing work from emails and managing tasks right in Gmail on web and Android.

  • Slack: Accomplish more by converting chats into structured work.

  • Github: Create a two-way sync between GitHub repository issues and Wrike tasks, enabling better visibility and superior collaboration across projects.

  • Salesforce: Give your account teams accountability and 100% visibility into client’s projects.

  • Microsoft Teams: Bring project management into Microsoft Teams and transform conversations into structured work.

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For your convenience, we’ve prepared a set of toolkits for different types of teams:

What's next?

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