Workload Charts

Workload charts are a part of the Wrike for Professional Services package and Wrike Resource add-on. Business and higher accounts can trial and purchase Wrike for Professional Services and Wrike Resource. Once the package or add-on are enabled in the account, regular and external users can use Workload charts.

• Overview
• Important Information
• Create a Workload Chart
• Navigate a Workload Chart
• Customize Workload Charts
• Share a Workload Chart
• Edit a Workload Chart
• Delete a Workload Chart
• Manage Tasks on the Workload Chart
• Backlog Box

Overview

Use Workload charts to manage your team members’ capacity, prioritize tasks based on their capacity, and plan work allocation.

Important Information

• Only scheduled assigned tasks appear on Workload charts.

Create a Workload Chart

Workload charts display tasks from within a location you select during the chart creation. Your team members’ capacity is affected only by those tasks which have effort, so, choose the following option that works best for you:

• Build a chart with tasks from a specific folder, project, or space: This option will work if all your tasks are included within a specific location. To apply it, select a folder, project, or space in step 3 below.
• Build a chart with tasks from the whole account: Choose this option if tasks that your team is working on are spread across different folders, projects, and spaces. To apply it, don't select anything in step 3.
• Build a chart with tasks from several folders, projects, or spaces: These steps can be followed if your tasks are spread across several locations. To apply it, first include all necessary folders, projects, and spaces in a specific (new) folder in your left panel and then select this folder in step 3 below.

To create a Workload chart:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Click “Create a Workload Chart.”
3. In the pop-up that opens:
   • Specify the chart’s title.
   • Select users or user groups whose workload you want to view on the chart:
     • Select the "Custom list" option if you want to add users to the chart manually.
     • Select "Account members" to link the workload chart to the list of all users in the account (including collaborators). You won't be able to edit the list of users manually, but if users are added to the account they will be automatically added to the list of users for this workload chart. The same is true for when you delete a user from the account.
     • Select “Current user” to make the chart show only the workload of the user that opens the chart.
     • To see all users (including collaborators) and to be able to edit the list manually, click "Unlink" at the center of the pop-up. Note that if this option is chosen, you’ll have to add/delete users from the workload chart manually.
     • To remove all users from the Custom list, click the "Clear all" button.
   • OptionalChoose a folder, project, or space to pull tasks from. Click “Advanced settings” and “Select Folder or Project. ”Select a folder, project, or space from the list (or start typing its name and select it once it appears).
4. Click “Create.”

🖐 Note! Folder-, project-, or space-based Workload charts display tasks from the selected folder/project location as well as tasks from subfolders and subprojects.

Navigate a Workload Chart

To open a chart:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Select the chart from the list.

What You See on the Chart

1. User List

• Users selected during the chart creation appear on the left side.
  

2. Calendar Grid

• On the grid you can see the total daily or weekly amount of allocated effort per user.
• Drag the grid to the left to see previous time periods or drag right to see the future ones.
• Today’s date is marked with a red vertical line on the grid.
• Gray cells represent non-working days. On weekly view, weekends are visible only when you drag and drop tasks or create new ones.

3. Tasks

• Click on the caret icon to the left of a user’s name to display the tasks assigned to them on the calendar grid.
• Tasks are represented by bars that extend from the task’s start to end date.
• The bars are color-coded based on the task’s status. Tasks with specified effort have brighter-colored bars than tasks without it.
• The horizontal red line above some tasks means that these tasks have the flexible effort type and the total effort is different from the sum of allocated hours.

4. Allocated Effort

• The right side of the chart shows a user’s workload. Wrike adds up effort required for all tasks assigned to a person and scheduled for a particular day and shows this number in this day’s column and this user’s row.
• Wrike uses a color-coding system to show how busy a person is. If the daily effort of a user is:
  • 0 hours: The cell is white.
  • 0-8 hours: A portion of the cell representing the occupied time is colored pale blue.
  • 8+ hours: The cell is red.

Customize Workload Charts

Group Tasks by Their Projects

Click the “Add grouping” button 1 in the upper-left corner of the chart and select “Project.” Each user’s tasks are automatically grouped by the projects that they are housed in.
The tasks are grouped by the closest parent project. So if a task is housed within a folder that is housed within a project, the task will be grouped with other tasks from that project.
If a task doesn’t have any parent projects, it’s grouped under “Non-project tasks.”
Note: You won’t be able to create new tasks on the Workload chart if grouping by project is enabled.

Group Users by Job Role

Click the “Add grouping” button 1 and select “Job role.”
All users on your chart are automatically grouped by their allocated job roles. Users without a job role are grouped under the “No job role” section.

Change the Zoom Level of the Calendar Grid

Change zoom to see the daily or weekly effort total assigned to each user. Click on the drop-down menu icon 2 in the upper-right corner of the grid and select days or weeks.

Change Display Density

You can choose between compact or standard density modes depending on your preferences:

1. Click the toggle button. 3
2. Select “Compact" or "Standard."

Note: The default display density for Workload charts is standard.

Filter Tasks on Workload Chart

Apply filters to see only the tasks that match the criteria you select:

• Click the filter icon and select one of the quick filters: "All tasks," "All active tasks," and "Active tasks with Effort."
• Click "Add more filters" to open the filter panel with additional filtering options.
• Click "Clear filters" to remove all filters and see all tasks from within the location you specified during the chart creation.

Daily Allocation Hours

You can choose whether or not the total daily effort for each user should be based on their filtered-out tasks in the Workload chart.

1. Click the toggle button.
2. Select one of the following options from the list beneath “Daily allocation hours”:
   
   • “Ignore filters” - This will add up effort for all tasks assigned to a person and scheduled for a particular day, whether or not those tasks are displayed in the chart.
   • “Displayed tasks only” - To exclude effort in filtered-out tasks from being added to the daily total for each user.

If there's a dashed underline for the total number of daily allocated hours, this means that the person has other tasks planned for this day with more allocated effort. These tasks aren't displayed on the chart because they’re filtered out by the “Displayed tasks only” option.

Focus on Particular Users

You can select which users should be shown on the Workload chart without editing the list of users. To do so:

1. Click the user icon on the panel at the top of the Workload chart.
2. Select the person whose effort should be displayed from the list that appears or, alternatively, use the search bar.
3. After you have selected all the necessary users, click anywhere outside the window to save the changes.

Note: You can select only users from the Workload chart you are viewing.

Focus on Task Assignees

Use this option only for tasks with more than one assignee to see the allocated hours of all assignees of a particular task:

1. Click the task on the Workload chart.
2. Click the three-dot menu in the pop-up that appears.
3. Select “Focus on task assignees.”

Only the task assignees will be shown on the Workload chart.

Share a Workload Chart

By default the new Workload chart is private and only available to its owner. Start collaborating by sharing it with members of your team.

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Open the Workload chart that you want to share with members of your team.
3. Click the "Share" button in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
4. Start typing the name of the user or user group who you want to share the Workload chart with in the search bar and select them from the dropdown list.
5. Select the access role for the user*:
   
   • Full - All user rights available including editing and deleting the Workload chart.
   • Editor - User can edit the Backlog Box and share the Workload chart with other users.
   • Read Only - User can view the Workload chart but isn’t able to make changes to its settings or share the chart.
6. Click "Save."

User(s) who you have shared the Workload chart with will get will see a notification in their Inbox containing a link to the chart.
Users on Enterprise accounts can create and customize access roles and add/delete permissions for the Editor role. Note that external users can't share the Workload chart, even if they have a Full or Editor role.

*Keep in mind that this setting controls only the user’s right to make changes to the Workload chart itself and not to the tasks displayed on the chart.

Edit a Workload Chart

Edit Workload charts created by or shared with you.

From the chart list:

1. Click the Workload tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Right-click the title of a chart that you want to edit.
3. Click "Settings."

From the Workload chart:

1. Click "Settings" in the chart's upper-right corner.

You can:

• Rename a chart.
• Add or remove users to and from a chart. If you want to add all account users to a chart, first remove all users and user groups from the "Users" field, then click "Add all account users" at the bottom of the pop-up.

Delete a Workload Chart

Delete Workload charts created by or shared with you.

From the chart list:

1. Click the “Workload” tab (at the top of the workspace).
2. Right-click the title of a chart that you want to delete.
3. Click "Delete."

From the Workload chart:

1. Click "Delete" in the chart's upper-right corner.

Manage Tasks on the Workload Chart

Create, reschedule, or reassign tasks in order to resolve resource allocation conflicts without having to leave the Workload chart.

Create a Task

1. Open the needed Workload chart.
2. On your keyboard, press and hold
   
   • “Alt”+“Shift” or “Ctrl”+“Shift” keys if you’re on Windows;
   • ⌥ + ⇧ keys if you’re on a Mac, but not using the “Safari” browser;
   • ⌥ + ⌘ keys if you are using Safari on Mac.
3. Hover your mouse over the dates for which you would like to create a task, in the section of the task's future assignee.
4. Click and drag your mouse from the desired start date to the correct end date.
5. Release your mouse.
6. In the pop-up window that opens, enter the name of the task.
7. Select the location where the task should be created.
8. Press "Enter’ on your keyboard or the arrow icon near the name field.

The folder, project, or space that you chose when creating a Workload chart will be set as the task's location by default.

Change a Task’s Duration

1. Locate the task that you want to change.
2. Hover your cursor over the task bar’s left or right side so that you see a double-headed arrow.
3. Click and drag the bar to the left or right to change the task’s duration.

Wrike Tip! Using the same method, you can change the duration of tasks in the horizontal Backlog Box.

Reschedule a Task

1. Click and hold the task you want to reschedule.
2. Drag the task to the appropriate dates and release your mouse.

🔥 Wrike Tip! You can also drag and drop tasks to reschedule them within the horizontal Backlog Box.

Reassign a Task

1. Click and hold the task you want to reassign.
2. Drag the task to the row of a user you want to reassign the task to and release your mouse.

🔥 Wrike Tip! You can also drag and drop tasks to reassign them within the horizontal Backlog Box.

Add Additional Assignee

1. Click and hold the task you want to assign to an additional user.
2. Press the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard (“Option” key for Mac users).
3. Drag the task to the row of the users that you want to add as an assignee and release your mouse.

🔥 Wrike Tip! You can also use this feature to avoid automatic unassigning of job roles from tasks when you drag the task to the user with the matching role. In this case, the task will stay assigned to the job role and will also get assigned to the user.

Enable and Edit Task Effort

1. Click the task you want to enable or change effort for.
2. In a tooltip that appears, you can:
   
   • Enable task effort (if it's not enabled yet).
   • Edit task effort.
   • Change the effort type.
3. Press "Enter" on your keyboard to save changes.

Backlog Box

Backlog Box is a container of tasks that have to be allocated:

• If you use request forms, build a Backlog Box based on a folder, project, or space containing your team’s incoming requests.
• When launching a new project, you can duplicate a template and use that newly created project as the source for your Backlog Box, from which to allocate tasks among your team members.

Each Workload chart has its own Backlog Box that you can reconfigure at any time.

At least one of the following must be true for a task to appear in the Backlog Box:

• A task is unassigned to users (but it might be assigned to a job role).
• A task is not scheduled.

When you configure a Backlog Box, you can specify additional criteria for tasks that should appear there.

There are two ways you can display the Backlog Box:

• Vertically: The box appears on the right side of the view. The vertical Backlog Box contains tasks that are either unassigned to users or unscheduled. Tasks are automatically grouped according to their dates.
• Horizontally: The box appears at the bottom of the view. The horizontal Backlog Box only displays tasks that are both scheduled and unassigned to users. Tasks are automatically grouped according to the job role that they’re assigned to and the project that they’re in. 

To switch between a vertical and horizontal view of the Backlog Box, click on the  icon at the top of the Box.

Note: Both vertical and horizontal Backlog Box views automatically calculate the number of tasks in the Box and display it next to the Box title. Task count across the two views might be different because the horizontal Box does not display unscheduled tasks.

Wrike Tip! For tasks that are assigned to a job role and have allocated effort, use the horizontal view of the Backlog Box to see the effort on the grid before assigning the tasks to users.

Configure the Backlog Box (for the First Time)

1. Click “Backlog Box” in the upper-right corner.
2. Click the gear icon.
3. On the pop-up, select a folder, project, or space* and choose whether to include tasks from subfolders and subprojects.
4. Apply filters, if necessary. The preview window on the pop-up shows what tasks will appear in the Backlog Box based on current filters.
5. Click “Apply.”

The Backlog Box for the Workload chart is configured, and now you can:

• Drag tasks from it to the chart to assign and/or schedule them.
• Move tasks from the chart to the Backlog Box.
• Create new tasks.

*If you don’t select anything in step 3, the Backlog Box will show tasks from all folders, projects, and spaces.

Create a New Task

Please note that you can create new tasks only from the vertical view of the Backlog Box.

1. Click “Backlog Box" in the upper-right corner.
2. Click "+New Task."
3. Enter a title for the new task.
4. Click the arrow icon to the right of the Box or hit "Enter" on your keyboard.

Move Tasks From the Backlog Box to a Workload Chart

1. Click “Backlog Box” to see a list of tasks in your backlog.
2. Click and hold the task you want to assign.
3. Drag the task to the new assignee.
4. Release your mouse.

If the task was already scheduled, it keeps its original dates. If the task was backlogged without duration, it’s automatically scheduled for the current date with a 1-day duration. If the task had duration, it’s start date is scheduled for the current date, unless it's the weekend, and the end date is calculated automatically according to the duration.

Once you move a task from the Backlog Box, to the chart:

• The task is assigned to a person shown in the row into which you dropped it (existing assignees are also kept).
• If the task was assigned to a job role, and you move it to a user with the matching one from the horizontal view of the Backlog Box, the job role is automatically unassigned from the task (if you don’t want the job role to be automatically unassigned from the task when dragging it to the user with the matching role, press the “Ctrl” key while dragging the task (“Option” key on Mac).
• The task disappears from the Backlog Box and appears on the Workload chart.
• If you specified a folder, project, or space during the chart creation, the task is tagged to it (unless it was tagged with its subfolder/subproject).

Move Tasks to Backlog

1. Click a task you want to move to a backlog.
2. Click the three-dot menu button in the task preview.
3. Select “Move to backlog.”

Note that the "Move to backlog" option is only shown in the three-dot menu when the Backlog Box is configured.

Once you do:

• It disappears from the Workload chart and appears in the Backlog Box.
• If the task had a job role that was automatically unassigned from the task once it was assigned to a user with the matching role via drag-and-drop, the job role will be assigned back to the task when you select “Move to backlog.”
• The task keeps the same dates as it had on the chart.

🔥Wrike Tip! Unassign a task from the team members which are displayed on the Workload chart, to move the task to backlog.

Edit the Backlog Box Settings

Reconfigure your Backlog Box to allocate another set of tasks, e.g. tasks from another project you have started working on.

1. Click “Backlog Box” in the upper right-hand corner.
2. Click the gear icon.
3. You can:
   • Apply different filters.
   • Change which folder, project or space to pull tasks from.
   • Include or exclude tasks from subfolders and subprojects.
4. Click “Apply.”