Feedback concerning Custom Item Types

Sammy understood the assignment.

Very thorough. Job well done!

Hi Sammy! First of all, huge thanks for such detailed feedback! We loved working with it with our Product team 🤗

Hope you don't mind if I reply to you in a similar manner 🙂

We've distinguished three types of answers: 

• Planned ✅
• Please provide more info about your use case ℹ️
• Not currently planned, feedback noted ✍️

✅:

• Filtering in dashboards & reports (where currently custom item types are deselected by default)
• Project progress tracking
• Dates roll-up
• Recurring custom item types
• Adding custom item types to calendars
• Saving custom item types as blueprints

✅&ℹ️:

• Custom item type management in spaces

Can you please specify who you think should make such changes (e.g. Account admins)? If so, should they also manage the visibility of space types in spaces they have access to?

ℹ️:

• Exporting custom item types or being able to modify them in a table and reimporting them
• “Add Approvals” and “Add Dependency” are hidden by default. Would you like all the options always turned on by default or off and why?
• When opening a custom task type: instead of the "+ Item" it shows the first custom task type in the dropdown list (e.g. "+ Milestone") - we don’t consider it a bug. Can you please elaborate? 
• The dropdown order of custom list types cannot be changed.
• An added subitem does not display until you close the task and reopen it. This doesn't look right, can you please reach out to our Support or let me know and I’ll raise a ticket for you? 

✍️:

• Multi-edit custom item types
• Folder types. Can you please share your use case?
• Convert a task to "milestone" or to "planned" when right-clicking the task, not from within the task window itself.

 Thank you again for your post, Sammy! 

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

Hi Lisa. Thanks for this extensive answer. I'll try to add some examples/use-cases as requested.

"Custom item type management in spaces. Can you please specify who you think should make such changes?"

The account admin should be able to create multiple Custom Item Types but should have the power to decide in which Spaces those Custom Item Types are available by default (without going to each of these Space separately).

When setting up an account or new Spaces it might be handy that there is a default set of custom item types available, who are particularly useful for the Space theme. This will give the Space users a set of predefined Item types, useful for them, without feeling overwhelmed with all the Custom types that are defined on the account level.

The Space admin can decide on his own if he wants to add extra Custom Item types for their Space. From the Space settings, he can choose to add Custom Item Types that are already defined on the account-level, or add new Custom Item types specifically for their Space.

What would be nice here is if the Account admin could see what are "Space Custom Item Types" and what are "Account Custom Item Types" via the admin dashboard (settings). That way the admin can decide if there were new Item Types created that might be useful as a global/account Item type, for example.

"Exporting custom item types or being able to modify them in a table and reimporting them"

When custom item types really are going to be in use massively (and they will 🙂) an easy way to manage those custom item types would be beneficial. For example, I have created an Excel myself at the moment, where I've put all the different types, description, relation with other custom types, etc. Just to have an overview. If we were able to export the current Item Types, it would already be great, but being able to import them afterwards, would be even greater. That would mean we could edit multiple types at once, add new types (ok, the icon would be a default one, unless there is a code for that), remove types, etc. Especially when you are in the process of creating Custom Item Types from the start, there are many moments you think "I should change this or that" or "I first need to create these types, before I can select them in another custom type as subitem" etc... When you have a lot of types, it becomes quite cumbersome to change these one by one, especially since the window for changing them takes a little time to load (a couple of seconds only, but it is noticeable when looking at the overal Wrike experience, which is faster).

"'Add Approvals' and 'Add Dependency' are hidden by default. Would you like all the options always turned on by default or off and why?'

The "Timer" option I can understand if it's turned off by default (although other people might contradict this), but "Approvals" and "Dependencies" seem so crucial most of the time, that it would make more sense to turn them on by default and let the user decide to turn them off. I would think that turning them off is more of an exception than when they are off by default and you need to turn them on/visible each time. It is just something I noticed when creating a lot of Custom Item Types at once and then realizing I need reopen each one of them again, because Approvals and Dependencies were hidden by default (I first thought they were missing completely).

Then again, you would probably have all the statistics to verify the use of these features, so maybe most people would like them "off" by default according to your analysis...  I am only speaking from my point of view here.

"When opening a custom task type: instead of the "+ Item" it shows the first custom task type in the dropdown list (e.g. "+ Milestone") - we don’t consider it a bug. Can you please elaborate? "

With normal Item types, you have the option "+ Item" and then have the option to select "Task", "Project" or "Folder". But once you are using Custom Item Types, this disappears and you immediately get the first Custom Item Type that was created, which is not wanted behaviour at all. Especially since you cannot change the order of the Custom Item Dropdown list, unless you delete all custom Item Types and start with the custom Item type you want first to appear (which might even change after a while depending on user feedback. 

So, the easiest way to fix this, is to also use the general "+ Item" and then let the users select the correct type. Or allow that the dropdown list with Custom Item Types can be reordered. In a "Content" Space for example, maybe I want the "Comm" Custom Item type to be first and not "Announcement".

Another "issue" with this for example, when you open a custom task type that has specific custom item types as subtask, when you create you first task, you see "+Milestone" for example. You select another Item type, for example "+Deliverable". That works, but then you see again "+Milestone". When you click it however, it immediately switches to "+Deliverable" again. Which is wanted behaviour, but things like that conflict with the mind, because when you see "+Milestone" again you are already thinking that you need to change the custom type again if necessary. Or the other way around: you assume that the custom item type is reset and you want to add "+Milestone" and suddenly see that is still the previous one... That is why "+ Item" would be better or like the "normal" item types: when you select "Folder" once, you keep seeing an adding "Folder" types from that point on until you change the type or refresh the page.

"The dropdown order of custom list types cannot be changed."

I tried to explain this together with the answer on the question just above. Please tell me if it is not clear enough, then I will try to elaborate more.

"An added subitem does not display until you close the task and reopen it. This doesn't look right, can you please reach out to our Support or let me know and I’ll raise a ticket for you? "

I tested this again and it seems to work now. If it would happen again, I'll reach out to support as suggested, thank you.

"Folder types. Can you please share your use case?"

We have custom Project Types and custom Task Types. Within each of those you can select the associated sub-items (be it custom or normal item types). For specific Custom Types, it makes sense to limit the sub-items and to also attach sub-items specifically related to that type. Because there is no alternative for "Folder", you cannot define what sub-items a folder type should have. That means that once someone creates a folder as a subitem, the logical connection between custom-types is lost, since the default sub-types of "Folder" are always "Task", "Project" or "Folder".

For example, I have a Project Type, named "X-Project" (X = the name of my space or firm, ...), the only possible sub-items of that custom Project Type is "Folder" or "Objectives", which is also a Project Type. And so on, here you find a short example in the following screenshot:

So ideally, we could create custom Folder as well, to assure the same logical connected types can be respected throughout the whole flow.

An added benefit would be that you can select these Custom Folder Types also in the filter. That allows you to select a Space as source and not only filter on custom task or project types, but also on specific folder types.

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I hope I was able to clear up some things and that they can help you to further improve the custom item type experience (which will be a killer once some of the planned updates are in place!). It is really a nice expansion in the Wrike environment where many will enjoy its benefits eventually 💪😎

Thank you so so much for getting back to me with more feedback, detail, and use cases, Sammy! 🙏 

I've now passed all this extra detail to our Product team 👍

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

Hi, amazing list of suggestions!

Could I add, it would be nice to be able to already define the custom item type when importing from excel.

Thanks for adding your feedback here Willy Brunn! 🙌

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 would like the ability to restrict spaces to only allow users certain custom item types. Most of my users click on the big green plus arrow and create a Wrike default task that has the wrong workflow and then users don't know why, then they figure out how to change the workflow but it's still the old item type... etc. etc. So then the dashboards created don't work and everything feels messy and glitchy and people don't use the software...

...It would also be cool to restrict custom item types to view types or something like that, then admins are essentially forcing a workflow on people making it more user-friendly :)

Andre Herrero Thank you for providing detailed feedback on custom item types! I'll now share it with the team 🙌

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 don't know if I got the previous comments right or if my need is something else, but I would like to force the subitem type. As of now, the option to select subitems types in a custom type only changes the displayed types in the type selection list when you create a new item, but if you manually key in another type, nothing prevents it.

If I say that my custom project can only accept a given custom task type, then I want noone to be able to add anything else inside that project, it's not just a suggestion, it's a no-go, otherwise, it's pretty much useless and I'm stuck with tons of items of the wrong type with the wrong workflow...

Hi Nicolas MONNIER, thanks for reaching out! If I understand you correctly, you'd like the search option to be removed when creating a subitem for a project-type?

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 finding this error when limited the subitems list on a custom item type.  The defaults Task and Folder, keep renabling themselves.  It like the options that I make won't change.  And the lowest level custom item shows itself by defaults as a subitem.  And we don't want that.  Every time I toggle this off, it comes back.

Hi Sunnie Lewis, thank you for sharing your feedback, I've passed it on to our Product Team 👍