[Status: Launched! 🚀] Sort Comments by Newest at the top

Hey guys, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts on this with us, I'm passing your feedback to the team now! 

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

"Hey guys, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts on this with us, I'm passing your feedback to the team now! "

Your organization has said that for over 2 years, with no movement on this.  I wonder how many of your customers, who have asked for this feature but gotten no response, have since abandoned your product because of things like this.

Hi Brad, maybe Lisa will be the one to slap some sense into the management team :)  she might be new to her team let's give her a chance to make some headway with this. 

If you jump to the start of the thread, there is a comment from a manager from 2018:  "This part of the system (the comment stream) has technical blockers and we can't release this improvement in a reasonable time and with an acceptable quality level. In order to build a reliable and comprehensive solution for all users, we first have to do a technical refresh of the task Stream itself.  The good news is that the technical refresh will also unblock a few of other important product improvements that are discussed in the Community, such as Code formatting in comments or Custom field change log. The task Stream refresh is on the product roadmap..."

Apparently that "road map" was a road that goes over a cliff... I agree management has had MORE than enough time to correct this user-experience flaw. And by their own admission, fixing this will also fix other gaffes in the design so it makes me wonder who is driving the Wrike bus...

Michel Strøm Tandrup you are 100% correct.  That is the same canned response that comes in over and over, I’ve even specifically tried to call out here in the forum for the Product Team to step in so Lisa and @... aren’t left to the wolves here in the Forum because they are writing their messages in here like minions being told by some boss to just “go tell them the same again, heck with them!”

You can find 15+ threads in here with exactly the same tone of this one, and they are all equally important features in my book.  And you’re also right in Wrike losing customers.  I’m one of them, abandoned my yearly contract in the end.  ClickUp just came out with the ability to put tasks in multiple lists, something they didn’t have before that Wrike does, so now I can another pilgrimage over there from Wrike, which I’m sure is already happening all the time - not just to ClickUp, but tools like Hive, Monday, etc. that actually respect users when they request features in a public forum!  Like 1) respond to them with transparency, and 2) actually build those features! As opposed to Wrike, which granted does do a weekly release, it’s just completely not connected to requests in this forum.  I can never tell what drives their basis for the releases, can you?

Hello again, everyone! I've spoken to the Product team again, and they consider adding this to their roadmap (and your feedback certainly helps them to decide on this). At the same time, this might include a considerable re-work of the comment stream's logic. I'm hoping to be able to share more details in the coming weeks (end of Q2 or beginning of Q3).

Thank you for sharing your feedback! I know we say that a lot, and it's because we truly value it even if not everything is currently possible to implement. 

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

Please do bring some priority to this.  

My company operates our software development efforts from Wrike, and this is the second most painful thing about the tool.  It makes me think that you don't use your own product for managing your work or that, if you do, you don't have active update streams on tasks; because it is simply STUPID UI that I have to scroll to the bottom of 20-30 comments to see that there is an outstanding question holding up a task.

My team occasionally talks about dumping Wrike in favor of another tool because of this issue, and also the most painful issue for us: lack of code blocks in the task description. 

Hi All, 

Is there an update regarding this improvement? It is one of my biggest bugbears at the moment?

Thanks,

Ellis

Hey everyone, a quick update here -  the Product team continues to be interested in this suggestion, but there are currently no plans to implement it into Wrike in the near future. Rest assured that all of your feedback has been shared with them, and that if there is any new information here, I'll be sure to pass it on to you.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at any time.

This is needed and would be a productivity savings as I wouldn't have to scroll.

Doesn't sound like the Product Team is that interested to implement....

I keep forgetting to unfollow this thread, because it's a waste of time.

3 years ago this was raised and nothing has been done at all. No the best support to say it should be an easy fix.

Hello everyone! I have an update for you. You might have seen an update from one of Wrike's Product Managers a while back, where he explained that the Comment Stream has technical blockers, and to build a reliable and comprehensive solution for all users, we first have to do a technical refresh of the task Stream itself. I'm happy to let you know that the team is now actively working on the refresh. In regards to this particular suggestion - the team has plans to release a feature that would allow you to quickly navigate to the latest updates in the Stream. I understand that this is not exactly what you're asking for here, but it looks like a step in the right direction. The quicker navigation is currently planned to be released in the first half of 2021, and the team will continue to work on further improvements.

I hope that's good news for some of your cases, and I'd like to thank you again for all the feedback you've provided here. I'll keep you updated on the progress. For now, I'm going to change the status of this suggestion to "Investigating" so that the team's current plans are more clear - please let me know what you think! 

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

Thanks for the update, Lisa. So it sounds like the initial "feature" is a work-a-round that will allow users the ability to "jump" to the latest comment in stream? I understand it's early to commit what this will look like but I assume a button or will it auto scroll to the bottom?

Let it be clear I see this will help all users not just a select many of us who have reported or are eagerly waiting for this update.

lol well why didn't I think of that?  A button prominently displayed, that jumps you to the bottom of the thread where the newest comments are is a PERFECT solution if they can't reverse the list. 

Just make the button visually striking so it stands out, as this really is an important feature that just about everyone would use (and I'd have to question the sanity of any who do not use it).

Hi Michael Johnson John Rakoczy! Thank you for reaching out and sharing your feedback! I'm very glad to hear that the solution would work for you 🙂 Quicker navigation is planned to be enabled by a button in the Stream. 

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, 

Just to clarify you. You specifically mentioned stream, so within tasks will there still be no option to have the latest updates first?

Thanks,

Ellis

Hi Ellis McMahon! Quicker navigation to the latest updates should apply to task, folder, and project streams. 

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

Sorry, old techie here, (been doing software and hardware installation/training/support since the mid '80's). My concentration has been database schema design and implementation, both RDBMS and other types of DBMS systems.

Which wrike is, at it's core. A DBMS with a gui, probably written in some API or other  Maybe on top of Oracle, for all I know.

Sooo, you say "This part of the system (the comment stream) has technical blockers and we can't release this improvement in a reasonable time and with an acceptable quality level. In order to build a reliable and comprehensive solution for all users, we first have to do a technical refresh of the task Stream itself."

I'm sorry, I'm gonna' have to call that one highly questionable, as far as an acceptable explanation is concerned.  Here's what happens:  Somewhere in your application, a request is made to display the comments associated with a particular object: task, folder, or whatever.  Now, the system has to call whatever subroutines are necessary to retrieve these comments from one, or a combination of the following: disk, disk cache, RAM, RAM cache, or 'somewhere in the cloud'.  There's going to have to be a point where the subroutine has decided WHICH comments from disk, disk cache, RAM, RAM cache, or 'somewhere in the cloud' are to be included in the list that is displayed to the user. Fine. Now, feed that list of comments through a sorting subroutine that takes as a parameter a CHOICE from the end-user as to which sort they'd prefer.  THEN display it. It's something I could do in 15 minutes.

I suggest you try doing one of two things:

1) Explain the reason you can't do this using actual computer software concepts and terms. Phrases like "technical blockers" and "technical refresh of the task Stream itself." are not even HALFway towards an explanation about why this SIMPLE addition can't be added to the code.

Or 2) Admit it's a total smokescreen answer.  Sorry.  Unless your HARDWARE can't do a heap sort, a bubble sort, a B-Tree sort, or any other meaningful sort of SORT, there's no reason at all you couldn't add a reverse date sort option to the application.

lol @Jeff Glock  Yup I'm also technically able and said long ago in this thread that I could fix the sort in just about the same amount of time!  I personally think some senior manager is holding this back because they prefer how gmail works (newest threads always at the bottom) and they are purposefully stopping them from sorting in a sane and intuitive manner.  (Nevermind that all email clients, even gmail, put NEWEST mail at the TOP of the page if you sort it that way.  And imagine if your phone contacts were always displayed in reverse order where the most-recently updated contacts were at the bottom of the list!  oh the insanity lol)

That said, I'll be fine with a prominently displayed button that just teleports me to the latest comment.  One mouse click is MUCH better than endless scrolling (over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again)... 

The manager holding back this much-needed correction because of their own personal preferences is someone I'd... oh, never mind lol.

AND ANOTHER THING...

When I go to add a "mention" in a comment, I get a popup list of folks to 'mention to'.

The PROBlem is, the thing tells me there are "too many results to display. Please refine using search terms."  This is not verbatim.  But close enough.  WHERE do I enter the search terms?  The popup doesn't tell me that.

Also, does this 'too many results to display' behavior ever happen in the comment issue, like the one I ranted about 4 hours ago?

THAT would be as hilarious as I am incorrigible...

Still like the software, but you've got issues need dealing with...

jdg

Hi Jeff Glock, apologies for the delay in getting back here, and thanks for your detailed comment.

We've spoken to our Product team on this and they shared the following insight. It's correct to say that’s it's easy to sort items in any way. However, changing the order affects other elements that depend on this. For example, comment field position, grouping by periods, etc. As such, it makes this task more complex than you described, as it's directly connected to other parts of the product.

As Lisa mentioned above, the team is working on a solution that would allow you to quickly navigate to the latest updates in the Stream and they are planning to release this in H1 2021. It would be great if you could let us know if a solution like this would help in your case.

We very much appreciate your feedback here and as soon as we have further updates to share we'll be sure to let you know.

Elaine Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Elaine Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Great to get the commentary of Jeff Glockand John Rakoczy here, and just chiming in again to say how much this would be useful, and express dismay that this feature just doesn't move.  Fully agree with Jeff - there is no way some manager's personal preference should get in the way of hordes of voices wanting a feature.  That's the exact opposite way you develop quality product!

Thank you Al Sape! The buttons for quick navigation in Stream are going to be released this year 🙂

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, this is just another example of the drawing out of simple features you guys have requested here in the forum, assuming you decide to develop any in the first place.  You said back in Sept. this is coming soon, and now you've just said "this year."  You have no more precise guidance?  It's like you have one dev in all of Wrike that has been tasked with fixing this, who may or may not get to it, depending on what other priorities come up.  While in reality, you have an army of developers, and as has been stated here again and again by John Toups, John Rakoczy, Brad James, Michael Johnson, Ellis McMahon and others, we don't understand how hard a fix this could be.  All you've said is that there are "technical hurdles."  Ok, we concede this.  But you are using that as a crutch to take gobs of time to fix it, presumably due to those hurdles.  But there is a point where, technical hurdles or not, it becomes absurd to just draw this out basically indefinitely.

I just had a flashback to Kevin Bacon in "Animal House", during the crowd stampede.  That's the role the "Community Team's" members have here.

Well apparently someone's business model is working - congrats on your valuation and purchase by Citrix for 2.2 billion :).  Now please fix the sort order of comments before all that champagne starts to flow lol :)   Still love Wrike, just wish my middle finger didn't get such a work out (from using the scroll wheel to be precise 🤣)

My first thought was YGBSM, but a quick web search showed me that you're not kidding, John:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/citrix-is-acquiring-wrike-from-vista-for-2-25b/

Well, we're phasing out Wrike in our organization, anyway, so for us, the issue is moot.

"Pending approval"?  From a company that can't respond to its customers' complaint?

YGBSM

Also scrolling to last comment in this forum thread... seems to be part of the ecosystem. As for priorities, seems it's not with existing customers. 😔 #wheresthebutton