Gmail Subject Line Grouping Email Incorrectly

Gmail is great, don't get me wrong, but it has one fatal flaw when it comes to providing notifications from Wrike--and I believe there is a fix on the Wrike side of things that could solve it: remove the brackets "[...]" that enclose the project/folder name in the subject line and replace them with something else that can differentiate the project/folder name from the task name.

Background:

We've deployed Wrike across our company and run many similar projects/campaigns for various clients through it. Similar projects means similar tasks (identical names, in fact) for good reason--we're trying to accurately report status, by task, across all of the projects.

As all of our communication and collaboration is done through Wrike we rely heavily on the email notifications. Herein lies the problem for the PMs and team members using gmail: because the tasks are the same AND gmail does not recognize text within brackets, "[...]", (per this, it ignores that text https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/gmail/fmltUIWIjtw) the email updates from different projects end up being grouped together.

For example, an email update for the task with the subject line, "[Project A] Campaign Kick Off Meeting," would get grouped together by gmail with an email with the subject line, "[Project B] Campaign Kick Off Meeting," because it doesn't recognize the text within the brackets. If the subject line read, "Project A | Campaign Kick Off Meeting" or "Project B - Campaign Kick Off Meeting" gmail would not group them together and all communication would be sound.

Recommendation:

If Wrike was able to use something other than the brackets to enclose the project or parent folder Gmail would no longer mis-group the emails.

Is possible?!

Thanks!

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Anastasia

Hi Phillip, thank you for this detailed explanation and sorry for a delay in getting back to you! I did some testing and discussed this with our team, and you're right, this logic is applied to Gmail inboxes where the "Conversations" option is enabled. This limitation appears specifically for conversations in Gmail due to their grouping logic, and changing our own logic to something other than brackets isn't something that's on our roadmap. Many aspects of our Email Integration and Notification systems are based on various combinations of attributes surrounded by these brackets (whereas Gmail uses them to differentiate only Google Groups), and changing them would mean creating a new system altogether. As a workaround, the "Conversations" option can be turned off in Gmail settings. After some quick research, it looks like this is an ongoing conversation between Gmail users and Google, so this could be a point to bring up with them as well. That said, I really appreciate this detailed post, thank you for bringing up this topic!

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I'm adding my voice to this pain. Disabling conversations is an option, sure, but it would be more flexible to be able to modify the subject line template, for instance. I'm sure Gmail is a common enough email consumption interface that could make a good case for "adding this to your roadmap".

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Stephen

Hi Jorge, thanks for your input on this. You've definitely posted it to the right place as our Product Team reviews these posts when deciding on future changes/optimizations. If there are any further updates, I'll be sure to post about it here.
 
As an aside, I also wanted to mention the new Wrike for Gmail add-on which you may be interested in considering you use the Gmail integration often. It doesn't solve the feedback you're raising but I still think you'll find it useful. It would be great to hear your feedback on this new feature too. Thank you!
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Our team is also experiencing this issue too! 

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We are also having problem with this. Any update?

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I agree, we are having the same issue. Please remove the brackets "[...]" that enclose the project/folder name in the subject line and replace them with something else that can differentiate the project/folder name from the task name.

Thanks!

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Please add this.  I agree with Jorge.  Gmail is big enough that this should be a higher priority.  Most users don't take the time to post here, they find another product.

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This is a huge pain point for our company and has caused entire teams to lobby to get rid of Wrike entirely. Seems like this is a no-brainer to add to the road map since a lot of companies use the G Suite. When can we expect to hear an update on this?

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I stopped using email notifications altogether, because having the messages grouped into nonsensical threads is completely useless.

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+1 for a fix for this

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Maybe 2020 will be the year this gets fixed? 🤞

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Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your continued support here!

I don't have any updates from the team unfortunately, but I will let you know as soon as I have news.

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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