[Status: Not planned] Markdown formatting in Description field
It would be incredibly helpful if we could use Markdown in description fields.
e.g. instead of having to use the mouse to choose the header level, simply type ## at the beginning of the line for a level 2 header etc.
Dropbox Paper is a good example of this working well. Markdown is enough of a standard for this to be worthwhile.
I really like using Wrike as a note taking tool (for meetings etc) but the mouse-based formatting makes it rather slow.
Thanks.
Good on you Chris,
I have meaning to ping this thread for the New Year. And yes, I 100% know what you mean about just expecting Markdown syntax to work everywhere.
I think your hunch about Wrike having a blind spot when it comes to technical and engineering teams is probably spot on. My guess would be that their own devs don't use Wrike. It's the only thing I can think of that can explain the company's baffling inability to understand how odd the exclusion of MD support is.
In the next 24 hours one of their worker drones will pop by and thank you for your post and give us yet another anodyne assurance that they will "share" your "feedback with our team". They will do no such thing. Their developers, given any sort of authority, would absolutely prioritize this feature.
I'll put the challenge to Lisa and Juan again, why can you not simply change the status of this feature request to "Planned"?
Please explain why you think you should not add this feature. And be honest with us.
Hi Wrike, judging by the number of requests and threads from paying customers on this topic, I can't believe that nothing has been done about it yet. I mean, this has been going on for years now...
What exactly are the technical reasons preventing you from implementing this? Do you need any help with this?
Hi folks! I've just shared all the recent feedback in this thread with the responsible Product team at Wrike, so please rest assured that your feedback is being heard. That said, there are no current plans for introducing markdown support due to other planned enhancements. We'll keep you posted in case there are any changes or updates here in the future.
Thanks a lot for your feedback here!
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, Juan and the rest of the resilient Wrike-Team,
once again we are at the point where everybody just wants to throw Wrike out of the window.
Please *reason* why you do not want to put such a simple feature, that's probably the most requested feature, into the next deployment?
And please *reason* why you do not even allow "monospaced" formatting in your description editor. You surely have some junior frontend dev ready, who is eager to earn your customers applause by implementing a simple monospaced font (bonus: with some darker background).
Thanks a lot for your feedback here!
As Franz says in his epic burn above:
"why you do not even allow "monospaced" formatting in your description editor. You surely have some junior frontend dev ready, who is eager to earn your customers applause by implementing a simple monospaced font (bonus: with some darker background)"
I know for a fact that the underlying rich text editor library that Wrike use has a monospaced font option. Turning it on would be a simple config change, and most likely no programming required beyond that.
This is an hours work. They can't give us an hour - for a small part of a feature we are clamoring for.
Can we have an update on this feature request please?
We don't have updates currently Simon Taylor, this idea, although it makes sense to our team, is not on the roadmap at the moment.
If there are any updates in the future, we will let you know. Thanks a lot for your continuous feedback!
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,
Our feedback is not being heard.
Put it on the roadmap.
Your new AI knows about markdown.
As you can see in these screen images, I entered some text using the WYSIWYG editor, then asked the AI to reformat it as markdown by entering "Convert this text to markdown".
1.
2.
3.
It got the bullet list items right, which is pretty impressive, but of course since you don't support markdown that's where it ends.
When I gave it more detailed instructions it got everything right:
The question remains: Why don't you support markdown? We have shown you that there are libraries that support WYSIWYG and Markdown at the same time, so there would be no loss of UX for users who don't care for markdown.
Why won't you at least take the trivial step of adding a monospaced font option to the WYSIWYG editor? The library you are using supports it, as we have shown you.
Why not at least put that trivial step on your roadmap?
Hi Simon Taylor, thank you for your comments and additional feedback. Please, rest assured that your insights have been noted and that our Product Team is receiving all your comments; they are aware of the popularity of this suggestion.
As mentioned before, at the moment this suggestion is not part of the current roadmap and the reason behind this situation is that unfortunately not all suggestions can be prioritized as fast as we'd like. However, if any improvements are implemented, we will for sure let you know in this thread 👍
I feel for you Juan.
At some level you must know that this makes no sense, but month after month you and Lisa bravely wade in here and give us the party line. Always polite, always timely, but never able to deliver news of any substance.
Can I remind you that one of the requests in this thread, made by multiple of your clients, is forget markdown if you want, but just add the damn monospace font button.
Your developers had the time to add a new "AI" icon to the toolbar, but apparently no one had the time to make the single line entry in the config that would add the monospace button to the same toolbar.
Your prospective clients are reading this thread. The message is loud and clear for them: "don't expect any feature request not approved by marketing to get traction. We're not interested in what users tell us."
Hi Simon Taylor, I understand that it can be frustrating to hear that this feature has not been implemented. Our Product Development Team considers multiple suggestions simultaneously and, in this process, prioritization must be done. Please, feel free to check our Weekly Release Notes forum to discover all the feature updates that are being implemented every week 🙂
I've passed your comment on to our relevant team and we will keep you updated if there are any changes 👍
As usual, if there's anything else we can help you with, please let us know.
Still "Status Not Planned" despite:
What does is take? Users are entitled to be angry about your comical inaction, particularly given your lack of desire to implement either of these related (and much simpler) requests for code formatting or even just monospaced font in description field:
Code formatting in task descriptions and comments - started 2017
Code formatting in task descriptions - started 2019
Can you give us a positive response please?
Simon Taylor I applaud and appreciate your effort in being so diligent with your follow up on this issue through the years. Lisa and @..., having hit up against your pretty much boilerplate responses on several product feedback items, I share in Simon's frustration, and I think that if the product team would simply provide an actual response as to why some of these asked for features have been languishing in the forum for years, users would not feel as if they were talking to a wall.
@..., why Wrike does not publish and share its road map to paying customers is another issue entirely. But your linking to the release notes, while informational about what has happened, does not give your users any insight into what is _going_ to happen and that is the whole point of a road map.
Thankyou Greg
We have to do all that we can to keep the pressure up. I am currently taking this up via Wrike's Australian people, and I might have an update soon.
Disturbing thought, but it's possible that Lisa and Juan are bots.
Simon, Greg and others!
Can I please ask you to help me in understanding your needs and use cases better so I can come up with the precise case internally?
Is it about formatting capabilities for you like fixed width font (code blocks)? Or maybe about applying formatting as you type without touching a mouse? Or maybe it's about seamlessly pasting formatted text from the outside?
Hello Vladimir,
yes, it is about nearly all the things you mentioned: Adding fixed width formatted code blocks, fixed width formatted inline text and pasting fixed width formatted text from the outside.
Your clients are not just designers working on Figma and providing screenshots to PMs, but also some software development companies or departments that need to show program code and similar stuff in a description. A screenshot written somewhere else is not sufficient as no one can copy and paste it for testing, so we need real text.
If you are looking for examples, please take a look at
Thank you very much for your response and attention to this matter after all these years.
Hi Vladimir,
While we have some people that are used to working with editors like the existing one, most of the developers I work with are just more accustomed to markdown. Not limited to developers though, there definitely are other people using it. Even whatsapp and reddit have basic formatting that's similar or a subset of markdown. We just use it extensively to write documentation, tickets in other platforms, etc. We'd just like the ability to format text with it here so we don't have to switch to something else. Just have another editor as an option that we can use where text can be entered in markdown and is then formatted to whatever you want/need internally.
There definitely are other people that prefer what's currently there, I don't think anyone would suggest just replacing it.
I just want to be able to keep writing and add *italics*, **bold**, `inline code` and ```code blocks```, ~~strikethrough~~, and lists - without having to switch or figure out what the shortcut is for this platform... (come on cmd+shift+7 for an unordered lists vs hitting enter and prefixing with a dash...)
It's not about not using the mouse specifically, I have it. It's about speed. I just want to get in, update what I need to, and get out while not having to think about specifics of ***this*** platform.
The other part is, sometimes I want to copy something from somewhere else. Most of that is... in markdown. So now I have to format it by hand.
I think we all have seen that it's ubiquitous everywhere else.
Hello Vladimir,
As I see it there are two distinct use cases:
The first is fixed-width formatting.
As Franz says,
"software development companies or departments that need to show program code and similar stuff in a description."
Incredibly, your users can currently do this everywhere in Wrike *except* in the ticket description field. This is arguably where it is most needed.
If you live and work in code, and you cannot add fixed-width formatted snippets to ticket descriptions, you are at a significant disadvantage.
Your developers had the time to add a new "AI" icon to the toolbar, but apparently no one had the time to make the single line entry in the config that would add the monospace button to the same toolbar.
The second is marked-up plain text.
Markdown is the dominant way developers and other technical specialists add formatting to plain text.
Markdown is like Internet Plumbing! It's heritage goes all the way back to the "POD" markup used by the Perl community, but Markdown is language and architecture agnostic, and it is everywhere.
As Ruben says,
"It's about speed. I just want to get in, update what I need to, and get out while not having to think about specifics of ***this*** platform."
The idea of plain text markup is that you can format on the fly in plain text. And the technical burden is one way. Only the author of the marked up text needs to know the syntax.
The readers of the content simply see nicely formatted results, pretty much just as if the author had used a WYSIWYG editor.
And on that point, as I mentioned earlier in the markdown thread, it's not as if adding markdown support means that you have to alienate Wrike users who only know WYSIWYG. There are libraries like that let you create a text entry widget that supports WYSIWYG and Markdown at the same time.
I can't enter URLs here, so just google "stackedit app" to see what I mean.
Hello Vladimir,
Any thoughts or feedback on this ticket?
In the meantime, can Wrike please commit to making the much simpler change in the Code formatting in task descriptions ticket?
Cheers,
Simon
Hi Vladimir,
It’s been over 3 weeks since we explained our use cases. Wondering if you could provide an update. At least that it’s been seen and maybe actions that are being taken.
Thanks
All, I just wanted to let you know that we are actively discussing improvements to the editor internally and while it's not commitment yet we hear you out and it's one of our focus areas now. Join us at Collaborate 2024 in just a week from now to hear out more about what is coming.
https://www.wrike.com/collaborate/conference
Hello Vladimir,
This sounds promising.
- Simon
Throwing an upvote (and a comment) here so this hopefully gets put on the roadmap soon.
Or I'd be happy with just a shortcut for typing headings.
Welcome to The Resistance Lilian.
In a couple of months this feature request will be 7 years old.
We live in hope!
In the meantime, feel free to add your voice to the much simpler change request in the Code formatting in task descriptions ticket, if that's also useful to you.
@... so I guess this was just "get to the conference"-spam?
Hey Franz Josef Kaiser, I don't know if you watched the Product Keynote, but some developments for the editor were shown closer to the end of the session. I'm sure Vladimir thought that people in this thread may find it useful. We'll keep you posted on any updates related to it.
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
So you managed to build a game (A GAME!) into Wrike, but refuse to invest time to fix the editor with one of the most asked for features?
Are you OK?
We are on our way off Wrike now. This was the one thing too much: We are paying for a tool, not for a game.
EDIT
This is how you can turn this off on an admin level
Hello Franz Josef Kaiser,
Another legendary post from you.
For some reason you didn't think Wrikey Dog was a good use of resources? Shame on you! It's not up to us to tell our betters at Wrike what they should do.
They know us better than we do.
We asked for markdown, they don't understand why anyone would want this and they refuse to add it to their roadmap.
We asked for fixed format font (the horrors) in ticket descriptions, they've told us this is too complicated, and complicated in ways we could not possibly understand.
Now, go back to your game, and do not be troubled by the things you think you want.
You are mistaken.
I am mistaken
The dozens of users who supported us in both feature requests are mistaken
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Cheers,
Your colleague in frustration,
Simon
A final follow up on topic: We ended the contract.
Wishing everyone else good luck … or at least some entertainment with this topic.
Have nice time!