FILTER REQUEST : incomplete tasks for which all predecessor tasks are complete
We need to be able to filter by tasks that are not complete for which predecessor tasks are complete.
This is very important to us because our tasks MUST be performed in a specific order. This should also be very easy for Wrike to implement.
In other words, we just need to be able to filter out (remove from our view) tasks for which the predecessor tasks are not complete (so we know what we can and should be working on).
Admittedly, the email notifications are useful and nice, but they do not solve the problem as each of our users has a lot of tasks (hundreds, sometimes thousands per month). As such, we desperately need this filter so we can use our Wrike spaces (timelines, to-do lists, etc.) to determine which of our tasks we can and should be working on.
Also, please keep in mind that a user may be assigned to several tasks within a series of tasks that are linked (each predecessor task leading to the next), but the user needs to be able to filter everything out except for the one task that can and should be worked on at that time. The user can then filter those tasks for ones that are assigned to themselves and the result is exactly what they can and should be working on.
Thank you and best regards,
Jeff Pinder
Hi Jeffrey, thank you for posting this suggestion here! I wanted to share another feedback post which you might be interested in upvoting too: More Control with Dependencies. I also wanted to say that I think your use case is really interesting, and would love to learn a bit more about how this process works for you right now. Are different users assigned to all tasks in this dependency chain? It sounds like this specific order might be based on a series of approvals required for each task, let me know if that's the case, it would be great to hear about your workflow.
Hi everyone, I wanted to post some additional info Jeffrey sent over, which is a great addition to this request. @Jeffrey, thank you once more for sharing this!
"Good morning Anastasia,
Thank you for the link. Unfortunately, strict/enforced dependencies do not address our need. In short, each of our users need to know: what tasks are theirs… that are incomplete… for which all prior dependent tasks have been completed.
With regard to your question below, no, different users are not assigned to all tasks in our dependency chains. Users are often assigned to multiple tasks within our dependency chains. Here is a summary of our operations as they pertain to Wrike: Each month we have approximately 70 separate dependency chains (individual projects that have to be performed in a very specific order; otherwise the end result is incorrect). Therefore each month a particular user may have 200+ tasks to perform, but the user has to wait until all of the related predecessor tasks are complete; otherwise, the user will ruin the product and multiple people will have to re-perform their tasks (waste of time and resources).
Currently, the best we can do is each person looks at timeline view and scans each little project/dependency-chain for tasks assigned to them for which all predecessor tasks are complete. This is not very efficient.
Admittedly, the email notifications are helpful, but they are cumbersome and far from ideal as our users need to be able to pull up a single document that highlights for them the items that are available for them to work on (as opposed to rifling through multitudes of emails). Please see below.
Imagine you are a user. If you only filter for incomplete tasks assigned to you then you could easily perform tasks for which predecessor tasks have not been completed. As a result, we would either catch the error and have to re-perform all of those tasks and subsequent tasks or our clients may catch the error, which could lead to us losing those clients… The only other option is for each user to scan each dependency chain over and over to identify tasks that they can and should be working on.
Admittedly, the email notifications do help the users a little bit; however, they don’t help the Project Mangers at all… and it becomes is cumbersome to constantly rifle through emails to determine appropriate workflow when we have a GREAT tool like Wrike that just needs one single filter option to get us over the hump.
Thank you and best regards,
Jeffrey Pinder"
We're struggling with almost identical problem - I would love to know if anyone has found a usable work-around solution!
If prior dependency completion could be made to trigger a task status change, that would also provide a fix for this issue because a custom status could be used that indicates all dependencies have been completed and a task is ready to be worked on (of course, this would be an "Active Status" status).
Scott Henderson Arizona Community Foundation azfoundation.org
Having the option to filter out tasks on a dashboard that have incomplete dependencies is an absolute must-have.
This still isn't addressed after more than two years? The workaround mentioned doesn't solve the problem so please update Wrike to allow this filter!
@Devin Hi, thanks for your support for the suggestion here.
I don't have any updates to share at the moment. As soon as this post gets 60 votes, we'll add a Product Status to it, so the best way now is to upvote the suggestion so that our Product team can assess its popularity among Wrike users. I'll refer Community members with similar suggestions here to +1 it.
Any updates, I'll make sure to get back to you here. Thanks for posting!
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
Seems to me this request is related to these:
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115001633865--Status-Now-in-Wrike-Labs-Investigating-Automatic-Task-Status-Changed-on-Dependency-completion
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360020779513-Update-dependent-tasks-when-task-status-changes
...because if prior task dependency completions could be made to trigger following task status changes, a custom (non-active/deferred) status could be set on a task initially, until all dependencies have been completed and then the automated task change to an Active status would indicate it is ready to be worked on and the task would appear in appropriate dashboards and task lists.
So these 3 posts could almost be combined.
Also, I note the post represented by the top link here says "Now in Wrike Labs" ...but I don't see it in Wrike labs. 🤔
Scott Henderson Arizona Community Foundation azfoundation.org
I would appreciate the feature as well; the workaround solution creates unnecessary work and does not actually solve the problem adequately.
Hi All,
We came up with a workaround for this issue. We are a development shop and create subtasks below each development issue that needs to be completed. Our implementation team do a 'customer perspective' test on the issue that was just completed. As we have dozens of issues to be completed it was becoming difficult for the implementation team to identify which issues were ready to be tested, where the predecessor tasks were already completed.
Our workaround was to tag the completed development work in to a folder called 'To be released'. This was also useful for understanding which new development items would soon move to production. As a result of that tag, I created a dashboard with a widget that populated Issue Testing tasks assigned to the Implementation team that were still marked in an active status that were also searchable from the "To be released" folder.
So it does require an extra step when marking the predecessor task complete, but if that is followed, it does make identification of incomplete sub-tasks ready to be worked on easy to identify.
Hope this helps!
Tim
Hey Tim MacEachern, thank you for this workaround!
I don't have an update for you all at the moment, but as soon as I do, I'll let you know.
I would also be interested in this being possible. I was just looking to see if it was and came upon this post.
Hi Kelly Smola, thank you for sharing this feedback! It's been passed on to the Product team.
This feature is definitely needed.
Hi everyone! 😊
I think that the recent release of Wrike's Automation engine can help here. It's possible to create a rule applied to tasks that will automatically add a comment with an @mention when all predecessor tasks are completed:
Please let me know if that helps!
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 seems to be like a step in the right direction, however it still does not address the issue of actually making the successor status change to letting the next person know that the project is now ready for them. Simply if Predecessor status changes to -> complete, set successor status -> Ready and add comment in successor task to Ready to start task.
Hi Noreen Eckert, welcome to the Community! 👋
It should also be possible to "Add another action":
Please let me know if that helps 😊
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