[Status: Backburner ⏳] Shorter Job Numbers or shortlinks

@stephen Like a previous poster said, a secondary numbering system is fine. Here's what I posted 10 months ago which would be perfect:

Right now, what we are essentially doing is using another software program to generate a part number / job ID (e.g., TSS-KP036), and then we manually add it to the beginning of a task so we can easily query against it quickly in Wrike.

@stephen I'd like to second the idea proposed by @Ken Paynter.  That functionality would be greatly appreciated by the entirety of our team.  Additionally, to add to idea, it would be great to see the ability to store multiple Prefixes so we can identify documents created for multiple departments (ie. MKT, FIN, DEV, etc.)

Great news, I'm glad you are maybe going to implement something for this.

IMPORTANT:

I think it is not at all neccessary to change your current 'internal' task numbering.  The long ID numbers can stay as they are, undisturbed so you can use them as you do now, internally.

What we need is a 'Users Task Number', which can be totally separate from your internal task IDs.  

You may even want to implement a few new "Task Number" or "Task ID" fields that meet different requirements.  These can be thought of as just new task fields.  No need to change or modify your current internal task numbering.

My vote is for a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) system where the task numbers get re-calculated if a user moves tasks around, copies them from project to project etc.).  That will allow users to re-structure their tasks and projects, without having to tediously re-number all the tasks manually.  Similar to how Microsoft Word 'Outlining' feature works.  

First picture:  original task outline in Word Outlining.

Now, if the user moves Original Task 2 to be AFTER Original Task 3, the system re-numbers all the tasks and sub tasks:

@stephen - I totally agree that it's not necessary to change Wrike's internal numbering system.  If that is deeply embedded and complicate to do, then leave it.  Just give us a secondary numbering system option that we can customize. 

Yes, agree a second numbering system would be ideal. For our particular use it would be great if there was a client list built somewhere in Wrike and each of those clients had a shortcode of three letters and then a five digit code after that based on the next job created. For example: Orthopedic Department shortcode is ORT and then the next job is 5403 so the code produced is ORT5403. This can then also be used as a key number for advertising etc.

Having the ability to customize your Job ID is crucial.

We are currently trying to migrate into Wrike from waffle since they are closing soon.

So far working with Wrike has been fun and personally like it for the sleeky design, love to open the page

But, here comes but, having an access to concise IDs assigned to each task is really important in terms of

  - naming branches

  - communicate with team

  - search for branch based on issue/task

Please please consider adding domained id to workspace🙏 I dont know what i do without it

I created a similar post regarding this but will echo the need for a secondary numbering system. This is such a vital component that we are looking at other project management tools capable of this.

The current task ID system offered, while important within the Wrike sphere, is just too arbitrary and therefore little value in looping Wrike into our other project management strategies.

Hi Everyone, just wanted to jump in to thank you for your votes and use-cases here, they really help us when having internal conversations with the teams 👍 For now the Product team investigates this feature suggestion; I'll get back to you when I have more detail and any updates. 

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

This issue desperately needs to be looked into by the Product Team.
It seems to be a big issue for a lot of people, and is preventing some companies from being able to use your software at all.

We need to be able to customize/auto-generate Project ID's. It's preventing a lot of our departments from being able to come on board to Wrike and is creating a lot of extra work-arounds/people just not using Wrike at all because it is lacking this function.

This issue has been requested here and in some other threads for OVER TWO YEARS.

My expectation was that Wrike would address this within a few months.  They seem to be IGNORING THEIR USERS.

This feature is a BASIC project management system feature.  

I HAVE GIVEN UP AND AM LEAVING WRIKE.  They are unresponsive to their users.  

Hi, adding my 2 cents, very heavily needed for me as well.  I am moving from Jira, which handles this well and I’m guessing a good deal of the posters here are also Wrike faithful that have stuck with you in lieu of Jira, or other more agile-based issue tracking systems of which this is a fundamental feature of the app.  It is next to impossible to run a meeting using your task ID’s:

- they are hard to find in most views, invisible in boards;

- they are so long it is hard to easily reference them

- they do not relate to a project or any other context within Wrike

I am hoping to at least re-write the task ID via API and an integration with tray.io, but I’m not even sure now that will work.  Ideally you guys should make the effort to get this prioritized and inline with other systems that use a “project ID” + “number” system that is easy to consume.  I can tell you that as my team now converts to Wrike, due to the myriad of other superior features you have to most everything else out there, we will be keeping an eye on this, and potentially moving off Wrike if the fast-moving competitors without your tech debt (read Clickup, Hive, Clubhouse, Notion/Coda, Zenkit, etc.) move quickly enough to implement this, and some other basic features you need like time of day in a tasks’ due date, better integrations with Source code repos like GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket so that transitioning task status in those tools also transitions in Wrike (a must for most developers).  

I would really advise you guys to think hard about fixing this soon.  After all, aren’t good engineers supposed to like hard things to solve?!

Sorry if this is a bit blunt, but I just want to indulge your request @stephen to be forthcoming and lay out good reasons, from the point of view of a user, to make this difficult change happen.  Thanks for listening!

Wrike Team: Can you provide a status update on this?

Hi, there! See this is being investigated? Any movement? Agree this would be an impactful enhancement for our team. 

Hi, what is the latest on this? I see there was a lot of back and forth on this and in a different page: 

https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360026539113-User-friendly-IDs-and-URLs

Has there been any progress on this at all? 

Hi Wrike Team,

I would also like to read an update on this.  Like many other users, this functionality would be a huge efficiency multiplier for our Team.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Please add a number scheme that would mirror task structure...

01.01 = task 1 subtask 1 

This functionality should allow for multiple layers and automatically adjust as tasks are shuffled and reordered during project plan creation

Hi everyone, thank you so much for keeping this conversation going!

We continue to report all your feedback to the team. The suggestion is still being researched at the moment. I'll let you know when there's an update! 

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 can't believe this feature request has been pending for other 2 years. I feel bad saying No to your sales guy who's been trying to get our company to switch to Wrike but features like these don't get acted on.

All this needs to be is a custom field that references clients, type of project, and previous job number.  Even an ancient system like Workamajig does this--and it's very flexible.  This ONE feature is the reason we cannot and will not switch to Wrike.  Why is this so difficult?  And why does it take two years to research it?

We need this, yesterday :) 

I 100% agree - customizable project / campaign / folder / task #'s are essential and are a huge hindrance.  I currently have to manage an excel grid to assign sequential purpose-driven #'s and then go in and create a project from either a blueprint or create from scratch.  When using a blueprint it is not as terrible as you can input the # as the prefix and it auto-assigns to all tasks however it gets very clunky very quickly when working across integrated teams and new tasks get added along the way.

When not using a template it's entirely a manual process to add the # in front of each task

This function should be a top priority if Wrike wants high volume cross-functional marketing teams to leverage the tool

Hey everyone! Thanks for your continued support! 

The research continues here, hopefully I'll be able to provide details in 2020. 

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 everyone! Nothing new on this one, I'm afraid - the team continues to research. I'll be checking with the team again next quarter and I'll let you know if there is any 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

2 years and nothing, when plenty of solutions have been provided. Clearly this has been put into the backlog with no hope in sight. Very disappointing, 

This is very frustrating! This is one feature that's causing us a real headache. We use request forms as we work with multiple teams, and having to manually assign project numbers after the project has already been submitted is a huge amount of manual work. 

Can I apply for a job on your Research team? It seems like it's a very low-pressure role.

John Dexter haha 🤣

This is very disappointing that you guys can’t make this happen. If you intend to have a serous kanban use in Wrike, you need to be able to reference cards with a unique identifier. Among other issues you’ll encounter without this is a situation where you have a ton of tasks called “refactor the code” and users will get frustrated trying to differentiate them all

Ken Paynter could not agree with you more!!