[From Wrike] New Layout and Functionalities of Item View 💚

Hi there, 

As mentioned by a few people already, the right-hand side panel is more efficient as we can scroll through the description and comments while seeing the fields simultaneously. This meant that we could refer to the fields and update them without losing the view of the description and comments, so it was faster. 

This new update has introduced more scrolling and isn't as productive. Please can we be given the option to view the fields on the right-hand side panel? 

The classic view, pre-Lightspeed, shows fields at the top so this new update has gone back to what it was previously. 

@... Curious what the product team thinks after these mostly negative comments on the change that have come through. My hope with this feedback is that the team is working on a way to get the side bar back in some form. We have custom item types that had the assignee as the top field in the side panel with Wrike ID# (which we attach to graphic file names for easy reference back to the project in Wrike), the status and the due date as the three most important aspects that our designers needed to know. Now as the project manager, I'm opening the More Fields option and spending more time scrolling to find the info I need. We have some change management on our hands in this change is staying on those custom item type layouts and training with our users on where to find the info they need. 

This is a major UI change and while our user case may be different to others, given that most comments above seem to prefer the side view for Custom Fields, it is clear that at the very least, the new view should have been rolled out as an option.   Forcing everyone to use it, has caused a lot of disruption in workflow and ease of use.  
As we use a lot of Custom Fields, we now need to scroll repeatedly within each task to correlate the comments with the info in the Custom Fields.  

Hi Shruti Phang Melissa DeKoff MW - thank you very much for sharing your feedback with us. I've passed your comments on to our Product Team. In case we are informed of any changes, I'll get back to this thread to share the updates 👍

Ah, I found the proper community post for feedback here.  @... We much prefer the sidebar over the new layout.  The sidebar offers more information at a glance and reduces the amount of scrolling.  If you had just added the custom field search bar to the top of the sidebar and the ability to make it wider, this would have provided all the improvement necessary for our needs.  Custom Item Types are now less valuable than before.  I like the suggestion from others to make this an optional layout, but from the comments it looks like about 80% of the members here prefer the sidebar.

@... Please expedite the process of putting sidebar back. My team members and myself have spent significantly more time this week in filling the custom fields as these are now multiple clicks away. The productivity has gone down.

@... most above users seem to prefer the sidebar, as do I.  the new layout not only requires more clicks, but also requires a lot more scrolling back and forth , when trying to correlate the recent comments with information that is updated in the Custom Fields.  In short, each task / comment takes a lot longer to review and act upon.  

As with majority of people here, I wholeheartedly agree that this is a step backwards. Most important data is now hidden from users view. As I mentioned in the other thread, our company made a decision to move to custom item types based on old UI and spent last few months preparing to migrate but this change is honestly a dealbreaker for us. Please give us the option to bring the old split view back.

Hi Trevor Tollefsbol SV - MW - thank you very much for sharing your comments with us, please rest assured that our Product Development Team is aware of this feedback. If any changes are applied to the layout, I will gladly share the updates with you as soon as possible. Thank you!

I had my comment on another thread about this, but tossing it here as well since this seems like the primary thread..

Agree! Our team relies heavily on filling out Custom Item Types for our Reporting. Having them now hidden makes it more challenging to keep track of and forces an additional step to see. Out of site, out of mind. Ideally these would be visible in some capacity whether through the side bar or top nav as others have suggested. 

Hiding them also feels like it reduces the value of the Custom Item Type view and giving us the opportunity to customize what is visible for our teams.

Maciej Klosinski Alexander Wheble thank you for your comments, I've passed them on to our Product Team 👍 We will get back to you with updates if we receive any new information. Thank you!

I am not a fan of the layout of information in the new Item view. The Status, Assignee, and Date fields are way bigger and take up the entire top space, while providing less information than the old view. Why do you need a field area of almost 4 inches to show the dates? It's a waste of space. Even with a date range and effort hours shown, there's over an inch of unused space.

The single column approach to fields, including custom fields, is so less efficient. Now I have a page and a half of "More" fields to scroll through because of the inefficient layout.  There's no advantage to having the custom fields only a single column. Most fields are single data values, which only take up about and inch of space. So it's wasting 8 inches of horizontal space with nothing in it. The old layout was multi-column and I could see all of my custom fields without scrolling. Now I have to hit the "More" button first, then scroll down to find the field I want to see.  This new layout is much less efficient. 

I also don't like having the Location hidden in the "More" section. I want to look at a task and see where it is, not have to go hunt for it. The Author and Created Date are also now hidden so I can't see those at a glance, I have to open up the More section to see that as well.

And burying the Importance is a terrible idea. Used to be an icon next to the title. Now it doesn't show up at all in the Item view unless you expand all fields. Why on earth would you bury the Importance? That should be readily seen by default in any view. Otherwise, it goes completely unnoticed.

We loved the previous view. We were so excited to see it and it was one of the reasons we rebuilt everything early on using CITs. The ability to see the all the custom fields that are important to a task or project in one screen is most efficient. When you added the 3 custom fields at the top of the item view, we had to rearrange of of our CITs to accommodate this update. However, our users could still see/update everything from one screen. With this update of 2 screens to see the same information, we are getting a lot of complaints from different teams. We will now have to rearrange the Custom Fields in the CITs again to have the 3 most updated fields showing at the top of the first screen. 

It was much better the original way you designed it. I am hoping you will get enough feedback to change it back or at least give the user the option of hiding the right panel instead of having to go to another screen to see it. 

Thank You Jason Pontius & Kerri Zollers for so clearly elucidating the challenges that we are all facing.  We too rebuild our work flows are the CIT's , spend weeks training all the users and now all the users are confused and irritated.  in our over 10 years of using Asana we never faced such a major UI change with no notice.  Very disappointed with Wrike's roll out of this major change.  

I agree with the user comments on needing the ability to see custom fields on the right side, introducing multiple clicks to the teams workflow is not an efficient use of time.

I preferred the side-by-side layout as well. My reasons echo what I have read in this thread. 

I also personally preferred the side view for custom fields. It was easy to access and you could make it always visible. Now, you have to click from the top which hides everything else in the item view and it's not stationary. This has made my work less efficient. 

We switched a majority of our tasks to the custom item types specifically because you could see the custom fields we want highlighted off to the right-hand side while being able to review the task description and comments. No one wants to have to click another button to see the fields we identified for the item type and it is not helpful to not still be able to see them when you scroll down to see the task comments.

This change has just now gone back to the old task view where we had to click on the custom fields button to view the custom fields at the top, except it is actually worse because now we also have to choose between only having three items always visible which includes choosing between the task status, assignee, date and location of the task. At least with the old, typical task view those important items were still always visible at the top without having to sacrifice one of them from being visible at all times.

We need the option to revert to the view we prefer. This completely kills the point of Custom Item Types, and being able to display relevant fields at a glance. 

This update is unfortunate, because my team needs to see ALL the fields we chose to display and not hide in our custom item. Our workflow is hindered by having to open the More menu to view the additional custom fields. We have more than three fields that we consider vital and that play an important role in our workflow. Please at least give us the option to enable this view or not. 

I would like to add my support of the above commentary.

Prior to this change, we were easily able to see the custom fields we wanted our stakeholders to reference/input data in to per custom item. Having it tied to the right hand side made the separation clear and allowed us to view the general information/comments section cleanly in unison with the custom field data. Post change, it has been a point of confusion amongst our organization understanding that you need to select the show more option to expose the fields. Some of our items also have a large number of custom fields (15+) for forecasting purposes, and with this change the fields now dominate the entire item UI unless collapsed. I would love to have at least the option to change how our fields are displayed and revert them to their former state and I can say a majority of our stakeholders feel similarly. 

Please revert to the previous side by side layout. Our workgroup much prefers the two column layout. Hiding information and adding clicks is to us a step backward. 

I can only jump in to the same as the others before: the new view has several disadvantages.

Simple question: did any GUI designer ever test the functionality in a real project? It seems for me that you are making a typical failure and do not let the developer use the software in real application. 

Simple point: one typical thing I always want to see: how much effort is planned in a task and how much time is already booked. I can not do that in your new view. (see screenshot 1) You have to read the 40h planned in the task, then open the more menu, get screenshot 2 and then you can read the booked time. Simple question: why vanished the overal booked time from the time booking button? 

Another simple question: for which sreen did you optimize the new layout? I want information. You waste screensize. Status, Assignee, Date are so big (does not matter on small laptop or big screen) and have so much empty space. Why????????? Also the row below with subitem and so on: it is only filled half. Why???? Put important information to the standard screen or (even better) give us the posibility to decide by ourselves to arrange things and also the amount of things (in both rows).

for those who don't use custom fields.  project folder used to appear at the top and now need to click "More". i find it less convenient

Natali Bitton  I totally agree. I often use the parent folder/project name as a quick link to get to that location. Now it is buried, so after searching for a task, I then have to open it, click on More, find the parent object and click on it to get to the location in the space/project. Much less convenient and quite annoying.

I agree with all of this feedback. I find the revised layout less convenient, poor use of screen space, less information available quickly, and just a bad attempt at changing it.  Like mentioned by others, do the devs ever really use the software in a real-world scenario? If so, they should see that it is not an improvement.

What concerns me the most is the constant revisions to user interface while we have core features and functionality that after years and years, still don't exist.

QUIT REVISING THE INTERFACE MULTIPLE TIMES OVER!  And let's focus on functions over look and feel. Please!!!!