Is there a way to set up an automation that notifies me if someone marks a main level task as complete but still has open subtasks?
I was setting up some automations for projects this morning and sometimes I find what I call "orphaned tasks"—subtasks that are still active inside of a main task. Human error... people forget to doublecheck all subtasks sometimes before they close out a task! Is there a way to catch these with an automation without using a custom item as the main task type? I couldn't figure out a way to set it up. This would help us keep a cleaner account overall!
Hi Daisy,
I think is not possibile at the moment.
I follow because it'll very useful also for my company
Thanks, Pietro! Glad to hear my idea would help others as well!
I'll move this thread to the product feedback forum 👍
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
Pietro Poli please upvote also!
I think the best approach is to avoid manually changing the status of the main project. Instead, let automation handle it for you: 'When all subtasks are completed, change the main project to complete.'
Thanks, Lisa!!
We need a solution from Wrike for this request. I am stumbling across this all the time in our projects where parent tasks are closed out while buried child tasks are still open. We need a "Sub-Task Blocking Condition" on the parent task workflow to prevent this from happening. Anyone who has taken any type of Project Management training knows that you never close out a parent before all child tasks are set to a finished/cancelled/deferred state. We constantly see work being missed because Wrike doesn't prevent the closure of the parent. The pop up that asks the closure question only stays up a few seconds and users often move on without reading it.
There is a similar request from Sept 2022:
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/8748481888791-Prevent-a-task-from-being-updated-as-completed-if-all-subtasks-have-not-been-completed
And another from Aug 2018:
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360014732854-Automation-of-changing-the-status-of-a-master-task-when-either-A-subtask-is-started-change-the-master-task-to-In-Process-and-or-All-subtasks-are-complete-change-the-master-task-to-Complete-
And as I suggested as an enhancement to Automation through the following back in July of this year: "we could use some enhancements to the AE on this one. The "When status changes to" trigger needs an associated If Condition added to search "If any subtask is Active". At that point we could then notify @assignees of the parent task of the issue.
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/16036249195287--Automation-Prevent-Parent-Task-from-changing-status-until-a-trigger-happens
Hey Michael Kelley, I can totally understand how this could be an issue for you.
Thanks for taking the time to share this detailed feedback with us here, it's really useful and we've passed it on to the team. We'll keep you posted here on any updates we have to share in relation to this 👍
Elaine Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Elaine Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover