Dashboard | Overdue To Start Widget Solution

Challenge

The dashboard filters available in Wrike currently do not allow for a user to create a widget that quickly isolate tasks that have passed their Start Date while in a preparatory status, in our use case the status would be Not Ready to Start or Ready to be Assigned.

You are able to set a similar filter easily by Due Date e.g. set Due Date filter to Next 7 Days and you can filter tasks coming up that are due. There is no Past 7 Days for the Start Date field, which would solve this issue in our use case.

So in order to have a widget in our dashboard that achieved this, we would have to update a Custom Date Range value for the Start Date filter, which is a bit of a hassle.

I have looked through the community posts for a more automated solution and did not find one, so I took some time to figure out a solution utilizing some folders set up in my personal space, and two automations. The following is a result that I find satisfactory.

Solution

Setup

1. If you do not have a folder in your personal space set up to aggregate your Projects, Folders and Tasks I would do that first. Mine is called dashboard-driver. I add this tag to all items I am responsible for across our spaces so that I can quickly generate reports or new dashboards by adding this folder as the source. 
2. Create a subfolder within dashboard-driver called dd_odts (dashboard-driver_overdue-to-start) or something similar.

Automations

Automation 1

This first automation will be used to add overdue-to-start tasks to a designated folder to isolate them for the widget

1. Navigate to Automations in Settings and select Add rule
2. This new automation source should be dashboard-driver or your aggregating equivalent in your personal space
3. For your Trigger, set your field to Start Date, condition to Has Passed, and set your appropriate time zone
4. Set your Conditions to Status, and select your preparatory statuses e.g. Not Ready to Start  or Ready to Be Assigned
5. Set your Action to Change Location and select dd_odts as the location to add the task to
6. Save!

Automation 2

This automation will remove the tasks tagged dd_odts once their overdue to start status has been resolved, so that you don't have to manually untag them once they have been updated. This is not mandatory, but makes things easier.

1. Select Add rule
2. This new automation source should be dd_odts as we're only looking for tasks that are currently overdue to start.
3. For your Trigger, set your field to Status, condition to Changed, and select the status the task would need to change to that triggers it to no longer being Overdue to Start, in our example it would be Active.
4. There are no additional conditions required in our use case
5. Set your Action to Change Location and select dd_odts as the location to remove the task from
6. Save!

Dashboard Widget

Now that the automations are set up, we can add a simple, custom widget to our dashboard of choice. Simply navigate to your dashboard, add new widget, and add dd_odts as the source for the widget. As your first automation fires, it will automatically add your overdue to start tasks to the dd_odts folder, displaying them in the widget. When you open the widget and update your tasks, it will automatically remove them.

Additional Thoughts

You can play with other conditions or triggers to remove the tasks from dd_odts. E.g. You may not have the information required to set a task to Active when it is overdue to start. Instead, the task/project is going to have to push. You can add an automation that will remove the dd_odts tag if the start date changes, removing it from that folder and the widget.

Would love to hear if this is useful to anyone else in the Wrike use cases. Also happy to discuss challenges or alterations that work for you!