Assigning CORRECT task dependency in List View.
I am a project manager for a company that launches several products a year in multiple markets. I often use the same task name for different markets under separate projects. When setting up dependencies on sub-tasks, I am having a hard time distinguishing which one is the correct one to select.
Here is a scenario on the problem I am facing:
- Production is dependent on the Purchase Order
- Both sub-tasks have separate parent tasks
- In list view for Task: Purchase Order, I click on "Add dependency" and under "NEXT TASKS" I start typing Production. Multiple tasks titled as Production appear.
How do I distinguish which task resides in the project I am currently working on? The project name will not appear for sub-tasks. Parent tasks are important for my team as these are identified as our milestones. There have been numerous times where I have selected what I thought was the correct task which then setup a dependency with a task in a separate project. It gets frustrating when I currently have 25+ projects with the same task names and I have to select multiple tasks until I find the correct one. Is there a better way to handle this?
I see that you are in the Gantt Chart. Have you tried to first tie the two tasks/Subtasks together by clicking and dragging a dependency to the one that you want? This would ensure that you select the correct one. To do this hover over the task in the Chart and two bullseye looking things, one at the front of the task and one at the back, will appear. Click, hold, and drag to the front or back of the next task. This would essentially add the dependency that you would need, then if you needed to adjust the dependency it would already be attached you would just need to change it to fit what you are doing.
Hopetully that helps.
-Ryan
Ryan,
No, this is in the list view. I would prefer to work out of the list view, not the Gantt Chart. When you are under the list view and open up the dependencies it will show a mini version of a Gantt chart.
For more clarification, I opened up the task from list view and this image is of the far right side of the task.
Gotcha, I love working out of the list view for viewing and working with tasks, setting up tasks, however, I think we need to work in other views and use the strengths of those views to our advantage. I have also had frustration when setting up dependencies within the list view for similar reasons you have listed. Playing around with Wrike I found that what I wrote above is the easiest way to complete the initial setup of dependencies, then in List view, I can then edit them to fit my needs.
If you are finding that you are using the same tasks and folder structure over and over again and having to set the dependencies over and over again, have you looked at using templates. You can set a template up with the dependencies that you want and then just duplicate the template when creating a new project.
Something to think about.
-Ryan
Krista, to piggyback on Ryan's point about templates, you can also add a task name prefix when you duplicate a project or folder.
In theory, you could just duplicate all of your projects right now, add the task prefixes and delete the original projects.
This is also a problem that my team are having - it's another fiddly little thing that takes more time to set up than it should because of the trial and error involved. If you accidentally select the wrong one, then the date of that task gets auto-rescheduled and you have to go and change it back. It's a pain.
It sounds that the structure we use for projects is pretty similar to what OP described: parent milestones and subtasks nested underneath them. One thing I find interesting is that if you set dependencies between the parent milestones, it does displays the overall parent folder so that you can differentiate and select the correct one (see image below, some sensitive info blurred):
It would save a lot of faff if this functionality could be extended to tasks and subtasks also.
Hi @Hannah, happy to see you on the Community 🙂
This is a great finding, thanks for sharing about the milestones, I'm sure it will be helpful to many Community users!
I can also see that you've created a Product Feedback post with this idea - thank you!
@Everyone, please upvote is you agree: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360034541153-Breadcrumbs-needed-on-task-dependencies
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
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