[Status: Not Planned] Cascade Custom Field "Value" from Folders/Projects to Sub Projects/Folders/Tasks

We appreciate your feedback, folks, thank you for sharing it with us! 

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 see the difficulties with a feature like this because sometimes we want the information to flow from the project down to tasks. Sometimes it should flow in the other direction and aggregate the data in the project. And sometimes it's selective, where some information on the project goes to some tasks but not all. 

I'd love for the Wrike team to have some options, but this also looks like a really difficult thing to achieve because of the huge number of different use cases. 

I do like the new table view, and I use that to update customer fields a lot. It would be nice if it could be automated. Maybe that's the route to go, make an automation that can cascade custom fields based on user input. That way the user can choose how they want the custom fields to flow (down or up). 

Thank you for the detailed feedback Mike Fank, we'll be keeping you posted as always in the coming months 🙂

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

Our usecase is this:
- Form request capturing information for a process to be run 

- The request creating a small project from a blueprint

- Different tasks as part of that project are being serviced by different people; they need to be able to easily access the information from the original form

So for example, an employee onboarding request form captures

- employee name, 

- line manager

- role

- region

etc.

The resulting project has several tasks including vetting, software setup, procurement, payroll setup etc, assigned to various people.    

There appears to be no easy way to get that original form information to them.

Hi Dominic Barnsley, welcome to the Community! Thank you for your detailed feedback, I've shared it with our Product Team 👍

We'll keep you updated in case any changes are implemented. Please, feel free to visit our New to Community forum to get the most out of your experience with our Community 🙂

With the enhancements made to automations recently, is there a workaround I haven't uncovered yet within those features that could essentially do this for the time being? 

Hi Lisa, this feature request is a P1 for us. Could we kindly get an update? Thank you!

Hey folks!

I've just checked with the responsible team - they are aware of the need here as well as the popularity of this idea. Although there are no immediate plans to work on it, our team will try to prioritise it for this year. 

Thank you for your feedback! 

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

https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360018897394/comments/20695505858327 Exactly my scenario. 

I have a workaround where I have an automation rule for each project that sets the values of my custom fields. I have to have a single rule for each project and I hard code the values to the value that's relevant to the project. Of course, this is cumbersome as it creates many automation rules and becomes a lot to manage.

This could be solved if there's an update to the Automation functionality that would allow us to reference project fields when creating a rule on tasks. If we could create an automation rule that does something similar to the following:

"When a new task is created -> Change custom field -> set value = value of a selected field on the project"

My particular use cases could also be solved if I were able to use project fields to filter reports and dashboard widgets built at the task level.

Just some ideas! 

Hi Amanda Juneau, thank you for sharing your use case with us! I've passed your feedback on to our Product Team 👍

Dumbstruck that critical custom form data does not propogate beyond the initial Task it creates

I have been deep into trialling Wrike over the past 10 days experimenting with various implementations for my company, digging into various template spaces, and I was just about to pull the trigger on paying to get Wrike. Wrike's user interface is great, it's features and functionality appear excellent.... until you actually build specific use cases, use cases which are not uncommon in my 20 years of marketing experience.

Anyway, after many hours today experimenting with various structures and approaches, and then building our full first stage use case into Wrike, I've come across a potential deal breaker.

No matter what I try, I cannot get the critical data from a custom form to populate all the parent tasks and subitems in a project created from the custom form! However, if I have the custom form create just a Task or a CIT, it does propogate the data, but not down into any subitems. 

I've spent hours searching online for a solution, but it appears Wrike does not propogate information captured from the custom form or the project parent, down through a project's tasks and subitems, whether we use CITs or just normal Tasks and subitems.

If I am missing something, please let me know!

It makes no sense at all to have an end to end project created from a custom form, but then all the data from that form and anything added at an early stage in the project, is not propogated down into subsequent parent tasks and subitems.

Yes, you can click on the '! Info' link just to the right of a Project Name and it will open a panel with all the information captured from the custom form, but as soon as I click into any subordinate Parent Task or subitem, none of them contain the critical information from the custom form. And, you can't have both the Task, CIT or subitem panels open at the same time in the same browser window. You'd have to flick between two browser windows to review crucial information about the job, or cut and past it into the current Parent Task, CIT, or subitem, or you'd have to have two browser tabs open side by side - madness!

I've tried all manner of automations as well, nothing propogates the data.

I manage an internal Design Hub for the business and I am conducting a broader digital transformation of the company. We design and manufacture clothing and specialised equipment for military, law enforcement and emergency services, and we also have an internal business which makes custom merchandise for military, law enforcement, emergency services units, associations and veteran's groups. My team also provides all the design resources for marketing and sales, and my team manages our B2C website.

Stage 1 use case example:

1. An external client completes a custom form for a new merchandise job. We capture all their information through a combination of custom and standard fields.
2. Upon submission of the form, automatically create a new project from a blueprint. (*I've tried creating a new Task with subitems, new Projects with Tasks and subitems, new CITs, new CIT projects with CIT tasks and subitems - but no data propogates from the custom form beyond the initial Task, or propogates from any higher Task or CIT to subordinates. The only thing that I've managed to propogate is what I setup to be prefixed to the Task name or Project name)
3. I first review all the Incoming Requests (tried setting it up as both Task & CIT) created by the custom form. I then add a job number into a custom field, prioritise the work, and then look at the capacity of my team and assign the Job (project) to a single designer who oversees that job through to completion - design, ordering, manufacturing, shipping. (As a side note, I also have to manually drag (copy) the assignment of all the tasks in the project to the one designer down across all of the parent tasks and subitems in the Table view) - insane.
4. The designer then completes each task according to the designated workflow through the various phases - design, ordering, production, receipt of custom merchandise, QCs the merchandise, then it's shipped out to the client. Typically an 8-10 week cycle including client approvals of artwork and getting a signed order by client, submitting order to manufacturer etc.

But, if we have to enter even the most basic information from the original form into every subordinate parent task and subitem, it's complete madness! I am genuinely shocked this is not available in Wrike, especially as I see people have been requesting it since 2017! I've implemented Workfront in the past and never had this issue.

Also, if I have a resource off sick, or I need to reassign a task or subitems to another designer due to capacity issues or deadlines, none of the critical information about the job is contained within those tasks or subitems I have reassigned.

Examples below (all dummy data):

Successful propogation of data from custom form into a new project from a blueprint -

However, subordinate Parent Tasks and Subitems - data hasn't propogated except prefixed name of company

Custom Merchandise Job Project Blueprint using CITs (collapsed view) - (no data propogated, and yes I tried the same thing with a normal Project type before I discovered CITs)

Custom Merchandise Job Project Blueprint using CITs (expanded view - part A) - (data hasn't propogated)

Custom Merchandise Job Project Blueprint using CITs (expanded view - part B) - (data hasn't propogated)

And on another related note, cover images do not show on the cards on Kanban board for the Parent tasks and subitems I mentioned above because the artwork submitted by the client on the custom form IS NOT PROPOGATED. So the benefit of having a visual cue on cards on a Kanban board is lost for any Parent Task or Task within a project because the information hasn't propogated. I use the Kanban board for a quick standup with my team in the morning to go over backlog, tasks we need to complete today, this week etc, and if anyone needs any help to complete their tasks - if they do, I can reassign. The visual cue of artwork on the card for the job helps to quickly recognise the job, particularly when you might have 20+ jobs in production at any one time on the board. And NO, we are not going to waste our time manually attaching artwork and information from the form data into Parent Tasks and subitems - defeats the whole purpose of getting Project / Work Management applications like Wrike!

Example below - no Cover Image on Task within Project created from custom form because there's no propogation of any data let alone the customer supplied artwork in the custom form. The other examples below were my first attempt at setting up a standalone Task of me reviewing all request Tasks and including some simple subitems. These were created from a custom form. I thought I could then trigger the creation of a Project Blueprint for the remaining phases and tasks of a job when I completed all subitems or approved it, but once again I ran into the same problem of no data propogating so I then tried doing it all as one complete project, same disappointing result -

Current iteration of the folder structure in the Space:

Also, I'm very surprised that there's so few end-to-end marketing use cases available inside Wrike or provided in blog posts or videos. The various marketing - campaign management, creative production, and content operations Space templates in Wrike are superficial at best. They don't reflect a real world end-to-end marketing department, team or processes. Other templates like Enterprise Service Management and Agile Scrum are similar. Wrike should be building out end-to-end marketing use cases, fully populated with dummy data, to showcase best practices of using Wrike in these contexts.

Once again, if I am missing something in Wrike, or I am using it incorrectly, I take all this back!

Martin Walsh Thanks for your clear critique of this critically missing functionality.

Martin Walsh, I've similar found Wrike templates to be largely pointless since they are very surface level.

The inability for tasks or sub-tasks to inherit custom field information from request forms is insanely frustrating and there are some threads here and there from people who are using Wrike Integrate to write recipes to varying degrees of success. What our company has done is to use the Wrike API and create our own integrations to achieve this goal. 

Hi folks! We appreciate you sharing your feedback and insights in such detail. We will let you know if we have an update to share. 

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

of course the team prioritises according to more data then just the upvotes on this community.

However on this topic I worry that the data might get skewed. Since people's only workable option is to manually adjust the fields of the tasks.

So if they decide not to do this. But suffer the consequences of the missing data. How is this missing data visible?

For me this is the first problem, where I'm struggling with and getting pushback from. My users just can't understand why this is not an option.

Guys. 6 years of comments that this is needed. You shall really take it as a prio 😆

it is beyond absurd that this is still not being actioned upon that I finally gave up and asked one of my devs to accomplish this task through API in two days. And half of it was me lagging on testing. 

Kristen Diegert this! 👆 Of all the user feedback we've been able to address, this has been in the top feature requests since I started using Wrike in 2015.  This would be game-changer and pain-point-solver for user experience and executive reporting.  Please help escalate this product request.  Thank you! 😄

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Rohan V that is INSANE. I'm a new customer of Wrike who has been doing digital transformation for 20 years including implementing job/project management tools over a dozen times across small and larger teams. I've seen dozens of these types of tools over the years but data management has almost always been a priority, but not with Wrike? As a consequence of trying to find out why this functionality is not in Wrike, I ended up reading hundreds of discussions and requests from your customers who have been requesting this BASIC functionality in Wrike since at least 2018!!!!!! I've looked at all of your product update videos and blogs for the past few years and this crucial but basic cascading data requirement should have been prioritised over many of your other updates. I simply cannot believe that Wrike does not think that this BASIC cascading and unification of data functionality is not a priority. Utter madness.

I wanted to point out to this channel that Wrike has cascading functionality when it comes to permissions. Permissions are inherited by default, but permissions can be made explicit at any level. I'm assuming the logic is easy because permissions are binary. If a task is in two folders, and a user has permission to access everything in one folder but not the other, they still have access to the task. (Haven't tested this.) 

I don't see why cascading data wouldn't be possible if cascading permissions already is. 

Perhaps in a non-binary scenario where a task is in two folders, and the field being cascaded is the name of the owner, then the task would inherit both owners. It would be more challenging when a field only allows one string of data. In that case, I think it would inherit the data from the first folder the task was put in, and this would be considered the primary parent. A user should then be able to change which parent is primary at any time.

Anyway, I don't think a logic is impossible in a structure where locations are more like tags than folders.

I'm not sure if it's somewhere in this thread or another one, but other people have demonstrated that this much requested functionality 100% works by either  using Wrike Integrate recipes (a not inexpensive paid add on when considering the fact that it is a per license fee) or what my team have done by using API to perform the task.

This lack of cascading functionality really stings. Sadly, there are many other glaring deficiencies that only become apparent when you try to implement your particular use-case. I'm currently following SEVENTEEN community posts like this one, hoping they will get looked at but I'll admit I'm not very optimistic. Development appears to be extremely slow and mostly focused on window dressing. Core issues like this one, and another of my favorites, "Automations can't trigger another automation" would have driven me far from this platform if my team weren't already invested heavily in our workflow structure. Every time I think I have found a way to get around a particular limitation, I find a DIFFERENT limitation holds me back. Extremely frustrating.

We appreciate your continued feedback here, everyone. Please rest assured we keep sending it on to the responsible team. 

Thank you! 

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

Thanks Lisa, because not having this is probably my number 1 productivity killer.

Understandable, Steve Mruskovic. Thanks for the continuous feedback. Rest assured we have passed your feedback on to the team and will keep this thread updated if there are any changes. 😊

Basudha Sakshyarika Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Since I have a similar post/request, I need to put my support here.
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/16421393269143-Custom-Fields-set-value-from-parent

Thank you for adding the post here, Russell Sprague! 👍🏽

Basudha Sakshyarika Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

I can only agree with all the previous posts on how much we miss this functionality. Currently we are at 100+ users and if the possible expansion is approved we will go to 500+ within 2025. So far I have been an advocate for Wrike internally but reading about this, apparently deliberate, delay of a fix for this issue for the past 7 years makes me wonder if maybe we should look for some other solution.