[From Wrike] Your Feedback: Leads and Lags for Dependencies in Gantt Chart
Stephen
Due to popular demand on the Community and a lot of hard work from our development team; Leads and Lags are now available when setting dependencies in Gantt Chart!
You can read more about how to use this feature in our Knowledge Base article found here.
As always, we want to compile your feedback and we would like you to use this thread so we can keep it all in one place.
Comment below outlining what you like, and also where we can improve with future enhancements. Our Product Team will be keeping a close eye on the insights provided here so please provide use-cases and insights wherever possible.
Thanks to everyone who raised the requirement for this feature on Community!
Thanks for releasing this functionality based on my original post. I have tested it in the Gantt chart (just a few basic tests) and see that you can define the lead/lag with the dependency type and the lead/lag duration.
I would see it useful to be able to set a lead/lag while setting dependencies in List view (using the Add Dependency) button. When box pops up to select the task to link to, and you can select the dependency type, it would super useful to enter the lead/lag right then and there rather than needing to go to the Gantt view to do that for each lead/lag. Is there any consideration for adding that functionality in the List and New Table views?
I apologize if some of my posts came off as aggressive or sarcastic, however, it is my passion for finding the perfect tool to manage projects that has me fighting for said tool which I believe that Wrike can be with more functionality.
Just bring forward some feedback that was provided on the community feed. Looks like some people haven't caught on to this feedback feed yet :)
---------------------------------
Okay, so we appreciate the effort here. Great job on improving the Gantt view. We are happy that we are able to test this beta feature. It looks very similar to MS Project. So, that is a good start.😃
Business Days vs Calendar Days vs Working Days
I need to be able to specify business/banking days vs calendar days for a given task with lead and lag time. I would imagine that Attorneys would need this just as much as Realtors. Or, imagine an Academic or a Teacher who needs to create lead and lag with school days. Wrike allows for scheduling when we are working, but we also need to keep track of when others are open for business or which days contracts are executed.
In an ideal world, we would be able to subscribe or identify which days are business, banking, court, or school days with editable calendars. But, for those of us that work round the clock, we don't want to limit our resources during those times because our resources can execute other functions on days when our vendors or clients are closed or our contracts are not requiring attention.
Rescheduling a single task vs all tasks in the dependency
NOTE: If you hold down Shift while dragging, everything is preserved -- But, shouldn't that be the default? Please fix this or make it crystal clear to users that clicking and dragging will screw up everything. Even Wrike sales people aren't aware of this feature. (See David and Keith's comments as to how this is confusing for users)
Currently, Wrike is re-scheduling tasks that conflict with dependencies. Why would you allow this? I need to be able to set lead and lag times that can't be so easily overridden. Wrike should prompt me to make a choice or warn me before it implements a choice if I change a date that causes a conflict. Isn't that programming 101?
If Megan isn't 100% satisfied, then this shouldn't be counted as launched yet
Furthermore, we need to see the lead and lag in every view where the dependencies are edited (see Megan's feedback). It should allow us to pick banking days or business days or court days from a drop down next to the number of days. How about a nice GUI next to the dependency type that lets us pick a plus or a minus sign, enter the number of days, and pick the type of days?
In the Task Window Dependency Dialogue:
[FS/FF/SS/SF] [+/- ] [enter days] [days type drop down for Business/Banking/Court/School/etc.]
Dates shouldn't be required
Perhaps most importantly, adding lead and lag times forces a date to be picked. Please allow for dependencies without a date. Not only is this important for blueprints and templates, but we need to be able to plan task dependencies based on their relationships to each other and have those relationships respected before dates are assigned. Often we know the lead and lag for a dependency, but we do not know the date. When you force a date, you are creating a bunch of inaccurate data in our tool.
For our use case, just imagine you have to keep track of every task in a Real Estate deal. We need to layout all our dependencies without dates. We have some key dates that adjust the dates of everything else. And, we don't want to enter them until they are firm or we have a good place holder. For example, we may have to do an inspection within 17 calendar days after a mutually accepted agreement and we may have to provide a notice within 2 days of that time period expiring. I want to enter the mutual acceptance date and have the others automatically populate the right dates based on adding the dependent date. But, I don't want junk dates in the tool.
This is a good start. And, we feel that there is a lot of room for improvement with how Wrike is handling dependencies.
Here are related posts:
New feature - WBS
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360000281465-New-feature-WBS?page=1#community_comment_360003837074
@Brian, thank you for the detailed post. Lots of great information here!
Regarding business days versus calendar days and alternate schedules (such as accounting for school holidays), there are a couple of options that you may find useful. While not as easy as a drop down to choose schedule type, it is still possible to accomplish what you are trying to do.
First options is the ability to allow for working 7 day weeks (working weekends) on individual tasks. Under the date section, select the radio button for "work on weekends."
When accounting for users that follow unique schedules from your business, you can create multiple schedule types under Work Schedules in account management and assign those schedule to specific users. Below, I've created a School schedule and added a 5 day holiday to coincide with spring break.
Hope you find this information helpful. Cheers!
As a follow-on to my previous post, allowing for work schedule selection at the task level would be a great option/enhancement. This coincides with Brian's request for schedule selection when creating tasks
@Brian - Your suggestions would make my job so much easier. Thank you for posting such thoughtful and important breakdowns of each issue!
@Wrike - Please let me know when these fixes/updates will be available. These could help me direct my team on projects we are doing right now and it would all flow so much better. Thank you for addressing lead and lag times so far!! Much appreciated.
(mirror post/response to same topic on different thread)
Hey ,Trevor--Thanks for posting the screenshots.
I'm hoping we can expand those features that exist in Wrike to allow us to clearly define lead and lag times in the task. Instead of "Work Weekends", Wrike should ask if we want the task to observe "blocked days" for default or selected schedule(s). This feature currently constrains start and end dates. We also need lead and lag times to have their own scheduling constraints as I outlined previously.
For example, I may choose to work the weekend, but a task may be constrained by a court holiday. In CA landlord tenant law, a response must be filed in 5 calendar days from date of notice served, but if that day falls on a weekend or a court holiday, things are bumped to the following open court day. This is an example of something we run into all the time with our landlord clients who are dealing with tenant issues. It is also a great example of where we as Realtors are monitoring a court process even though we are not attorneys and do not chose to work based on a court schedule. So, we will never have a user have the court calendar be their default calendar for work availability. But, we do have to make sure our work is scheduled to avoid conflicts with the court schedule that constrains lead and lag times for a given court process or contract.
Currently, Wrike adapts these special schedules to users. I would prefer to apply these schedules to tasks instead of just to users. Specifically, I would like to apply these date constraints to lead and lag times as previously described and also to constrain dates between start and end dates. Can we leverage these "Work Schedules" Calendars for that purpose?
@Soraya
Thanks for reposting! I'm really hoping we can get comprehensive dependency management so we can make Wrike an essential tool for everyone on our team.
I just successfully added dependencies to my project template and was able to clear the dates that had auto-populated! This is going to be very helpful for our team to have a template with this information already included! The only thing I would suggest is to eliminate the auto-population of dates (with the exception of defined predecessor dependencies). It is a little cumbersome to have to clear all the dates. Nonetheless, I am very happy to have this new capability!
The new lag/lead feature seems to work well, and the effort on that is appreciated. However others may not be aware that the Date Constraint functionality was removed with this update. For our team this was a critical feature, and losing it caused some serious scheduling issues until we became aware of it. We're still trying to figure out the best workaround.
For others who relied on the Date Constraints, please voice your concern:
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360026202613-Bring-back-Date-Constraints
--- Dave
When following the instructions in the Knowledge Base Article, I do not see an option for 'predecessors' when creating a column. The only options I see are: ID, Assigned to, Time Spent, Start, Due, Duration and Status. I feel like I am missing something, can anyone help me out? Thanks.
MATT S: Are you just trying to add a column in your Gantt view? If so, see blow.
Thank you Brianna, I was actually in the Table View (misunderstood the direction). Got it now, thanks!
Brianna C. Can you expound on how you were able to make predecessors and dependencies without dates? I am trying to create a template that says X is due #days after y and let the date be picked when the blueprint is populated as a project but I am not having luck
Before: If you open the task window and drop down the Dates, you can select "Clear Dates."
I just tested this out again and it looks like this capability has been wiped out. The dependencies disappear again if you clear dates. Hmmmmm.. Wrike, can we have this back? Is it now available in the Blueprint? HELP!
I need some help using the lag and lead time feature. I make a dependency between two tasks in Gantt chart view then add the lag time by adding the plus sign after the predecessor task and adding a number for the days to lag. For example, 2FS+30. When I hit enter, the plus sign and number are deleted and nothing happens. Here is a screen shot of the information I am working with. I have tried using the desktop app and the web app however both have the same problem.
Just want to toss my voice in to the pile of "dates shouldn't be required for dependencies" feedback. This is currently the highest thing on my Wrike wish list. We have a small number of blueprints used repeatedly and have opted not to use dependencies because utilizing them properly would take more manual effort than working without them. This is all the result of scheduling variability in our client engagements, and I can't see a clear way to work around this without introducing additional work for our PMO.
Just starting with Wrike, it appears the lag feature does not work with Tasks that are set as Milestones. Our use case has a repeating monthly schedule and milestones calculated back from the end date. At the moment I am using one day regular tasks to work around this.
+1 on removing the requirement for a date to set lag in a Blueprint
Hi Owen,
I have to comment here your own feedback.
I do undestand the need you express, sometimes, a milestones is the "virtual" accomplishment of all previous steps and might lag.
However, we quite often have milestones that are... milestones, and that must be met as deadline.
Therefore, it should not be black or white, and for sure we should be able to keep a "lock" on some milestones.
This could be the features actually - and, quite usefull for all tasks finally
but this would offer case like Owen's to decide when lag should apply to any tasks incl. milestones.
cheers everyone
Hi Julien,
My idea originated from trying to setup a blueprint for this recurring project containing milestones. That is, Create from Blueprint and set the date of the last milestone and then all the prior ones set their dates based on the lag in the dependencies.
Then you could manually move them. Which is required because as other commenters have noted, the workday calculations are not very flexible. (We would need to set the lag to non-work days, but then "round down" to the closest work day if the initial calculation falls on a weekend.)