[From Wrike] Custom Field Update 🔥

This a great step forward into usability of Custom Fields for us! The new design - although needing more vertical screen space - boosts readability and speeds up the information recognition in my point of view. I really like it.

I am just wondering: The old layout allowed a kind of indirect/manual ordering of the attributes as it uses the same order as the grid view. Is it planned to allow the same or alternatives to influence/control the display order in the future? The reason behind is: Not all attributes which logically belong close together will have names expressing this. Or names which are alphabetically close should not be be displayed in same order.

e.g. Planned Start Date, Planned End Date

These two would would be sorted vise versa.

Hello and thanks you for this update.

The look is clearer now : realy nice.

I've just got a small issue : maybe i missed something, but with the automatic alphabetic order, we lost our owns "orders", right ?

Previously, we were able to rearrange these orders by dragging the columns in the "Table view", and, rearrange them, the way we needed (eg "by Importance").

It could be perfect if you could re-add this feature.

Hi. Great improvement. A nice addition we've been waiting is the REQUIRED fields.

What did you think when designing those checkbox layouts? This is the most stupid design I have ever seen. It's so easy now to get confused about the actual state of the custom field regarding the icon of checkboxes and radio boxes.

Overall, it's a nice layout. I do have a couple of concerns though.

The biggest concern I have is not being able to order the fields the way that we specify. Some fields are in a particular order for a purpose. A numbering system to the field names would solve it as a workaround, but being able to have control over the order would be great. 

Secondly, the checkbox field layout lends to some confusion about which checkbox is for what and if it's checked or not. 

I love the new layout! Looks great and so much easier to navigate, especially with the icons. I find the alphabetical list to be easier to navigate than searching for fields that are always in a different order for every project.

Two questions:

1. When can we get this for Projects, too?

2. Will we ever be able to delete custom fields?

Thanks!

I think this update is along the right track, however, I agree with a previous comment, the icon in front of the custom field is not necessary and takes up valuable real estate and checkbox fields are confusing.  For our team, it would be more valuable at the project level for custom fields to be in alphabetical order or allowing drag and drop or some form of custom field layout.  

If we only had 10 custom fields it would be helpful. As it stands we have 55 with descriptive field titles that WERE in an order that was logical to the workflow for our team. Once again a change we weren't expecting and don't want. As we joined Wrike 2+ years ago we were given the alphanumeric answer to order fields but also the ghost tag solution since there is limited view space for field titles we chose the ghost tag to logically order fields for our team. 

Since our projects can run 6 months or longer I am in a constant state of training to keep users familiarized with how to work in Wrike. Add the changes you keep throwing out there and my frustration is at an all time high with you guys. Why is there no opt out or in like with the lab environment?

The feed back from the first user on our team to see it "It is horrible."

The screen shot is from our blueprint, you now have to hover over virtually every field to see the description. 

I agree with many of the above comments - while I like the new look and now it's MUCH easier to see which fields are empty, I wish we had some ability to rearrange the order of the fields. This never really worked well for us previously (it seemed every time we looked the fields were in a different order), but it would be a nice to have. Similar to Ken, we have a large number of custom fields, and often we fill them in/update them throughout the project timeline. It would be great if we could add in a separator so it was clear which section needed to be validated upon kick off, then which needed to be added in during the project, then which needed to be added prior to completion (but after tasks are complete). 

I'm also anxiously awaiting this to be applied to projects where we use custom fields more often!

This just made simple task updates go from 2 minutes to 10 minutes.  I really love how these updates just happen without warning and make my project tracking harder.  The few times I've actually asked support for help, nothing has been done.  Keep up the crap work, I'm suggesting to management we need a more friendly tool.  Now I'm sitting on a conference call with my team trying to decide how to rework all of our columns and process.  This literally happens once a year.  So happy my company pays for this turd.

I agree with opinions posted previously. First comments along my colleagues were "they changed everything and know we have to learn where is each field again".

The alphabetic order is a nonsense, we had it ordered from more important/useful information to less important things. Now the referencie number, which should be the first field, is the last one. I cannot change names tu put numbers on them as I export some reports to excel and apply a ton of formulas on them, if I change names all the formulas will have to be redesigned.

Also I find the icons confusing as it seems that some checboxes are marked when they are not.

And finally, we think adding the option that some fields must be filled to allow the user to mark the task as finished would be a much more interesting update, this one was not useful at all.

I have the feeling that this should've been tested in wrike labs before launching it to everyone.

As I said before, I agree with the change. The previous version was awful and unuseful to us (the different order of the fields for each project). I understand some companies need an order different than the alphabetical one. So, if you enable that option, it will be ideal to keep the new look n feel and the option of the alphabetical order as well. I also agree with the issue of the checkbox icon. And please enable the REQUIRED field option.

Agree with the comments about the alpha ordering. We have (now had) custom fields in specific order for a reason. They are a lot less "custom" now that they can only be in alpha order -- and a less useful. Please return the ability to arrange custom fields in a custom order.

Hi everyone! 

First, a huge thanks to you for all the valuable feedback you've shared here!

Our Product team released this update to make the custom field update process easier and faster, and they are now listening to customer feedback very closely. The reason behind the alphanumerical order of updated custom fields is that now when you are using the same fields in the tasks that are tagged in different folders and projects, their location is a lot more predictable than it was before. 

Custom field sorting, grouping, visibility, deletion, and setting required fields make part of a bigger project related to fields and the Product team are researching this to further plan their work, so all your feedback here comes at a very good time. 

I've also passed on the feedback that multiple members shared here on the checkbox field's layout - the team is investigating this concern at the moment too.

The team has plans to extend the new custom field layout to projects and folders too - this is also a part of the bigger update project.

Thank you again for your insights and use-cases here! I'll continue passing on your feedback to the team and update you once there's more 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

Lisa - So plans are to continue to with an update that at least from the comments here 50% or so don't like or want. "The team has plans to extend the new custom field layout to projects and folders too - this is also a part of the bigger update project."

The second part of your comment is what has me most concerned "this is also a part of the bigger update project" This has me very worried, and as a customer I don't think we should be worried about how a company who's software we pay for could force a change or break our work processes without warning.

Our management team met with our Wrike Customer Success Manager yesterday to ask why this major update to the UI structure wasn't put into Labs so we could see it, try it and then express any opinions before it went live. Or why we have no view into what the plans for updates are. He explained that if we schedule a meeting he can share a slide deck to show us what is on the road map for development. So, it's on the customer to find out.....not something that Wrike is proactive in it's consideration of the customers. You have our e-mail, our phone numbers, feel free to reach out first and schedule that meeting with us.

How are you sampling customers opinions, by size, by type of team or type of company? Is there a customer advisory board? If so we would like be able to participate in whatever form. 

I am not all negative on the updates, the changes to table view with freezing columns, drag and fill cells and now forcing the referential integrity of the data type is very much appreciated and applauded. 

Hi, 

One piece of feedback I just got this morning is related to dates in the new layout. Would it be possible to add the today and clear buttons back into date custom fields? I also would love to get the functionality back to organize the fields in the order you want. Once this gets to the project level our order will make no sense if it is alphabetical. 

Other than that, the new look is nice, clean, and easy to read. 

Thanks!

The missing today and clear buttons in custom dates fields is very frustrating.  Similarly, now when you add groups to a task, the custom fields from the new group don't get carried in and updated automatically - you now have to refresh the task for them to appear.  This really should have been rolled out in labs first.

Thank you for your feedback here, everyone! I'm passing it on to the Product team. The team are now thinking of how to optimize our roll-out processes, so thanks a lot for pointing that out! 

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

Hi, I just wanted to point the urgency of the ability of organice the order of the custom fields again.

During this COVID crisis, metadata and statistics have become more important than ever, and we are strugling with a very complicated way of introducing data in our tasks as the alphabetical order has no sense for our workflow.

Agree with the urgency and importance of the order of custom fields.

Alphanumerical order makes absolutely no sense because it does not cluster the custom fields that are related or relevant, nor does it help in displaying the most important batch for individual use cases (for project managers, portfolio managers, regional specialists, engineers, back offiice staff, branch mangers, etc.).

We have custom fields that are used globally by various use cases, local custom fields by country, custom fields that are only relevant to certain areas or regions, etc. So naming or numbering them in a consistent way across the whole account is not possible.

We've created a Product Feedback post here, if anybody else in this thread would like to add or comment something: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360043433754-Order-of-custom-fields-in-the-folder-project-task-view#

Hi Jose Manuel Basso and Christina Fischer, thanks a lot for sharing your feedback! I've checked with the team - they are planning to review user feedback on Custom Fields in Q3 to plan out future improvements, so your insight comes at a great time! 🙌

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

Going to go ahead and throw my opinion in on this as well. At a minimum, we need the ability to drag and drop custom fields into the order that works for our organizations. 

I love how the new layout looks, I just wish that we as the customer had more control over how our individual software works.

Thank you for your feedback, John Bibbs! 🙂 As I mentioned earlier, the team are planning to review all custom fields-related feedback this quarter - I'll let you know once I have news from them! 

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 agree with the urgency of the allowing admin to arrange the order of the custom fields. My users are struggling to complete entry of the custom fields as I cannot set the progression by which they see them. It feels like a hug jumbled mess to them and we are getting a significant number of complaints and people are not completing them. This is a nightmare! 

If this cannot be resolved, I will be facing issue from my leadership on the continued use of the system going into the next contract year. Have you thought of these kinds of impacts?

Hi,

This is just to note that we don't have any update on this or news about status since August

Hi Jose Manuel Basso, thank you for flagging this! I'll check with my colleagues and we'll get back to you shortly! 

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