[From Wrike] New Experience 'Ask Me Anything' with our Product team 🙋

Hi Ivan!  Thanks for adding this option for feedback.  

While it is different, the new UI does have some advantages to find those most common areas of Wrike that are used.  However, as an admin of the site, I think there may be an opportunity to expand the UI to having different views, say for a Project Manager, a Collaborator, and then the broader user, such as a site admin.  Thoughts?

Will the layout be customizable other than just hiding items? For instance, the Recent section is helpful, but can we decide how many items to show? 4 is not enough for my activity.

As you have seen with much of the feedback, navigating the new layout is less efficient and requires more jumping and clicking. Are there plans to add more navigational elements to more easily jump between spaces and objects without having to go back to the Home page?

1. Echoing Jason Pontius, the ability to easily and efficiently navigate across spaces/projects/folders; show the hierarchy on the left pane based on what's been shared with you...oh..that's the old way of navigating

2. Star/Pin: if something is starred/pinned, its because we want to quickly get to it. Going to Home page each time for a pinned item isn't quick

3. Global setting for default Project Views: unless I've missed it, do i need to add back views for every project because the default is just List?

Thanks for the opportunity to ask anything.

Testing in labs and have a few immediate notes:

• Nicer looking but it does require more clicks to go anywhere. I find it super irritating that if I want to go to another space or dashboards, I always have to go "home" instead of from the navigation pane.
• I think the navigation pane on the left should be like original wrike, with the option to hide when working on gantt chart as well as full navigation from the pane.

I like that the new UI is trying to address the experience of a user working off of one space, which becomes more common. Unfortunately, as many people mentioned, it makes the experience of anyone joggling multiple spaces pretty cumbersome.

For example, I can't just find all spaces I own or manage easily unless I pinned all of them. "Discover spaces" takes me to everything that's public. "Created by me" or "Shared with me" doesn't include spaces. It is easy to lose track of smaller spaces and harder to navigate between them unless you search every time.

Hi Ivan,

thanks for providing this opportunity to ask questions. I'll tried out the New Experience and would have given similar feedback as many other gave outside of the thread (https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360047257293--From-Wrike-The-New-Wrike-Experience-is-now-in-Labs-). I am sure you follow that as well.

I feel and support one re-occurring message: Wish for efficiency with less clicks and the need to go back to Homepage than often. And this raises questions which are not functionality based: Are you guys using Wrike on your own in your daily business to work on it? Are you power users within Wrike to "see, smell and taste" it as your users do? And this means: Are you dependent on it to be successful?

Why am I asking this? Well, I worked in product management by myself and know how hard it sometimes is to understand and agree with certain wishes of users. It easily can feel like "they did not understand" the idea behind a super nice function. But sometimes one did on the other hand also easily oversee tiny little annoying behaviors within. Such could disturb an good/excellent/awesome new application experience or reverts it to annoyance even. More likely the power users' or more regular users' one.

Thanks for reading.

In general, I really love the UX, specifically the use of white space.  It takes a little while to get used to.  I would like to rearrange the menu on the right side or hide things that I don't use like "My to do". 

After a week of using new experience I agree with above comments - it's more time consuming due to more clicks.

From my perspective I also noticed lack of two important features:

• Search project/folder (in left pane) - I used it often to find quickly go to proper folder/project
• Spacing between folders/projects - in new experience spacing is larger, so I see less projects / folders on one screen :( again it require to scroll down the list and it's irritating.

I appreciate the team's efforts to make Wrike more user-friendly. While I'm in it enough to understand how to get around and find projects, we do have some other people who aren't in it daily and they struggle to remember how to navigate. We get a lot of "I don't know where to find anything" feedback. I think for them, the direction you are heading (more white space even it that means more clicks) will be welcome. For me though, it does create a lot of clicking to get where I need to be. I like the earlier suggestion of different views for different types of roles. 

On the home page, you have an inbox link at the top. Taking up the left side of the home page feels really wasteful and redundant. At least let us minimize it.

I don't understand why all the key links are to the right. The left-hand bar made a lot more sense although the cleaner version is nice. I agree the search needs to be top-left on the screen. It's the first place we go to find the right project. 

I like the pinned, recent, and spaces sections. As others stated, it would be nice to have them smaller or the ability to make them lists. Something to let you see more of each one. 

Did you know you can rearrange items on the Home page? Although you can't change where a column goes, for instance, move the Inbox to the far right, you can move items around in the middle column.  Prefer Pinned at the top? (I do) Move it up. I have Spaces next, with Recent at the bottom. You can even rearrange the Pinned items, just drag them around. 

I like the Inbox on the Home page, so when I start my day, I can see it right away, and then mark as read/archive as needed. If i need to deal with an Inbox item, one click on it, and I'm there, at my Inbox.

I Love how i don't have to see/or search through, all the spaces/folders/tasks from everything i have going on, a bit overwhelming when starting my day. I like how the Home page let's me start my day on my terms. I like that when i'm in a Space, all i see is that space, not all the other Spaces, etc. Less clutter. (See note* below)

Love that i can pin Dashboards! 

*One item that needs attention is that i don't know all the names of all the folders/spaces that i have. I like to tag tasks with multiple folders, based on what the task is, but unless i can recall the name of the folder in a different space, i have to go find it, and then come back to tag the task.  Perhaps, if the option was available to show/hide everything on the left side, as the current view shows, i would be able to tag without all the extra steps. I would keep this side view mostly closed, but in time of need, i would Show it. 

Thank you for encouraging input!

🐱‍👤

Please tell me this new UI includes a Dark Mode option.

☝️☝️ This please 👆👆 Dark mode has SAVED my eyes with other apps.

Hello, Wrike Community! I’d like to thank you for reaching out to me here to ask your questions and provide your feedback, it’s immensely helpful for us as always. Please see my responses below. 

Jeff R, Is there something specific you would like to see in the UI that will help you as a site admin? If you can provide more detail I’ll be happy to advise further. 

Jason Pontius, Currently it is possible to re-order sections (spaces, recent, pinned) as well as re-order items within the section. How many recent items would be ideal for you?

In relation to your second question, we’re actively working on a solution that should help to switch between spaces and other tools faster.

Edwin Chong, thanks for your questions. As above, we’re actively working on a solution that will help users jump between workspaces within Wrike more easily.

The pinned feature is also part of the solution above - stay tuned for more information as we test this.

As for Configurable Views, currently, only the default view will be enabled (that may differ from the List View depending on what you chose when you set up the project), we are actively working on a solution to easily enable views for multiple projects.

Nicole F, 

Thank you for your initial feedback - not to sound like a broken record 🙂 but we are actively working on a solution that will help users quickly navigate from one area to another without always having to go back to the My Home page. 

Julia Berzoy, 

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are working on improving this in different ways:

1) Better organizing Spaces in My Home. 

2) Providing an ability to browse Spaces and jump from one space to another without going through My Home. 

Andreas Wastl,

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts here. All of our teams internally use Wrike to manage their work. I believe that this is the best way to build a better product. This allows us to experience all of our new features first hand, the big ones, and the small ones.

Our goal is to help you do your best work and make it easier for all of our users to be more productive. That's why we listen carefully to feedback shared by our customers which allows us to identify pain points and work to make improvements. 

As mentioned previously, we are currently working on a solution that will help users quickly navigate from one area to another without having to go back to the My Home page. We’ll keep you updated on this.

Andi Bonk,

I'm glad you like the New Experience! And yes, we are considering adding the ability to hide the My to-do, Created by me, Shared with me, Blueprints, and Recycle bin sections in the same way as you can hide Dashboards, Reports, and other applications. Thank you for your feedback. 

Marcin Kwiecinski,

Thanks for sharing your insight. Regarding the spacing between folders/projects, we are considering making it a bit tighter. Regarding the search in the left pane, I have a few follow-up questions:

1) Did you try to use the global search in the top right corner instead? 

2) If we were to provide a quick search in the folder tree within the current space only, would it be helpful for you? This would be different from what was previously available. 

Lisa Bage,

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are currently working on a solution that should help when browsing Spaces and moving from one space to another without going through My Home. Regarding the links at the right, I'd encourage you to try to use Tools in Spaces and Pinned Tools instead of navigating through applications (such as Dashboards, Reports...). Would you find this helpful? Also, we are considering extending the abilities to customize My Home. 

Marj Downey, 

Thank you very much, we are glad you like the New Experience! We are considering different ways to help users choose folders and projects while tagging, in case they can't remember the title. Thank you again.

Ivan Saveliev Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Ivan Saveliev Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Dale McBroom Andi Bonk, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We don’t plan to add Dark mode in the near future, but we’ll definitely keep it in mind for future updates to the New Experience.

Ivan Saveliev Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Ivan Saveliev Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

That is a shame. It seems like an obvious feature that has been asked for since (before?) Mojave was announced. 

Ivan Saveliev Where I was going with this is in line with the configurable views that was described by Edwin Chong.  We have collaborators who have only have access to a few tasks in a single project, project managers of one or more projects, program managers who seem full spaces of projects, etc. all the way up to site admin, or those if us running a PMO, where we so every project.  For reference, we do not expose all projects to everyone.  On the contrary, we only expose projects / tasks to those that apply respectively.   With the increase amount of data, the new UI does simplify some things.  However, the more access to more project and tasks, the more difficult or cumbersome, it becomes to get to where you need to quickly.  It is possible that the additional features of being able to jump around without having to go back to the main page will address this.  I would have to see it to know for sure.  One last point on this.  Being int he PMO, we also work to better manage the structure of Spaces, Folders, Projects, etc.  Being able to quickly see the overall structure that you have created and manage is a tad more difficult without the left nav view.  This is where my comment regarding being admins comes from.  Thanks for listening / reading.

Ivan Saveliev  I did figure out how to move the middle sections to reorder them. Thank you. Regarding Recent Items, I think it is best to offer up a user configurable option for how many to show. Not everyone works the same way and some may not want a lot of recents, where people like myself that jump around a lot need more or they are mostly useless.

What I mean is that with only 4, by the time I look at half a dozen different items, the Recent list does not have items that I really want to get to. I find that the last 4 items are so recent that I don't need to get to those as I just finished looking at them. I tend to want to see a few back further in history.

Given the layout, the Recent list should be in quantities of 2 for it to fill out that section, but maybe we have the user setting of 4,6,8,10 recent items.

It's possible that some people may leverage the Recent list more than say the Spaces list just in the way they work, so they may really want more Recent items listed. Whereas someone else may find that they don't use Recent and really just use Pinned or Spaces links. So they could keep their Recent list area lean and clean with only 4 items.

Just some thoughts.

I'd like to reflect on some of the feedback regarding the search and the filter options. I do see where having the filter field in the tree is still helpful, and I think I commented on this already.

Regarding search, I find that the Global search now should have a "local" option. Now that we are only in 1 Space at a time, I would love to be able to search only within that Space rather than the entire platform. An option of Global or Space Only would be nice.

Jeff R  I agree with your comments about a big picture view of our architecture. Now that everything is broken apart, and the Home page provides the portal to it all, there is no way of visualizing how we have structured our layout. We can't see the entire tree to see if we have a nice layout or if it is all over the place. 

Not sure how important it is, but people like you and me are the type that want to see these things. 

Very much agree with Jason Pontius regarding the "local" search option! 

I'm trying to add add an existing Dashboard to one my Space's "Tools" section. No luck so far, is it possible to do this? Thanks!

Soraya Jung  Yes, you can move a Dashboard. By default, if it is existing it probably is now assigned to your Personal Space. Go to your Dashboards from the Home page, select the one you want. Then in the upper right click on the 3 dots for the context menu, and choose Move. This will allow you to assign it to another Space, and thus should show up in your Tools for that Space.

Soraya Jung Jason Pontius.   Thank you for asking and answering this question. I hadn't even noticed the Tools section in each space, now i'm moving Dashboards to them! Love learning from the community. 😍

Marj Downey  Any of the tools items (calendars, dashboards, reports, workloads) will show up in the Tools section of the space they belong to. So if you move your items to specific spaces, they will all be in the corresponding tools sections. So don't stop with dashboards; go to town with all of them.

One thing I noticed with the New Experience is that the Tools assigned to a specific Space take on the permissions of that Space. I do not like this. I had permissions set specifically for each Calendar, Workload, Report, etc. Now that I place them in a Tools section for a given Space, the permissions change to take on at least the same level of the Space.

So in order to keep my operations team from being able to edit the Operations workload chart, I can't put it in the Operations Space. I need to keep it in my Personal Space; otherwise everyone can edit it.

I do not like this functionality. I need to be able to have Tools related to the Space in the Space's Tools section, but I need to be able to limit the permissions by not allowing users to edit items I put there. I don't want them to edit Workloads and Reports. 

So we're caught in a place where the Tools sections mostly become unusable for us. I can't put Space-related items there if that means everyone can edit them. Makes no sense to me. The whole point is to group together related items; not to give the same permissions across the board because they are in the Space.

Jason Pontius  Under space settings, when you assign members you can determine their abilities. This may help with what you are talking about. Let me know. 

Marj Downey

Thanks for the note, however this is the problem. The Space settings aren't necessarily the permissions I want on the each tool. For example, we have a Space that is most of our active external projects, called Operations. All of my project engineers have the ability to edit items in here as this is where they work the projects.

So if I wanted to have related reports and workloads living in this Operations Tools section, all of my project engineers now can edit them. But, I don't want them to edit the reports or workloads that I define.

Within a Space you can add additional permissions, but you can't restrict permissions; it has to be at least what the Space offers. So there is no way to restrict access to a particular tool or project within a Space if by default they have edit permissions in that Space.

Same goes for even viewing items. If I create an Operations report that shows executive data about the Operations projects, and it is a report that I only want myself and the executives to see, it can't live in the Operations Tools section either. It must live in my Personal Space and shared with them, or a whole entire other Space just for those. 

Jason Pontius Looks like the devs need to adjust that. 

Jason Pontius Thanks for the tip! 😃