Remote Collab Tips - Wrike Guidelines, Teams, Docs, and More!
I'm sure many have figured out remote collaboration by now, but if you are like me, I'm always striving to see if we can improve on anything. We were remote before the COVID-19 situation, but many improvements occurred for remote work that we have also utilized. Here are a few tips that I have found keep us all on the same page and improve collaboration:
1 - Have Wrike guidelines/training area or docs and make sure your team adheres to them. We also made a Wrike knowledge base so that everything is in one place.
2 - Documents should have a single source of truth. We use MS Teams/SharePoint (and sync so it shows the same in File Explorer). In Wrike, we attach from the SharePoint location. This way everyone is looking at the same document/sheet, etc and there is no guessing or wasting time on the wrong thing. We can also all work on the item at the same time, total collaboration! (not everyone is on Wrike in our company, so we can't use Wrike for this)
3 - Projects should use blueprints/templates so that they are always consistent and everyone knows what to expect.
4 - Communication is always key, so make sure the Wrike guidelines or your overall team's guidelines for this is very clear on when and where you are to say or put anything. If you leave this to assumption, it will never be as cohesive as it could be, and you will lose efficacy.
5 - We are a Microsoft shop, so we utilize MS Teams. Make sure to link Teams and Wrike so that nothing is missed, and it can be easier/faster to respond if you don't already have Wrike open.
I hope some of these tips help or spark an idea for your team. Thanks for reading.
Working from home increased and improved our team's collaboration. Although controlled documents don't reside in Wrike, the editor makes the collaboration way easier since more than 1 user can edit/add comments to the file simultaneously, allowing for real-time collaboration.
One thing also that help us speed up approval while working remotely is through Wrike's automated electronic approval. Before COVID we used to do the snail process and it caused delays and bottlenecks. With Wrike's approval process, approvers can access task anywhere, anytime, so there is no excuse for late approvals. Tracking the approval's status is a lot easier. You will know who has already signed off and who's not and all changes are automatically tracked. Wrike notifies approvers when deadline is approaching and with its automation engine, it's even better. Wrike notifies the approvers when the task/project status didn't change after certain calendar years.
We love our approval process now. I hope you will too.
I wasn't remote before Covid and now on a flex schedule but my employee is remote. We use Teams / Wrike integration as well as have a master knowledge base with links to files but also template emails used for different task. This has assisted us with staying very consistent and easy to move projects between us as well as increased productivity!
These are great tips and thanks for sharing!!
One thing we've really focused on since we shifted to mostly remote and hybrid work - is not only tapping into blueprints (again great pointer on how to standardize work) but also using dynamic request forms to leverage those blueprints! This way, everyone is working the same way, and there are few surprises on how work is structured, or where to find it! There are so many options in the form editing tool - that you can really transform your intake process!
Our group is global, so keeping in contact via Teams was already in place. We have leveraged Wrike for requests and templates to help keep transparency and consistency. Great outline on how your team is managing remote work.
What we leverage:
These are great examples, thanks a lot for sharing, everyone 🤗
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 totaly agree with the tips above.
But for me the biggest point is: communicate directly. Wrike is for documentation, but for fast work and decission nothing is more important than direct talking. Does not matter if directly face-to-face or via MSTeams. The fastest and most efficient way is talking. On the other hand never forget to store all decissions and work results of a project in one place. And their I we use Wrike for the tasks and Sharepoint for filestorage. A very good combination. Only missing link I see right now is the Outlook calender to Wrike.
I think a lot of incidental communication is lost working remotely. Hearing John on the phone to a supplier - him turning to you and saying "the parts are going to be another week"- that sort of stuff, that you just osmose by being in the same space.
I try and get my guys to make sure if they talk to a customer or a supplier - they just add a jotted note to the relevant Wrike task - so this type of incidental communication is shared.
We use Wrike to keep track of all the projects and the updates from the workshops. So when working from home we can keep track of the progress. We use microsoft Teams for communication by either sending a chat message or just calling the person to see what the progress is. We do have some weekly progress meetings in place already via teams or some offline ones since the situation is getting better.
The communication also goes via Wrike if the project still has a lot of time to go or the changes are only small. Most of the new request will also go via Wrike and everybody has a dashboard and there notifications right so we can respond pretty quickly. We also have a planner who will give everybody the projects on Wrike so you know which you can expect in your portfolio
Thanks so much for your tips here, everyone, they are super useful 🙌
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
So many great ideas here <3 I'll share something we started to use recently and maybe not all of you might know it exists.
We use Zoom for all the meetings and "Actionable Meetings by Wrike app for Zoom" has helped us to save time and stay organized by taking notes and creating tasks much more quickly during the online meetings.
https://www.wrike.com/partners/zoom/
https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500011402441-Actionable-Meetings-for-Zoom-by-Wrike
I started "Wrike Office Hours" on Fridays from 10-11 for anyone to log in to my Zoom meeting and ask for help with Wrike. We have a lot of users who were slow to buy in when we first started using Wrike. I am retraining some, while onboarding others. Having an open meeting allows people to just "drop in" without a formal meeting and get a simple question answered or learn a navigation tip that they missed the first time around.
I love it Kelly R, thanks so much for sharing 🤗
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