Our #1 Best Practice - Request Forms and Blueprints
At my company, the #1 tip I always give people is to make sure the data coming in is good data, and that you have everything you need when a request comes in. This is one reason why Wrike is so useful, because we can customize forms that link to blueprints. Our steps to set this up was as follows:
- Create folders/projects/tasks with workflows, and make these into blueprints (so it will automatically set everything up once a form is submitted, it's a beautiful thing).
- Brainstorm what forms (with specific questions/info) that my team needs to control what other departments are sending us.
- Go over the brainstorm results with the various departments to make sure it makes sense to everyone and covers what is needed.
- Create the forms, and make it so once submitted the form is set up to use a blueprint and notify appropriate individuals (or group).
- All new submitted request forms go into a "New or Incoming Requests" folder that only certain people have access to (so people that don't need to worry about it aren't distracted).
- The people that have access to the "New or Incoming Requests" folder review the new request, assign it to the correct folder(s), and assign/reassign anyone needed.
This is just a very quick summary. If this inspires even one small part of your workflow, and it saves you 30 seconds, that can really add up! So definitely always try to review processes and see if they can be improved.
The other #1 tip (I guess this would be #2 tip), only accept requests coming through Wrike in a form. I know, this can be hard to implement, but get the support and start to enforce it. Your world will be better! No more chasing down people for information that they should have submitted in the original request. If anyone has any questions on the above, please just ask. It was a very quick overview. Thanks for reading!
Thank you for sharing Abigail Saunders, these are definitely great tips!
As you've mentioned, it's really important to go through Request Forms, Blueprints, and other tools and review your processes. There are always ways to improve processes and we're happy to answer any questions you might have during this process🙋🏻♀️
thanks for sharing, we do something similar too! we reviewed our most common assets that were used in 2021 and created blueprints out of them. then we updated our request form to pull those specific blueprints based on the asset. once the form is submitted it assigns the owner and goes into the backlog where it then gets groomed with other team members! the team likes the simplicity and efficiency!
to piggyback off of the #2 tip, it is really important to understand and track the workload coming in. we would get emailed requests that would often go overlooked. now that we updated our request form, we no longer accept emails and will kindly point them to the request form. 🙂
Request Forms and Blueprints are a key component to our business workflow. Abagail hit on a great point, if a request form exists do not allow users a work around. Most of our Request Forms are user friendly and simple, however we have a few that require a good deal of conditional logic and are more complex intentionally due to the information needed. We train our users to reach out to the request form "owner" if needed and complete the form together to save time for both parties. That seems to work well for the user requesting the form to learn and know exactly what is needed for the next time that request is used.
We have also implemented "best practices" into request forms so all like questions across all forms are formatted the same. We review all request forms on an annual basis to ensure we maintain best practices. I haven't done this to date, but I would like to create a request form to house all best practice questions so I have one place to compare and/or copy from. This will either be a draft only or not shared with anyone.
Hi Sherri Smith, thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience here! Very useful advice🙌🏼