[Status: Launched! 🚀] Ability to Assign Tasks to "Generic" or General Assignees

Megan, thank you for the suggestion! You're right, one of the workarounds would be to create a dummy user, and there's another option I wanted to suggest: creating a Custom Field to indicate the vendor the task needs to be assigned to. This Custom Field can be a dropdown with a predefined list of vendors, or a checkbox to indicate that the task is generally assigned to a vendor. It's possible to filter by Custom Fields, so you can create Reports or filter any of the views based on this criteria. Would this help? Let me know if you have any questions about this feature!

If we use a custom field to show a vendor as an assignee, how does that affect the resource and workload views?  I don't think it will show up as assigned to a vendor if nothing is truly in the assignee field, right?

For now, we can use dummy accounts, but it would be nice to have an ability to assign a task to someone that does not have a Wrike account.

Megan, thank you for the clarification about the Workload View. Planning resources in this view is only possible for users of the account, since it allows you to balance team resources. Usually vendors and partners are invited into the account as Collaborators, so they could keep track of progress and comment on their tasks, however they won't be visible in the Workload view either. I'd love to help come up with a structure for your use case, so it would be great to hear a bit more about your processes. Do you have certain team members responsible for working with vendors and managing their resources, or do tasks get planned solely for vendors? 

We want to be able to assign a task (or multiple tasks) to a vendor in general for their team to manage and complete outside of our project plan.

For example, a task of "Perform Exchange Server Upgrade" needs to be assigned to a vendor, but my team does not really need to know which specific people on staff with the vendor will be performing the change and we're not expecting the vendor to act as a "collaborator" to provide status updates (my team, likely the PM, will do that part within Wrike during and after status update meetings).

I appreciate the details, Megan! This is a great use case, and I wanted to share some suggestions our team came up with about managing this:

1. Create a Folder structure which includes a master "Vendors" Folder, with Subfolders for each vendor you work with.
2. Create tasks related to a vendor in the corresponding Folder. You can also create them in a different Folder or Project, and include them in the vendor one by using Folder Tags.
3. Assign the task to the team member who will be responsible for reviewing or editing the task after status update meetings.
4. Now you can access the Workload View from a specific vendor Folder to plan resources, or view resources across all vendors from the parent Folder.

I also wanted to let you know that we discussed the setup with your account manager, and he'll be happy to discuss this in some more detail on the next call you have scheduled. Let me know if any other questions come up! :)

I see what you are able to do here, but I don't think that's as straightforward as my team needs.  I will discuss this with my account manager.  We have a call tomorrow, I believe.

Thanks for taking the time to identify a potential solution.

Need a simpler solution. 

Should be able to assign a task to a "company" without having them a) having an email address or b) having to confirm an email invite.

Please just add "company collaborators".  No email address. That simple!

How would one assign a "dummy user." It seems that all users must be tied to an email address. My own workaround could be to make dummy users for each service (designer, videographer, developer, account manager, project manager, content manager) and then use the "swap user" feature to swap out the official teammate for the role placeholder. However, this is a very messy process, and it would be much better if the process could be automated as soon as the project team is finalized.

It needs to be simple and straightforward. One of the selling points of rake is its power. The more complex you make us walk around an issue the less valuable it becomes.

Meant to say wrike. Not rake. Siri!

Would be helpful if Wrike offered a feature that allowed resource scheduling at a macro level - without requiring full integration of projects/tasks and users/emails.  We are slowly integrating Wrike as a PM tool but only about 10% of our team and projects are integrated at the moment. As a resource manager - I need to be able to map out my resources (both internal and freelance) against projects and availability - on the calendar. I'm looking at a separate resource mapping tool to do this. Would be helpful if Wrike offered this on a macro level - without all projects needing to be mapped out within the tool. 

Hi Marianne, I can understand why this would be useful when assigning resources across your organization. Thanks for voting and adding the use case here for our Product Team, it really helps get a wide perspective on how this might be implemented. Thanks for sharing!

I also think this is essential and voted.  Here is another use case:  Project managers like to ensure every task is assigned to someone, even if that users has no involvement in managing the actual project task in the system.  The project manager owns the task updates for people that do not want to be bothered with project management activities and would never want to be added as even collaborators in the system.  For example, directors or VPs that have decision tasks do not want to get emails from Wrike or manage a task in Wrike.  But the PM wants to keep track of this task and know who is assigned to that action so they know who to follow up with.  They want to see it directly on the timeline or workload views and the only way to achieve this is via assigning the task to that name or general role.  I cannot add a bunch of dummy emails into Wrike to avoid adding these resources' email addresses, or to add generic roles, just so I can assign that "user/collaborator" the task.  I need to be able to assign tasks to general roles or people without email addresses.  I have had a really difficult time importing extensive MS project plans and managing them in Wrike due to this limitation, because the project plans will have a set of resources that are not in the system (and I do not want or need to add them).  Please consider opening up the ability to add users without an email address so we can assign tasks to general roles or whatever we need.

Hello!

My team is very interested in this feature as well. Many of our tasks have to be followed by a group of people (both internal and external). Having to set this manually per user is not only a waste of time but allows room for error. Key people might be missing updates on a task that they might not directly participate in but should follow and monitor.

Related to this topic, I'd like to suggest that if a group has access to a folder/project, then that group should automatically receive notifications on newly created tasks inside that folder/project (or in other words, tasks created inside a folder/project should get an auto-follow of the groups or individuals who have access to that folder). This could be an option which can be checked on and off in the folder/project's settings.

Nicolas Villarreal Art Outsourcing Producer

Same! This feature is essential for my team as well.

We are a translations company with a number of external vendors/translators, and we need to be able to "assign" translations to them for tracking purposes only. I don't want them to access the system at all - neither as collaborators or users. 

I would suggest a Workflow status noting that Task is in the hands of a particular vendor, then your PM can manage all tasks with that Status.

In other tools, you can assign a task to a "role" such as "producer" or "designer", and choose who's going to be in charge of that either when the assignation happens or during the template duplication.

In companies like ours with more than 500 tool users, having the list of possible assignees to 3-4 per task would certainly help...

We are managing IT-projects/programs where a big part of the challenge is keeping track on tasks from multiple external parties (companies not persons). We want to use Wrike to do the overall project management, but we will rarely have staff from these external vendors in the system. We simply want to be able to put "Vendor A" instead of a named person as Assignee on a task, so that we can see "which vendor's are in charge of what". So a strong +1 here.

Another use case for this is when "mocking up" a project plan, before I actually want to invite actual people into the plan.

Another series of related use cases:

Almost all orgs manage outside vendors:  Lawyers, Engineers, Accountants, Contractors of various sorts.

Sometimes they are individuals in another org.

Sometimes they are orgs with unassigned or unknown individuals.

Sometimes they are too big/structured/uninterested in signing up for wrike, even if invited as a collaborator.

Sometimes they are too small/unskilled/uninterested to sign up for wrike.

Wrike allows some accounts to have unlimited collaborators.  Therefore there is no economic loss if Wrike were to allow a collab to be unhooked from an email address.  And, obviously, not require an email confirmation.

(I know that doesnt help wrike 'spread the word', but i have never seen a third party sign up regardless from an unsolicited invite.)

And we dont want to manage them through a custom field.  That is unnatural.  Managing orgs and third parties is like managing uinternal people. 

Please allow collaborators to be detached from an email address.

Thanks

My team would also benefit greatly from this. We're currently waiting for a new hire, for instance, who doesn't yet have an in-company email address, and a dummy account would allow me to plan ahead for him. Along that same vein, would it also be possible to transfer all tasks from one assignee to another? 

Thanks!

@Julie Hi! Yes, you are able to swap assignees and you can actually do that using mass editing.  In terms of your new hire - I'm not sure what your process is like, but I think templates or an "onboarding" Folder would be helpful. If you have all the tasks that someone will need to complete ahead of time, you can put them all in a Folder for that person (for example a "Julie Onboarding" Folder). Then when the person does start you can mass assign all tasks in the Folder to your new team member. If new employees always use the same onboarding tasks you could even create a template which you would then duplicate when someone starts. 

Thanks Stephanie! Creating a folder and mass assigning will work perfectly. 

This would be so helpful, but the way I'd need it is when I assign a task, then at different points in the workflow I need to assign it back to "first task owner" and not an individual! That way I wouldn't have to create a million workflows just because the reviewers or the person actioning the task are different. Hope that makes sense!!

@Catalina Love seeing the screenshot! It sounds like an interesting use case, do you think you could walk me through a real-life example of a process where you would use this?

Sure, let's see... For example, in that screenshot, I have a flow for Copy and one for Creative. The flows are essentially the same, except for the people that the task needs to be assigned to as it moves through the workflow. If I was able to add generic assignees, then I could use the same workflow for both and say: when in review assign to Designer 1 and Reviewer 1, when changes required assign to original task owner, etc, but in each task those "roles" would be assigned from the task: i.e. when I assign the task to someone that's the original owner, and then the other roles could be specified there. Who's the designer for this task, who's the reviewer for this task, etc. Because for each task it will be different, and it makes it really complicated to create individual flows for each case, especially, but not only because they can't be duplicated. Then I'd only need to use one workflow, or a few different ones but not tens of them which is what's looking like for me right now.... Not sure that makes sense.

@cristian above highlights the most needed use case for this (IMHO). I have also seen in other PM tools that tasks can be initially assigned to a role placeholder that is later assigned to a specific person. This is particularly useful in setting up project templates. Create the project template with roles to be assigned to tasks...at the time of creating a new project, you can have the option (could be required) to define which person will play which role within the project, then all tasks assigned to a role in the template will be replaced in the "real" project with the person assigned to the role. 

We would like to have this option too. Mainly for the purposes of templates, where certain roles could be easily replaced when template is duplicated and new project is being set up.

This would be perfect for our company! Our workflow involves projects being assigned to a team and then a project leader is assigned by the head of the department. Currently the whole team gets assigned to the project, but it adds a bit of clutter to workloads. 

Echoing the call for this as well. We work with an outside vendor on a number of tasks and would like to create them without the need for an accompanying email address.

 This is needed. 

I think the reason they (Wrike) are reluctant, is it risks their revenue model. I suggest looking at that Wrike - otherwise your revenues will diminish as we all leave for better tools anyway...

thanks.