[Status: Backburner ⏳] Allow Subtasks to Update Start and End Dates of Parent Tasks

That would be awesome!!

thank you Megan!

@Megan, thank you for posting this suggestion here! I'll make sure to direct users to this request to include any additional feedback and add their votes.

100 votes for this one!  We work off task/subtasks and it's annoying to remember to edit the parent if a sub's date changes or maybe that sub goes away entirely.

Most definitely would be a great addition.

Should have been a given

Yes please, implement this! I reschedule tasks and the subtasks don't update, and viceversa, reschedule subtasks and the main task doesn't update. I have to move all of them "by hand", it would be great to be able to automatise it

Yes!  Do it please!  It's a feature that is very much needed!

Just commenting, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, on this more in hopes of reaching more folks that may want the same feature and to further explain what I am asking for.

Even with manually adding start and finish dates to the parent task it skews the total project time.

So here, I have a parent task with two subtasks.  Subtask 2 is a successor to Subtask 1 with a FS relationship.  If things automatically rolled up, you'd expect that the parent task would have a start date of Jan 26, 2017 and an end date of Jan 30, 2017, total duration of 3 days.

The problem is, if I manually add start and end dates on the Parent Task I, for one, have to adjust them manually anytime a subtask moves.  Additionally, when looking at the analytics, the manually added dates make the entire task group "bloated".  So the system actually adds the 3d duration (in hours) of the parent task on top of the duration (in hours) of the subtasks (see screen shots below).  Problem with not adding dates to the parent task…. It does not show on the timeline view!

Screen shot A is before I manually added the start and end date to the parent task.  Screen shot B is after I manually added the start and end dates to the parent task (total duration should still be 24 hours – 3 days times 8 hours a day).

A

B

Megan, this is fantastic! Thank you for including the screenshots, they're always really helpful. The point you've mentioned here is definitely important, and I can understand the role this functionality plays in accurate reporting. Subtasks are a topic we're discussing internally, and all of these Product Feedback posts are extremely helpful in understanding the Community's needs when it comes to this functionality. Once more, thank you for taking the time to put together all of this info, I really appreciate it!

Thanks for the response, Anastasia.  I am happy to hear that subtasks are something that's being discussed.

Woudl be great to have timing roll up !

Anastasia, is there any update on this? This is something that is definitely needed! When you have a large amount of subtasks it only makes sense for the parent task to be changed. Even further, this should also apply on the Project and Sub-project level as well! 

Hi Jennifer, thanks for posting here! I have some good news: our Product Team is already working on allowing subtask dates to roll up to parent tasks, and updates to the functionality are planned for the first half of this year :) Stay tuned!

The other piece that's related to this, at least somewhat, is when you run a report and there's a completed sub task for the time period but the parent task isn't complete. So you don't see the parent task and the subtask may make no sense without the parent task reference.

That's great! Would this feature also apply to the Sub-Project rolling up to Parent Project?

@Susanne, that's an interesting point, thanks for sharing!

@Jennifer, we're working specifically on subtask logic first, but applying this to Subprojects is definitely something to keep in mind for next steps :)

I thought that if a subtask is related to a parent task, the roll over of dependent dates will happen. Isn't it in the set up of dependencies that will make this function? Or is this really not working yet?

Thank you for your active community participation, Sonja! At the moment subtasks start and due dates are completely independent of parent tasks dates, but we're currently looking into ways of changing this logic.
If you have any other suggestions or questions, don't hesitate to post them here.

Anna G Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Anna G Wrike Team member Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

I am glad to see this is being done.  As a user having my sub-tasks feed the parent tasks is something that is very key in managing my projects, milestones, and data.  Please keep us posted as this is something that would be great to have as soon as possible. 

@Will We will definitely make sure to keep you updated by posting in this thread in particular with any news. For news about other releases, I also want to mention our Release Notes. We publish them every Wednesday and they include any product updates that have occurred since the previous release notes were published. You can click "Follow" on the Release Notes page to receive a notification when a new post is added. 

Following on from a chat with Anastasia, This is my vote for getting "Allow Subtasks to Update Start and End Dates of Parent Tasks" 

@Anastasia -  would also like to get sub-task timelines linked to the task time line. 

Part of what we do, is working directly with our clients in our Design, Build & Validate phase. And while each of the task and subtasks are the same; they vary in complexity & duration. So we clone a project, rename it and then go in an update subtasks. Its very time consuming to re-order and re-align all the sub tasks & parent tasks once duration and complexity has been taken into account. So would be great if you can make this work, by being able to toggle this setting or 

Many thanks

Julian

@Julian, thanks for adding your idea to this post! :)

Checking in to see if there are any updates on when this will be available?  I created a 100-line project plan (as viewed in the table view).  Having to manually add the parent task dates took me an extra 15-20 minutes.  Everything looks great right now (besides the "bloated" duration of the project because of the double-counting of the manually added parent task dates), but once I change a subtask date, it's another time consuming process to update the parent tasks, especially if dependencies crossover into subtasks of other parent tasks (then their dates need updated, too).

Also, once again putting a plug out there for being able to assign dependencies in the table view by quickly keying in the predecessor/successor task and the dependency type (FS, FF, SS, or SF).  Here again is where lags and leads would be super helpful.  Manually creating a task to represent a lead or a lag is annoying, time consuming, and another thing that has be explained to the team who just wants to get their work done based on the dates their tasks have.

Again, all in all we like Wrike, it just needs some additional features/modifications to support a better workflow.  We have our 2nd onboarding session with our consultant today at 11 AM EST.

Thanks!

Hi Megan, great to hear from you again! I don't have an exact date to share just yet, but this is one of our team's priorities on the current roadmap. I'll make sure to update this thread when the feature is released, and this information will also be included in our weekly Release Notes - make sure to subscribe to them to be updated about new functionality and fixes every week. :)

Currently in demo period and surprised that this isn't a given.  

Do we have any idea on a timeline?  Without it, we'll keep shopping for an off-the-shelf solution.  Otherwise pretty impressed- but like all PMs need to minimize manual updating.

Hi Marc, glad you're checking out the software! While I don't have a concrete date for when this will be released, I can tell you that our team is actively discussing and working on changing the logic around subtask statuses (and your comment here really does help). 

Stephanie,

Thanks for the quick response.  Absent a firm commitment and date we'll have to keep shopping.  Would have been a sale otherwise.

Anastasia,

Do you have any updates on this topic? Please please do everything that you can to push this forward - the subtask dates rolling up to autofill the parent task dates is, in my opinion, crucial.

It is extremely time consuming for PM's to have to manually do this. I love using Wrike very much, but I find this to be a major flaw with the software. 

Best,

Allison

Hi everyone, I hope you don’t mind if I step in for Stephanie and Anastasia here.

@Marc, I am sorry to hear that Wrike doesn’t entirely suit your needs at the moment, but we hope you will give Wrike a try in the future. Will be happy to answer any questions or give tips and tricks to help out!

@Allison, thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I definitely understand that autofilling the parent task dates based on its subtasks dates is important in a Project Manager’s work. Our Product Team is currently working on developing this functionality but I’m afraid I still can’t provide any ETA on when it’s going to be released.

We will post an update in this thread once we have one, so I encourage everyone who hasn’t done it yet to start following this post to not miss it. :)

Anna G Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Anna G Wrike Team member Infórmate sobre las funciones y prácticas recomendadas de Wrike

Anna,

Please keep us updated- would be happy to put Wrike back on the list for consideration once what your user community seems to agree is a pretty significant shortcoming is addressed.

Marc