[Open Discussion] Share Your Favorite Automation Rules! 🤖

We have an internal Ticketsystem using Wrike a form. If a new ticket is generated it is assigned to a responsible person. If that person doesn't look at the new ticket, wrike automation bot sends a message to all followers (responsible colleagues are auto following the ticket folder) so that ticket may not be forgotten. To avoid that reminder, the ticket status hat so be changed from "New" to something else.

VERY HELPFUL!!!

Rule: If status doesn't change in 2 days from "New", add comment @followers

I also use the automation bot as a workaround to get a notification for new tasks in a specific folder.

Auto following a folder should generate an inbox notification if a new task is added, but this can't be cofigured by notification settings (https://help.wrike.com/hc/de/community/posts/115002774389--Status-Backburner-Editing-Notification-Types-in-the-Inbox)

Rule: If a new task is generated, add comment @followers

simple and effective!

Thank you so much for sharing, Florian Kislich! 🙌

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

We have one that we like: If a project hasn't moved from a specific workflow step, "Not Started",  within 7 days, it moves that project out of the active folder and into the "holding" folder area and emails the followers of that project that resources need to be allocated for that project to continue. Seems to be one of our favorites right now. 

We also really like moving projects from one folder to another folder once they reach the final completed step. 

Can't wait for updating all tasks within a project once that feature is available!

We have some fun ones that have proven useful. We have some that are like those already mentioned above where if a task status has not changed after a few days, then the automation sends an @ mention comment to the assignees. Then if the status still does not change a few days after that the automation does the @ mention to the manager of the assignees.

When all tasks and subtasks are complete for a project, the project status is marked as complete and the project is then moved to an achieved completed folder. 

In some of the folders, we also have it for when specific status' are selected, folder tags and reassignment of the task.

Hope this helps.

-Ryan

Hello Ryan Nelson

How can you post a comment to the manager of a task assignee? How does the automation know who is responsible?

Dear Ryan Nelson and Nich Adam

why do you move tasks / projects to a different folder if they are completed? Isn't the status enough to seperate completed tasks from others?

Florian Kislich We have so many projects and tasks within our Active area that over time, the build up would start to bog the folder down. So we now move things to an archive/completed area to keep the active area running quick. 

Florian Kislich the way we set up the folder and space structure is that Managers have responsibility over certain folders and projects. As a result, when we create the @ mention comment, we are selecting the specific manager over that project of folder. The system does not know who that is, but the way we built the structure we know who it is and can use that knowledge to our benefit. 

As far as archiving completed projects, completed projects, do not remove them selves from the folder structure. They are always there. Moving them somewhere else declutters the look of the folder structure. 

Hope that helps.

-Ryan

Hi everyone, thanks again for sharing your favorite automation rules! 🙌

I have some very exciting news for you - we’re going to have a sync with our Product team to discuss Wrike’s Automation and answer all of your burning questions in two weeks’ time! 

This call will be open to both Green and Black belt Community members 🥋If you’re interested in participating but don’t have a Green Belt yet, you still have time to earn it. Read this post to learn how to receive it https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360018649353--Read-Me-Become-a-Ninja-Community-Badge-Program-👍

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

Hi everyone,

We have projects divided in two major tasks:

1)Engineering => sub tasks eg. Motor (design)

2)Purchasing => subtasks eg. Motor (purchasing)

If i want an automation rule to connect an item from "Engineering" to an item from "Purchasing" i can't do it right now. 

For example: I want to @mention the purchasing dept that the design of a specific item is completed and so they can proceed. 

A rule based on custom fields would be game-changing!

In alternative, probably simpler, it would be good also a rule "if ANY of precedessor statuses change to". This also would solve the problem because i could create a dedicated status for specific items and connect them.

Thank you!

Antonio

Thank you for sharing your use-case and suggestions, Antonio Guiso! The team is keeping a close eye here 🙂

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

Hello everyone,

As a project manager i work with several profils such as developers and consultants. I have to follow their tasks and be sure everything is updated. It would be great to have an automation with Wrike bot telling the person that his task is late regarding the initial delay and asking him to update the status or writting in the task why it's not the case.

Another idea : I tested the new financial fields, which are great ! I created a calculated field so that i can easily see if we exceed the initial total budget or not. An automation sending all projects  wich are exceeding the budget to a specific folder or person, would be very interesting to manage all of it and react quickly.

Thank you :)

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Marlène LABATTU 🙌

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

We mirrored our active folder organization into a zarchive folder, it took some time to do but we mapped completed tasks from each folder to be moved to their corresponding zarchive folders.

Aside from that we use a workflow to automate the review process for emails and landing pages between several teams. The auto approval setup and status changes is great. To accompany this build, any time the status enters an approval status or a review status (10 in total) Wrike bot @mentions our digital team to keep the project flowing. And if the status doesn't change for 1 day when assigned to an approver Wrike bot @mentions the approver. (1day was the smallest time frame available).

It would be great if we could create a folder/organization structure of this automation rule area. I could see things getting messy as more automation possibilities are released.

Hi Alexander Fisher! 🙂 Thank you so much for sharing the automation workflows that you are using! And I'm passing your feedback on the rules organization to the Product 🙌

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

Has anyone found a way to have an alert sent about a task if it is overdue? Or more preferably, a way to alert when something is coming up being due soon?

Brittney Bemb the below is an automation rule I implemented for my team, based on specific statuses in an approval workflow. I don't believe there is a deadline related trigger.

Trigger = status hasn't changed in 'x' days

Action = @mention (assignee, follower, author, approver)

This can get a little messy if being implemented too broadly, so I recommend narrowing down the statuses that will trigger this reminder. Otherwise the daily to-do-list email update or a custom dashboard may be the best option for upcoming and overdue items.

It would be great to see a deadline related trigger though :)

I really like the automation that adds comments to tasks based on criteria - I use it to remind task executioners of key requirements when certain conditions are met, like custom field values combined w/ workflow status, etc.

We have a rule set up where if a task changes status, it would add a task and change the task status and add a comment. We use this to signal when a project is ready to go live and that the correct people have been informed.

We have an automation to move projects into appropriate folders when project status is changed. 

Also, love the if project status has not changed within two weeks move project to on hold with an additional comment into the project to @followers to make sure the custom fields are properly set and notifies owners that project status is being changed 

Our most used automation workflow consists of monitoring statuses for a certain number of days and following up with assignees. As the task sits in a status longer and longer, the Auto Bot follows up and changes the status until it is eventually cancelled. 

• If task is "Missing Information" for more than 5 days
• If more than 7, @mention and change status to "On Hold"
• If "On Hold" for more than 15 days, @mention and change status to "Cancelled" with instructions on how to revive a cancelled request.

We track if a purchase order is on time or if there is a problem with supply.

If the order is flagged "Problem with Supply" then the accounts contact and project manager get @ mentioned to check this change will not adversely affect the project.

We have an automation rule that if no work has been submitted to one of our test beds in the previous day (measured by a lack of status change) all the followers of the test request parent tasks get notified. It's useful for our less engaged engineers 😅

Also very excited for custom field manipulation as this will free up our Workato connection to do some more complex stuff!

sure a lot of nice ideas and tips in all above. the favorite one from my listing is moving a 'Completed' task from one folder/project to 'Open' status of another type of workflow (so for another team and other type of work/actions) in another folder/project.

Why we do this : in our setup every main project has 5 subprojects (00. requirements, 01. discovery/planning, 02. design & develop., 03. testing & training, 04. implement., 05, maintenance) whom make up the roadmap of the main project. These subprojects get their respective dates depending on the agreed time-span for the whole project (and so make up the overall map). This gives a very clear gantt-chart and reports and so view on progress. All tasks which "survive" the first subproject (00. requirements, where they client write out its needs) are only taken into (01. discovery) when they "survive" the requirements. (Client might mark some tasks as "Not Needed" and so they will stay in 00.) When in the (01. discovery phase) the task is marked as "plausible and executable", thru the Automation, its is taken as 'Open' to (02. effective design) for that team and so on and on ... so over the whole project we ever work on the same tasks only in each subproject it gets different handlings but at the end of the project it still is present and we know all that happened with the task from very start until its final completion in (05. maintenance). As this we can perfectly 'weight' the load of the task so to estimate (and necessary adapt the approach) for eventual future similar projects.

Thank you so much 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

We use a trigger of a Custom Field status change to auto-add the Task to an additional Folder.  We have a pipeline of incoming departmental project requests with a drop-down custom field for funding status, including Ideation, Business Case Needed, and Funded.  Once the project request Task custom field changes to Funded, it automatically double-tags another Folder where we track Funded Projects, which has additional custom fields associated with it.  This allows us to fill out the additional custom fields of information needed to kick it off (we then assign it to a designated Project Leader who kicks off a Project and double-tags the intake task to the Project being executed).  We like the Automation Trigger to Add to a Folder because we don't want to see all those other custom fields during the Ideation and Business Case stages, but then they inherit the Funded custom fields from the other folder at the time we need them.

Meredith Selden great solution for an interesting use-case! 👍

We have a rule set up to @ message the assignee on a task that is marked with a status of Pending Answer for 2 days, to request a status update. In doing this, it reminds our team to follow up on their question if they have not gotten a response, or to update the status to complete if they did get a response. 

Thanks so much for posting your rules, Meredith Selden, Caitlin Beaty - WFH 12.5! 🤗 This thread is a great source of inspiration for using Wrike's Automation 😍

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