Create and send a client-facing project plan
Hello,
We would like to send our clients a project plan (table or gantt) so they can see the status of the project, what meetings they are responsible for and any client due dates for material. I can select the client view filter and export to excel but as soon as one date is changed that export is then outdated (which happens often). Ideally, I'd like to have a live link to a project plan that the client can save and always access the most updated project plan. We do not want to give them collaborator seats since that will be more confusing teaching them how to use Wrike than just viewing a pre-determined plan.
Is this possible? Or any workarounds?
Danielle
Hi Danielle Wilson,
have you tried to use Snapshots on Gantt?
Hi,
We have tried snapshots and yes easier than exporting. Ideally we'd like a live link to the project plan. Our dates move quite often for one reason or another and once I send them the link to the snapshot and a date changes, that project plan is then out of date. If we could get a live link to see the "live" plan, then the client always has something to refer back to. We used to use Clarizen and this was a feature we used on every project.
If this feature is not on the roadmap, I'd love to hear other users process for keeping clients up to date on the status of a project - including their due dates.
Thank you!
Danielle
Hi Danielle Wilson, thank you for reaching out! For now, the snapshots that Pietro Poli shared are not live for security reasons. Let's see if other Community members can share how they approach such a use case.
Pietro Poli Thank you so much for helping 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
HI Danielle Wilson,
for our customer, that needs to know, in real time, where the project is, we use to add them like collaborator and specify their rights with user types roles.
Danielle Wilson Pietro Poli I was literally working on a way to deal with this today. Basically a large campaign scenario with months worth of timeline and the majority of it being "planned work" and only the few weeks in front of me being assigned out into actual projects/tasks. The planned work is all individual tasks worded like a human would list things out; ie "Pre-Launch Ad Campaign Begins" vs (09.18.23)VER_Marketing_Campaign.
I was needing show the client a tentative campaign plan that made sense and also not recreate work just to have a dumbed down version.
What I ended up doing was creating a custom item type titled "Client Facing", then multi-selecting the tasks that I wanted to present from the list view, and converting their item type in bulk to what I could then filter on a Gantt chart. In addition I added a custom field titled "discipline" that would allow me to tag the task as being design, video, communications, web, milestone/general, external... you get it. I could then filter out all the sausage being made of the actual work task assignments to a clean and simplified client view by skill area, folder level, and date range. IT WORKED GREAT.
I still had the option of taking any normal blueprint generated task and converting it to a client facing one. Even select duplication wouldn't bother me too much in this scenario. I will be using this method to base my snapshots from each week as I continue to keep them informed on progress and new adds.
What are your thoughts on this?
Hi Jonathan Gentry,
your way is very interesting.
Is like the same I've used for some projects but not using CITs.
Lisa I think it would be great to have one task coupled to another.
I'll explain.
I build my project with a series of tasks.
For some of them, I need to have a conversation with the customer (contributor) so I might want to mark them as "collaborative with a custom property".
It would be great that when I mark a task as "collaborative" this is duplicated in a specific folder, shared with the customer and can be aligned to the starting task for some data, for example the status.
If the customer replies in a comment, the comment is also brought to the original task in his task, while the comments in the original task are brought back to the "collaborative" task only if we mention the customer.
Turning back to this: Jonathan Gentry. Your process seems somewhat complicated for us and maybe our projects aren't as complicated or I need to just read yours through more thoroughly? However we do something similar that might be helpful or do the same function?
We have a project plan with client meetings. These, as well as any client deliverables like entering content or collateral due, are assigned to "Client" as the assignee. Then we create a snapshot in Gantt view, but use the "Client view" filter so only client tasks are shown. This way they don't see all the parts we're doing, just the deliverables they are responsible for?
Simplified Project:
Snapshot to show the client from Gantt View/Client view filter:
Hello all,
For those also working with client-facing project plans, I've started to use the calendar feature, and I think this will be a great solution to needing to share a public facing project plan with the client - that updates as dates change!! YAY
Create a calendar for each project and filter to only show tasks assigned to the client. I worked with the client and shared the calendar view screen while I changed dates on the table view. This way they could see the ramifications of their due dates changing and how far it pushes out the whole project plan. Helped them to see that it is not only us changing the end date, but mostly them missing deadlines. Let me know if people have questions!
Thanks a lot for sharing Danielle Wilson 🙂
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