Why are all tasks Active by default?
We recently signed up with Wrike. While we love the product, but some limitations are frustrating.
For example, if I create a new task, why is the default status the first one under your Workflow. By default that is always going to be under Active category. This will always show up wrong in reporting, because not everything is active.
Creating a new task, should be considered Active by default. These could be scheduled for 6 months from now. I wish we could set a custom Category and custom status.
Hi Nitin, thank you for this post!
The "Active" category is meant to apply to all tasks which are either planned or in progress. While the Default Workflow initially contains only one status per group, you can use the Custom Statuses and Workflows feature to add any additional statuses to each category, as well as create new Workflows for different projects. Based on what you described, I recommend creating some additional statuses in the "Active" category, such as "Not started" or "Planned":
This can be done from the "Workflows" tab on the Account Management page. Just click on a status to edit its name and color, or press the "+" sign to create a new one :)
Thanks Anastasia, the reason that doesn't work is because when doing reports based on Status Group's, it will combine Not Started as Active. Which is not one and the same. Unfortunately, I had to export data and do it manually in excel
Nitin, thanks for the clarification! When applying the filtering criteria for the Report, you can choose the whole Status Group, and then deselect an individual "Active" status to exclude it. In your case, you could select "All Active" as the status criteria, and in the workflow below deselect the "Not Started" status, it would look something like this:
Would this help achieve your goal?
Thank you, I agree that would work, but just doesn't work for our scenario.
I am trying to run a report which captures a snapshot of all tasks
Based on the current system limitations I can see it two ways:
#1 Run by Status Group, which will bundle Not Started under Active (not how I want to report)
#2 Run by Status (instead of Status Group), which will show all of them, but not it breaks down with too much data and not the major categories I really wanted.
I really appreciate this detailed description! I have another suggestion which could help in this case. To exclude the "Not Started" status, but still have a chart based on the major categories instead of a detailed breakdown, you can follow the steps I mentioned in my previous comment, but change the grouping criteria in the last step of the Report builder to "Status Group" instead of "Status", as shown here:
The Report will then show you tasks by major Status Group, without taking the "Not Started" ones into account. Let me know if this works for you!
Hello,
That's exactly how we want it, but Not Started in an important value to show as its the backlog / what the team hasn't been able to get to.
What we really need is another Status Group for Not Started and that is the default for new tasks. This way once we run a report for Status Group, Not Started / Pending tasks are shown clearly and lumped under Active or Ignored completely from the report. I guess I am trying to create a general report that can show us the big picture of everything from status point of view.
Nitin, thank you for the explanation!
While it's true that the Reports will pull a view with either general Status Groups or all individual Statuses, I've come up with another suggestion based on your latest post. You mentioned that the tasks under the "Not Started" category are the backlog which your team hasn't been able to get to. It sounds like these tasks may qualify for another Status Group - "Deferred" or "On Hold". These tasks can have scheduled dates, yet be placed in a category of their own until you're ready to make them Active. In terms of Reporting, this will make it easier to see the bigger picture of where tasks stand.
I have also shared your feedback about modifying the Status Groups with the rest of the team, thank you for your insight on this!
Thanks Anastasia. For now we are using a workaround by creating a "Not Started" status under Active Status Group. While this is not perfect, its the easiet for the team. Any manual reporting has to be edited in excel, again not ideal, but no choice.
I would appreciate if you can pass a request to your team to please consider the following changes:
a.) Ability to create custom Status Groups
b.) Select a default task status for all new tasks. (By default everything goes under the Active Group, which doesn't seem right and a pain to change when creating lots of tasks)