[Open Discussion] Share Your Favorite Automation Rules! 🤖

Great to hear that! Please let us know if you have any questions Heather Hernandez 🙋🏻‍♀️

When certain projects are completed they move to a different folder. Love it. 

Thanks for the feedback Robin Hayes 😊

We are just adding a new automation tool - as part of our archive process, we hav created a rule for when all the tasks have been completed in a project that this automatically changes the project status to completed as well - this ensures that dashboards and reports that report at the active project level are accurately reporting.  This helps ensure that nothing is accidentally left in "active" states!

Thanks for sharing Sherrie Besecker, it's a great tip 👍🏼

I have some similar rules set up as other comments - once all tasks complete change project status, then once project completed move to archive. I like these ones as they keep the folder structure clean.

But I think my favourite combines a workflow and automation - for approving our sales team fuel reports. Once sales person completed the task (in normal way by ticking task) task gets changed to requires approval and reassigned to their manager. Once he has approved, it reassigns to our finance manager for payment. It's great as the sales team use the task as they would any other one - don't have to remember to @ mention anyone or change status. 

Thank you for taking the time to share your automation practices here Dawn Kirby 🙌🏼

I have a rule set up that when the status of a task changes to completed it tags me and tells me to put it in the archive folder. Very helpful. 

 Mary Kathryn Merrill I have a similar automation, but mine automatically puts it in the archive folder. :)

We have a rule set to comment on any task that's active and has not changed status in 15 days, asking the assignees to check on it.

Thank you for taking the time to share Neyl Walecki, I believe this rule is one of the most used automation 👀

I lead the production team at a digital marketing agency in Canada. 

A handful of our clients have very particular requirements, and it can be hard to keep every little detail for every client top of mind when working on a task. We have an automated alert for these clients that adds a comment when a task status changes to in progress. The alert varies by client, but things like "ensure all Google Drive files are set to restricted mode" or "Always post on the staging site." While we could bake these into the task descriptions for recurring tasks for these clients, if new tasks are assigned someone would have to remember the custom request, so the automation saves us all the headache. 

Since implementing this automation, we've seen a marked reduction in errors on these accounts, and higher customer satisfaction. 

Then we have some pretty straightforward if complete -> move to this folder and when they're simple they truly help and save a lot of time. 

We also tested some things like "if task status doesn't change in X days, alert person Y" but due to the recurring nature of our work, this hasn't worked as we'd like. For example right now we have an alert that says if task status hasn't changed in 7 days, alert a PM. But for recurring tasks that aren't due until October, we wouldn't want or expect that task to be touched, but we still get the alert because it technically meets the criteria.

Overall we love the automated rules and can't wait to see more settings to help us get even more use out of it. 

Similar to Alexander Fisher , I have automation rules set up to move projects to our archive folders (subfolders based on project type) - if all tasks in an event project are completed or canceled, it changes the project status to completed and moves to the events archive.

Hello Carolanne Mak, Amanda Stephens thank you both for sharing your automation rules. Amanda, I've passed on your feedback to our Product team regarding the recurring tasks 👍🏼

Currently not using much of the automation tools, as I've found it somewhat limiting until I read some of the use cases here.
But I have used it for an recurring task that I need to have active for each week, one week at the time. After it's bee inactive (no status change) for 6 days, it changes to completed, so it's no longer visible in the timesheet. These tasks is used for tracking time spent on internal non-billables, and I wanted it to be separated for each week.

Thanks a lot for sharing how you're using automation Thomas Won Nyheim 😊 I'm glad to hear this thread has also been helpful 👍

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 automated verify in workflow for some tasks (verification by the task creator). I use an automated reminder if a task is in a verify status for more than 6 days that assignee and task creator are reminded to work it off.

Thank you for sharing Sven Passinger 🤗

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 a sept-up mostly for tasks status and approvals.

Some of them are:

- when a CAD request is approved, it adds it notifies the requestor and the assigned user.

- when a feature request is approved for project, it notifies the Managers and is moved to a project folder.

- and when the status doesn't change for 2 days, it notifies the approvers to review the task and files

- Or when a project is completed, it it moved to a specific folder where we track all completed projects.

Great examples, thanks for posting Aloi Calvert 👍

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

A current fav is when a project goes untouched for 2 weeks, there will be a comment to all the followers:

"@followers This project hasn't been updated for 2 weeks! Any updates?"

Like others, we use automation to close/archive projects when tasks have been completed. It would be nice to have some kind of automation on which blueprints to use based on custom fields, but I'm still learning. Any ideas appreciated!

Hi Sean Wright, Sara Davis, thank you both for taking the time to share your automation rules! 

Sara, do you mind sharing more about your use case? 

Hi @...

Thanks for the reply.

It may not be an automation per se, but currently we have our request form set to apply one of six blueprints based on a custom field we have for Deliverable (email, web/print design, etc.). 

For example: Sally completes a request form and selects "email" as the Deliverable, creating a project from the email blueprint. However, after discussing with Sally, we discover that there are more components to the project (or maybe she selected the wrong Deliverable), so the tasks from the blueprint no longer match with the scope of the project. 

I was thinking that it might make more sense to have one master blueprint and apply different tasks based on Deliverable, which PMs could edit to automatically populate a specific set of tasks. Not sure if this would be an automation, but any suggestions welcome!

Thanks for getting back to me Sara Davis, I don't think this can be done through the automation engine at the moment but it's an interesting use case. Would you be interested in creating a post on our How To forum where other Community members can offer help? 

Absolutely, @..., Thanks!

We are using automation to help with our movement of projects in our portfolio. Once a project is approved, then we create a project in a new Space for execution.

Thanks for sharing Kevin Thalacker 👍

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

Our favorite ones are so simple but helpful! If all Subtask are completed, the Main task changes to Completed and if the Project is Completed then it moves automatically to the Archive folder.

A great one, thanks for sharing Shelly Erickson 🙋🏻‍♀️