Collaboration

Hi Vincent,

Personally, I recently worked with a freelancer on a big project. As soon as we started the project I invited him to Wrike as a Collaborator. I shared one Folder with him and @mentioned him each time I created a new task for him to work on. He was able to @mention me back whenever he had an update and things worked really well. As other teams got involved I made sure to tell them to create tasks for the freelancer in the specific Folder and @mention him if they had something related to the project that he know about/work on. 

I realize that's a very specific situation (and just working with one collaborator). Can you share some more details on your situation? That might help me (and hopefully others!) give more applicable advice. If training is an issue, I've heard of some teams that create short videos specifically targeted for Collaborators who may work in Wrike infrequently. That way they can just share a  quick video instead of having to retrain someone.  

We are a marketing team working within a large and varied organisation, and we create collaborators across the other departments in the company whenever we do a project for them. Have also used it for some of our external clients. It works fantastically and so much better than email as all discussions are kept within the project. The feedback from the collaborators has been great.  

We add clients as collaborators and tell them that they can manage it how they like. Most just prefer email to be honest. It's our job to stay on top of things anyways. Not sure if that's the best way to do it but it works for us

Thanks for the feedback.  We are building our Collaborator how-to currently for our team - we have used it with a few clients in pilot mode.  We do exchange documents thru it and it does help us keep track of decisions.We used basecamp before and clients found it easier to use.  It may be a factor of our folder structure.  We usually have about 20 tasks associated with a project and we only expose about 5 to the client where we need their input.

QUESTION: Does anybody wish they could benefit from allowing the collaborator the ability to update a checklist in the description of the task?  We used this in Basecamp and it was helpful cause the customer could click off on more subtask like items in the body of the task.  Anyone else have any experience on how they approach this? 

Best case scenario would be having "clients" and "collaborators", each with different permission sets. Collaborators would be able to create and edit tasks, etc. Clients would just be able to see what's going on and communicate.

That's my $0.02

Ryan - It sounds like you're describing the existing external-users/collaborator.  Of course, the difference being that external users aren't free.  Right?

Yes, what he is asking is can free collaborators update the body of tasks. That is the basic difference between a paid user and a free collaborator. 

Here's an idea you can use which is what we do. Our custom workflow contains the steps a project goes through. Because free collaborators can change the workflow status, they can update it to the current step. 

This works for us because our processes are sequential so the current status always implies that all prior statuses have been completed. That may or may not work for your use case. 

I train collaborators to both update the status and record activities as messages in each task. That way, either I or my admin team can read the comments, determine the current status, and update the body of the task. 

I have inexpensive VAs who have full admin access who update tasks while collaborators and clients can only update status, attach documents, and send messages. 

So your choice is to either create unique workflows OR use an admin team to update tasks OR pay for more full users. Sometimes it is better to not having people who may not be that experienced using Wrike updating your tasks. 

I would like to know more about what Sam said re: the difference between external users and collaborators. 

Hi Gail, thanks for the great post on how you use Wrike! I wanted to provide some more information below (just in case you still wanted some information about the difference between Collaborators and External Users). 

In terms of the difference between External Users and Collaborators: Collaborators (free) have very limited rights within the Workspace, while External Users (paid) are more similar to Regular Users. The most noticeable difference between Regular and External Users is that External Users cannot share information.

Essentially, you want to make someone an External User if you want to limit their ability to share information, but otherwise want them to have most rights within the Workspace. 

I can give you an example of how we've used these license types:

We worked with a Freelancer on a recent project, at first I invited them to our Wrike account as a Collaborator. I would make tasks for them and they would add comments and change status as they worked. Eventually they became more ingrained with our Workflow and it is was easier for them to create their own tasks and add details into the description field. The External User license let them work well within the Workspace without giving them rights to share information with additional people. 

Hi Stephanie, 

Are external user rights the same price as full user rights in Wrike Enterprise? I have never come across any information about that. I haven't been using external because I was not aware it was different than collaborator. 

Hi Gail, yes, you've got it External and Regular Users are the same price (no matter what plan you're on). There's more information on the different licences here. Just double checked for you and it looks like you have been using Collaborator licenses (no External Users), and there's been no additional charge for the users you've added as Collaborators. 

Yes, I can confirm that we have 10 full users and everyone else I have added as a collaborator because I had thought that external users were the same as collaborators. Thank you for the link; that is very helpful. 

Got it, glad the link helped!

Hi,

One of our customers is already using WRIKE. Do I still need to create a external user or can I give him access to dedicated project folders within our own organization?

Thanks.

Hi Thomas! It sounds like your customer has a profile in a separate Wrike account. It's possible to be members of multiple accounts at once, but you can't collaborate between these different accounts. If you want to work on a Project in your organization together with your customer, I recommend inviting them to your account as an External User or Collaborator. When they become a member of your account, it won't affect their rights in the account they are currently using. Let me know if you have any other questions about this!

Hi everyone! We have started a dedicated thread to learn more about your experience with Wrike in situations that require real time collaboration (for example when you are taking notes during your meetings) - our Product manager for Collaboration experience in Wrike is eager to dive into this topic. We will be glad to see your comments here and it would be precious if you took a moment to go through a quick survey to share more detailed feedback! Thank you in advance!