Chicago users

Hey Nancy. I'm in Chicago and always happy to chat all-things Wrike!

@Nancy - I was only talking to a colleague recently about how the creative team uses Workflows and statuses.

I'm interested in hearing about any custom statuses you have created for Projects? 🙂

Hi Nancy, I'm not quite in Chicago. Am in Champaign... We have had loads of success with Wrike and am happy to connect if you want. 

Hi Nathan & Thu.  Appreciate you connecting.  We're just deploying our Wrike instance on Monday so I will be back in touch after that.  Thanks and looking forward to chatting!

Hi Nancy,

I'm in Chicago and also work for an in-house marketing/creative department. Would love to connect with others to share insight and best practices.

Hi Kerry -- good to meet you and yes, I look forward to connecting with you!

@all, so many people in Chicago - I always wanted to visit 🙂

I think it would be great to start sharing some creative teams best practices so we can learn from each other.

I always find it interesting to hear how Creative teams build their Request forms, everyone seems to take a different approach. Some teams have one form for all work in-take, while others have separate forms for different teams within the creative department.

It would be great to hear a little about the approach you all have taken and if there's anything you'd like to improve or achieve?

Hi all -- glad to meet you and hoping there are more Chicago area folks out there!  We just started using Wrike about a month ago; switched from a more complicated system in the hopes to simplify and get better user adoption.  I'm the traffic/production manager in an in-house marketing department with creative services.  We have three full time graphic designers plus some freelance designers for overflow work, four full time multimedia producers plus freelance writers. We have about fifty or so, project requestors/project managers around the globe. 

We've built custom request forms that we require people to use (utilizing custom fields, so we are ensured to capture all the info that we require for reporting) which tie into different workflows and durations depending on the type of project. 

Right now, the only complication that I'm seeing (and we were aware of this going into Wrike) is the limitations on reporting.  Our previous system had very robust reporting and capabilities of complex reporting so it's a little bit of an adjustment on that side... trying to get all the info out of Wrike in as few reports as possible.

Looking forward to hearing from you... how you work in Wrike...any best practices that you've learned along the way?

Thanks

Nancy

Hi Nancy,

We ran into the same issue when it comes to reporting. I find myself having to export to Excel and create charts and graphs from there. I'm hoping we can see some more report types from Wrike in the future, because each report they offer gives limitations to what we need. I have to run two different types of reports to get the information I need. It would be great to be about to combine or pick and choose. I've heard of others using APIs and connecting to another system like Tableau. I would be curious to hear from any of them.

Thanks

Kerry-Ann

I have the same challenges with reports. I ended up using the API to create a PHP integration with an internal Wordpress site so I could dump out data for non-Wrike users. That said, I am not really a developer and it becomes challenging to add more to those reports when I have a quick idea. I'm hoping the Wrike Integrate (I think that's what it was called) that was announced at the recent conference will solve some of those issues though...

We tried to keep our workflow simple.  Within a graphic design project we have the following tasks:

• Writing
• Design
• Asset Upload Submission
• Deliverables

For our video projects we have a few more tasks but similar to this. I was hoping we'd be able to slice and dice the reports a little more.  It does seem to be convoluted when you have to output multiple reports to get to a basic conclusion and in our instance not desirable as people would like to be able to run a report for themselves without having to do manipulation.

We are supposed to get Tableau but that may be restricted to only a few licenses.  I'm hoping that Wrike will continue to add power to their reporting.

Other than that (and a few other little annoying things that we think should be basic), the heavy users of the system seem to really like it.

Looking forward to sharing more.... and also hoping that Wrike will hold a forum in Chicago in 2019 :)

Hi 

We've been using Wrike at the agency for about a year now. Our team is comprised of visual designers and developers. We really haven't rolled it out to the off-line teams who still use a mixture of Basecamp and Trello. Reporting, priority setting, and workload management is a struggle but we are working through it. 

We started with a couple of different workflows but have settled on one which has multiple steps to accommodate our dev team. Our visual designers are not so enamored with the multiple steps and are happy with To Do, In Progress, In Review and Done. 

We manage staffing using a workflow state called "Resourcing" to help plan potential workloads on unsigned business.

We plan most work in "sprints". It's really just a way for us to say for the next couple of weeks, across all projects/clients, we are working on this...

I used to work primarily in JIRA. Atlassian had a few user meetups once or twice a quarter. It was really helpful to trade secrets and horror stories. It might be interesting to start a Wrike Meetup in Chicago/Loop. Maybe? 

Hi Tom,

Good to meet you.  We have the following status'

-Checked by Resource  (this is just a check and balance to make sure a resource knows that they are assigned)

-In Progress

-In Review

-Approved

-Completed

So far, so good although people do get a little mixed up with the status' and who is supposed to be changing the status'.

I totally agree on the reporting... was hoping we've find it a little more robust once we got into it, but have actually found the opposite.  We're hoping that the continued work Wrike is doing on native reporting will help us.

One of our big internal challenges is getting project managers to give us enough time to do the project.  It's not unusual to have requests come in for same or 1-2 day turn-around.  I'm interested in hearing more about how you handle your "resourcing" state and the criteria you use for that.

I would be totally open to having a Wrike Meetup in Chicago.  I'm not in the loop (in the western burbs)  but could easily make it there with a little planning.

Hi Nancy. 

"Resourcing" is used as a status for projects and tasks that fall outside of the current work stream. Typically it is work that we are planning to work on but it hasn't started, been signed off on or approved. This allows us to give future assignments to people without feeling like they are 100% committed to doing it. It indicates work that is flex work. Like a rough draft of work, it tells the assignee that the work isn't theirs yet, it could be, but not yet.

There are two ways that work comes in. We use the forms function within Wrike to have clients submit tickets to be worked on. The producer/resource manager lets the customer know when the work can be completed. Other projects have tasks being created by the project manager. We have daily and bi-weekly meetings to discuss resources and timelines. 

We are constantly juggling resources and timelines based on all of our requests. It really just boils down to all of us talking about what can and cannot be done in the timeframes allowed. Sometimes we have to crank on things we weren't planning on but we typically manage those timelines and client to understand timelines. 

Hi Tom,

We are in in-house creative group so our latitude is a bit different for assignments.  We usually get told when someone needs something and that's what we work to... albeit, those are sometimes 1 day turn-arounds and as you can imagine play havoc with reviewing and scheduling.  I assume you are working in an agency?  If so, can you share what your structure is.... who receives jobs, reviews, assigns work, reschedules, etc.

Hi Kerry-Ann,

I'm wondering the same about how your group is structured as you are an in-house.

Thanks

Nancy

One other thing to everyone... do any of you have a work-around for duplicating reports?  It is so counter-productive to create a report and if you need another report that is slightly different, you have to rebuild the report from scratch.  They definitely need a "save-as" function for reports.  If you all have any tricks or work arounds for this, let me know.  Thanks!