[Status: Not planned] Restrict or lock a task for editing
Sometimes, you simply need to prevent tasks being changed. The use cases are many, I will provide some at the end of this post.
Basic Info:
It would be amazing if there were a check-box or a task menu setting to mark a task as "locked for editing" that would simply allow the task to be viewed only (similar to the read only access role). The setting can be reversible, so if you want to allow editing simply uncheck the "locked for editing" box.
If the ability to edit this box was somehow tied to either access roles or license type that would be even more of a game changer. Say for example that one license type admin has the ability to lock or unlock tasks, that would let me solve many of our challenges with request forms being edited after submission or canceled tasks being awakened from the dead unexpectedly.
Advanced Info:
Being able to the lock for various editable parts of a task would really expand the functionality; for example;
- task editing locked
- task title locked
- task description locked
- task status changes locked
- task custom fields locked
- task dates locked
- task comments locked
- task assignment changes locked
API & Automations:
If the locking/unlocking could be set via API and automations many of our wrike challenges would be solved.
Examples:
- We use tasks to track permits, once a permit is expired (status changed to expired) I do not want the task status being changed back to active)
- We use tasks to track awarded contracts, once a contract is closed (status changed to signed) we don't want the task status being changed back to in-progress or started
- When tasks are IT support tickets, i want to prevent the task description (ticket scope) from being edited while IT is trying to resolve the original ticket.
- preventing request forms for internal users from being edited after submission, which has no current work around.
- locking task comments when a task is completed or canceled.
Related Posts:
I very much agree with Joel. Many times our engineering projects are kicked off with a scope that defines all characteristics of the project. It would be very problematic if the assigned engineer has completed 75% of the project and then the scope owner from upstream changes an aspect of the scope. Suddenly we don't know who's in the right and it gets messy very quickly.
Connor Trembley thank you for the kind words.
Sad to say but there has been almost zero meaningful development of the Wrike platform over the last 18 months.
Strip away the the holiday emoji's & use case templates (which I find no use for) there is nothing exiting or new to look at.
The automation engine is maybe the only thing, but we were already using the API so there are not any realized improvements from the addition.
Hey folks, thanks for your continued feedback here!
One thing I wanted to mention here in case it's helpful - it's possible to track who made changes in task descriptions by clicking on this version history icon:
And if you're interested in a deeper dive of what's been released in 2021, please check out this recent Community post 🙌
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
Thanks Lisa, haven't seen that before but that should definitely come in handy.
Joel, I worked with Wrike support and found a bit of a workaround. Basically you create a read-only folder that only you can edit (or whoever you'd like to have the permission). Then, in my use case, I would add a second tag to the desired task for this read-only folder. According to the support team, the most limiting access roll then takes precedent and locks the task. Suddenly it's a read-only task and both the team filling out the scope and the team abiding by it cannot edit it.
Not sure if this would tick all the boxes you're looking for but hopefully it helps a bit.
My business is suffering from a similar issue. Often times tasks are created with a scope in mind and then over time that scope changes. Although this is a natural progression it has added a layer of difficulty when attempting to back track on how we got where we are, who gave the direction and why?
As a best practice we've been attempting to use the comment field to provide changes in direction, however, this does not prevent anyone from making changes directly on to the description field. Because of this we are faced with the task assignee often times missing changes that were made to the description field or vice versa, adding time, frustration, accountability issues and overall hindering the project.
This very well may be an isolated issue to my business. However, if the ''locking'' of the description field is a feature that could be taken more seriously. I am all for it.
I have similar issues for my group, but also another case that this would benefit from. One case not covered here and not solved by having the history available is user errors. We have highly specific titles for tasks representing a unique analysis task that users rely on to find the given work they need to be doing. At least once a month a user accidentally changes the title of the analysis task to something completely wrong without realizing it and then move on to something else important for their work. A freak out ensues of "oh no all my notes and work is gone!" and then we have to try to hunt down where the task went and revert the change. Having the history allows us to eventually find and recover from the accidental change but it is frustrating to have to keep doing. Users are aware of this possibility but no amount of training or information is going to prevent this as analyst are focused on their work and can easily not notice mistakes made in tracking things when in Wrike.
Being able to lock even just the task title after creation would save us from this monthly exercise.
Thanks a lot for sharing your detailed use cases and workarounds here, everyone, that's super helpful for when we're discussing this suggestion with the Product team 🙌
Please keep upvoting the original post as it helps the team see how popular it is. If we have any updates for you, we'll make sure to let you know 👍
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
Any progress made at all with this? Would love to be able to auto-lock tasks when they are in a completed status.
Not at the moment Rory Hurlburt, so please make sure to upvote the original post above if you haven't done so yet - it will help to have more votes here for when our Product team reviews this idea 👍
Also, I'd recommend checking out Wrike's Access roles that can help with this use case.
Welcome to the Community 👋
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
Just another voice of support for this feature. Ideally for our team it would basically be a status that locks all editing on a task, only certain users can revert, dialogue is generated in the comment window when this occurs
Hi Alex Merrill, welcome to the Community and thank you for adding your support for this suggestion 🙌
Any update here?
Hi Asifbhai Vahora, not for the moment, we'll be sure to let you know if anything changes.
Any updates on this request?
Hi Fatme Chahrour, welcome to the Community 👋
For now, it is possible to prevent users from editing by using Wrike's access roles. Could you please let me know if that would work for you?
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 folks! Our team is currently researching this topic and invites you to participate in the user interviews to discuss a potential future feature. Please check out this post for more info 🙂
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
Replying to original post. States can be set up in a way(workflow) so they can only go into one way.
For example the signed state can only go into an archive state but not into an in progress state. However I still think there is no option per se to fix locking the description.
Hi Florian Gascho, welcome to the Community. Thank you for your comment, to prevent a user from updating a task's description, it would be necessary to change the user's access role to Limited or Read only. Is this what you were looking for?
Also, I'd like to mention that you can check our New to Community forum to discover all the resources you can find in our Community 🙂
Hi Juan, yes that was part of it. I just felt like it'd be good to mention the current options concerning this task so that others might find a solution to the original poster's issue.
Best Regards
Perfect, thank you Florian Gascho!
As the Wrike admin, I have members of our team asking to "lock down" or archive projects that are complete.
The reason for this ask - we have other users who are going into completed projects attempting to restart them, rather than put in a new request. Understandably, this is terrible for data/metrics if users are not inputting new requests.
Having the ability as admin to set entire projects to "read only" would be ideal. Has this been worked on by the Wrike dev team?
Patrick Burd
have you tried selectively sharing these projects? Here you can set up usergroups to have a limit access.
e.g Team A has Readonly rights whilst Admin Team has full access. Sadly there is no automation options for that yet though...
Hi Wrike team, is there any news on this feature, it seems to be pretty popular.
100% need the ability to lock down users from editing titles or completed tickets. It's all well and good to tell users not to do something, but as Admins we should have control of this and prevent things from being modified past a certain stage. Do better Wrike. How many requests do you need to have to know this is a wide reaching issue.
Hi folks, thanks for your feedback!
Our team has researched this topic and for now, it didn't make it to the roadmap due to the complexity of locking various instances of tasks. They may revisit this idea in the future so we'll keep sending your feedback to the responsible team.
At the moment, we're researching a similar feature for custom fields that would allow setting up who can edit certain fields, with plans to introduce it in the coming months. We'll let you know how it goes.
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
Since locking individual tasks seems to be too complex, perhaps the entire project could be locked once all the tasks are completed. I have instances where users will dig up old completed projects and ask for revisions or additional graphics. I've added an "ARCHIVED" workflow, so once all the tasks are complete, the project is automatically ARCHIVED and really moved to an archive folder. I thought this would help combat our issue, but alas, it has not.
Another suggestion I have is closing/turning off comments, similar to social media. Once a project is done and we mark it complete, perhaps it closes the comment section.
This would be a great feature!
Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Learn about Wrike’s killer features and best practices with our Online Training Webinars
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