[Status: Backburner ⌛️] Assign User Groups

This feature is an absolute necessity for the way we work, please try to include it on a future update! My team often has 25 or more members actively participating as part of a project team, so having to list them each individually is extremely time consuming. Would love to be able to create groups & sub groups based on types of projects they work on & just assign that group whenever a project they work on is created. That would save so much time on our end! 🙏

We would love to see this feature

This would be a great feature for us.  Like many others have noted, many times tasks are assigned to a group early in the concept or ideation phases of a project. 

We also would love to assign groups to a task! We have groups of editors, designers, etc. Currently we assign certain tasks to all of the editors, all of the designers, etc so whomever is available can claim it. It would be much more efficient to assign the group rather than all the individuals.

Since we've not shared our use case yet, here it is:

We want to be able to assign user groups as a placeholder "role" or position in templates. Certain parts of our templated projects go to one of three people depending on the details of the project. These three people all hold the same position on their respective teams, so the person from the team the project affects would be assigned in place of the group when the template is duplicated into a project. Right now, we're using fake accounts representing the three of them on the template and re-assigning the task to the correct person after it's duplicated.

Bonus (variation on above):

Our organization has several help desks emails and generic contacts that are each backed by one or more people. Not everyone knows who is actually part of that help desk or has each position (it may have changed, or they may be a new employee), but everyone recognizes that the positions themselves exist in our organization. For the moment, we've added the shared position email to Wrike, but that means that everyone in that position must share the Wrike account and, if they have their own as well, struggle to manage two Wrike accounts*. It also doesn't work well with logging in since we're using an SSO for that and the shared email accounts don't normally have the ability to log in (the people behind the account just have access to the mailbox from their own login).

*A specific struggle is when the shared account gets shared on something, but not the people that back the account. At that point, someone has to switch to the shared Wrike account and share the task with the actual people in that position.

I'd love to invite the people behind these help desks and other positions into Wrike themselves and setup a group in Wrike to represent the position that the rest of our organization is used to. A common way for us to pass work around is to just assign it, so being able to assign these position groups ("job role" perhaps) is a must. Additionally, these positions are frequently part of repeating projects that are duplicated from templates, so assignments work much better than @mentioning.

Finally, some in the thread have suggested allowing "assignment" of groups to just be a shortcut to assign all the members of the group. To me, there is a valuable difference between "the team is responsible" and "Sally, Joe, Tim, and Jane are responsible." If that's what you're using to send work to that team, having the group still assigned indicates it's been sent to the team but hasn't been routed within the team yet. The other could mean that they decided they all need to work on it. This might be a scenario that never happens in your team culture, so you aren't worried about the difference. At this point, however, this thread as been around long enough that I don't think Wrike is going for a quick solution, so I'd like to get as much information available as possible.

I spoke to Demetri (apologies if I mispelled your name) while attending the 2018 Wrike conference about the need to be able to assign a group to a task. Reviewing the "Role Assignment" option, it doesn't appear that it will help with resolving my need to assign a group to a task. The teams aren't given permission to add or remove tasks from projects. We have several projects that require specific groups to be responsible for providing assets for a single task. Currently I have to assign everyone to that task individually, I also share the project with the group, and @mention the group just to ensure I'm not missing anyone as roles change, and people leave. Being able to assign a group would be GREATLY APPRECIATED!

I'm curious if we have any update from Wrike Development Team on this topic. After nearly 2 years of asking for this feature, the best we've gotten is "keep those comments coming!"

Our simple case is we have a small design team and when we send tasks to them, we have no way of knowing who is available to do the work. We need to be able to assign it to the team so the "next available" designer can pick up the task independently of the rest of the group who may out of the office or working on other priorities.

@Vicki

I 100% agree about the lack of follow up.  Once upon a time, wrike seemed to listen and act on user input more seriously and timely.  But they're bigger now, so that might just be the way the cookie crumbles.

While I want the user group feature too... I think your use case could be easily solved with existing features (speaking from someone who led wrike for a team of 10 designers). 

For example: create a folder to contain all design requests.  This folder would get incoming tasks via wrike request form, or via an email sent directly to that folder.  Then individuals in the design staff can follow the entire folder to get notified of the incoming requests.  Designers can either grab unassigned tasks themselves, or a design director can monitor the workload and assign as needed.  We used to do a daily 30min meeting, working in a dashboard or the workload view, where we'd deal out the unassigned tasks to people based on their availability that day.

Especially with the Kanban view, that is the purpose to allow persons to with similar roles to "pull" tasks (not assigned).   So groups can view a task and pull it when they are ready to work.  You offer this view, and this is the intended purpose of how it works, so you really need to make it functional.  It's not a very agile workflow otherwise.  Thank you 😊

I don't think it is super wise for Wrike to continuously undermine what numerous, highly intelligent Project Managers are saying repeatedly here!!!!!  We are telling you time and time again.  We really need this feature and you keep telling us we really don't and that you don't think it is a best practice, or that it fits well with how we should be doing things.  Yet we are telling you, again and again, in many scenarios, across a multitude of businesses, that we have groups of individuals with similar skills sets, who for one reason or another need to be alerted/notified/assigned the task.  You do not know our businesses and I think what you are failing to understand is that as part of this practice it is probably very likely many of us have any expectation that if we assign a group called "Intake" which consists of 9 individual working 4 different shifts over 24 hours, we fully expect whichever individual receives the task to assign themselves to the ticket once they pick it up from the intake group, but you are stealing this opportunity from us by not allowing us the tools we've repeatedly asked for over the past 2 years to manage our businesses efficiently.  Now PLEASE, we are practically begging for this very, very simple yet CRITICAL tool to aid us in this process.  Thank you for listening to your valued, appreciative customers.

@Angi - again, just playing devil's advocate...

If you have a paid subscription type, you can set up a dashboard to function in the exact way you describe (this is what the graphic design team does at my current company).   There is a widget panel for "unassigned" tasks that people can go to see task they can assign themselves when they're available. 

However, if you're referring to the "Board View" specifically, then you're right, as that view is based on task status, not assignee.

Granted, wrike has several kinda-sorta-overlapping features, creating confusion about how best to do something.  

@sam - So you are saying that you can assign your "Production" group a task, that will move to "in progress" status because the prior dependency was closed, and each of those members will receive a notification because they are assigned the task??  I don't think that will work either!  Because all of those features are based on task status as well.  And unfortunately, we use Kanban, so I was specifically referring to the Board view, so that would not work for the dashboard option you suggested either.  It just doesn't seem wise that features don't support the views.

But I greatly appreciate the effort!!! 😁

@all, to keep you updated on this request.

During the investigation, the product team has discovered some further changes needed in other areas of the workspace for this to work correctly.

They understand the importance and popularity of this request and it's something they'll continue to work towards. Right now there is no roadmap ETA as of yet.

Will keep you updated here as I have more information. As always, your votes, use cases, and current workarounds you use help with this investigation so please continue to add your input here. Thank you!

Keeping this one on the radar and adding my 2 cents as well. We have tasks that are assigned to a group (say, Proofreaders) and when we send tasks to them, we need to be able to assign it to the whole group so the next available person can assign it to them self, update the status accordingly and work the task without creating confusion or duplicate work. Our projects involve other departments, so we need them to manage their workload vs. us having to try to determine the best assignee.

Upvote from me as well.

@Wrike Team Has this option come into effect? I tried to add a user group to a task but I couldn't.

It would be great if we can add a user group as a assignee to the task so that the entire team can be added in one click. Please let us know if its still under-construction or is there a way to easily add assignees (belonging to a particular user group) to the tasks. It would be really helpful.

This feature would be great for us!  We assign multiple writers to a task to create scripts.  Then we pick a script from there to go into production.  We don't want to have to add each individual writer (6-8 of them) as a task owner.  It would be a lot simpler to assign a group to it with one click.  

A mockup for everyone's consideration:

Wrike - I think this would (a) not be insane to implement, (b) satisfy 1/2 of the people in this and similar threads so you can mark them as complete.

Hi @Sam,

Greetings!! Hope all is well. The above mockup is excellent for adding user groups as assignees within Wrike.

@Team Wrike - I would like to clarify whether this one click option will come into place for the "Wrike for chrome extension" as well? Please let me know your comments. Thanks!

I case where you interact with a group of subcontractors or a team, and they internally manage ressources, it also make sense to assign the task to the user group and let the group re-assign to individual users as necessary. This is also helpful if a team is rotating in roles and as a PM you do not necessarily want to keep track of who is on duty at any given time. You have my vote for this!

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your continued use-cases and ideas here, they are really helpful to our Product team!

There is another thread with a related idea on the Community, and its status is currently "In the making". Please check it out and let me know if that covers at least some of your suggestions here.

Thanks for posting! 

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

Hey again, everyone! Please let me know if the Job Roles feature covers this suggestion? We'll appreciate any feedback! More info in this thread: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115000153925-Ability-to-Assign-Tasks-to-Generic-or-General-Assignees

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 Lisa, For my team the Job Roles feature isn't quite what we're looking for.  My specific use case is this:

I would like to see the ability to assign user groups (defined at the admin level) to tasks.  For example, when I assign the QA user group to a task, all members of the QA team would be individually assigned to the task, but the person assigning only needs to assign one user group instead of selecting each user.  

Thanks!

Lisa, it does indeed look like the Job Roles feature covers the suggestion.  However, some of us were under the presumption that this feature would be included as part of the base business or enterprise versions of Wrike. 

Lisa,

As stated by Brian. It is unfortunate that another feature is hidden behind a feature paywall

First of all, Job Roles aren't included in the Business version, so I can't test it. But in reading about it, it does not seem to meet my needs. I want to be able to assign a task to a User Group and notify all those users that a task is ready for them. For example, a product is ready for proofreading. I want to alert all the proofreaders that it's ready and whomever is available first can then grab the task and reassign it to themselves, complete the task, and it moves along. Job Roles would allow me to note I need a role, but it doesn't notify anyone and doesn't assign the task. Then later I can assign it to an individual. That's not the same functionality.

Hi all! Here's the response from our Product team regarding Job Roles:

- Job Roles release in October 2019 is an early iteration which does not yet have all the capabilities the team's envisioned for the feature
- the existing capabilities are focused solely on the resource management use-cases, specifically project staffing based on required and available resources and it is facilitated by Workload Chart feature which is available in Wrike Resource
- the team are improving the feature and its penetration across Wrike, and they are also collecting additional requirements and eventually, it may be bundled in a different way, however no specific ETAs or firm plans in regards to that. This is why your feedback is very important, so if you have any more use-cases to share, please do, we'll continue passing it to the Product team. 

So the team's planning to continue improvements in this area - I'll keep you posted on the development here! 

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 Lisa,
Are there any plans to expand this out to allow User Groups to be assigned at the Project & Proof Review Levels as well? Tasks are very superfluous to my team's workflow, we have found that assigning very single task for each project to be overkill & time consuming. My team would function much more efficiently if project owners were able to be assigned & tagged on both projects & proof reviews.

Hi Kevin Karl, sorry for the late reply!

No updates on assigning User Groups, but it's possible to @mention them already: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/articles/209603269--mentions#mention

Hope this helps! 

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 lot of posts here and somebody may have already brought it up. But having the same capability to add a group to the following list. If there is another thread for this please let me know, but I didn't see one that included following a task.

I tend to agree with limiting the number of assignees to help with the accountable/responsible part. But making sure a group follows a task would be helpful as well.

There are over 170 votes on this and the dates are back awhile. Has any progress been made to this feature, is it forecasted at all?