Auto-assignment based on status change

Hi everyone! I am Product Manager in Wrike and it would be great to discuss the following topic with you. 

We recently released a new feature which automatically adds task assignees depending on changes to a task’s status. This is the first step on Wrike’s automation voyage, and we are very interested in hearing your thoughts!

Quick recap of what things were like before:

For many teams, changing a task’s status is associated with more actions than just moving jobs down the workflow. Depending on your story, a multitude of additional actions can be triggered by status change. For example, a task status might indicate that an assignee needs to be added or changed. Before, changing all task attributes was a manual process.

Now:

You can specify assignees for task statuses. When a task is created (manually, not via duplication or a Request) with an auto-assigned status, or when the status is changed to one with an auto-assignee, the specified assignees are automatically added.

Best Practices:

  • This feature is perfect for situations where a task always needs to go to particular people if it's in a certain status.
  • Statuses like "In Review" or "Escalation" are particularly great fits, because tasks are usually reviewed or revised by certain people.
  • Quick Tip: Don't forget to remove yourself as an assignee if your part is done.

What do you think?

Our product teams are very interested in your feedback about this new feature. Moreover, if you have ideas of how automation and what kind of automation in Wrike can help you and your team, please feel free to share your use cases below. Let your imagination run wild!

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40 comentários

It would be helpful to have the option to assign a folder as well. Is that being considered?

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It would be helpful to have the option to assign a folder as well. Is that being considered?

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Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Robert, Folder's can't have assignees, but Projects can have project owners. Would you like the option to have a Project owner auto-assigned?

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Hello Stephanie, I was referring to auto assigning folders to task. So much like the way dynamic forms works, it would be nice to have the option of adding a workflow change to a folder as well as a person. ( see second pic, "Add parent folder")

 

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Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Robert, love the screenshot! I just want to make sure that we're getting this correctly for when we pass it to our Product Team. In addition to the option to automatically add an assignee when the task status changes, you'd also like the option to have a parent Folder automatically added?

Let me know if I'm getting it right.

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Yes, that would be correct. 👍

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Stephanie Westbrook

Perfect, thank you for the feedback!

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Would it be possible to have the workflow auto-assign to be more dynamic? we have an approval process that ends with the same two people, but begins with a different individual based on what team the person completing the task is on.  In our current process, the task assignee assigns it to their manager for review.  once it's past that manager's review then it follows the same path to the final two approvers.  I understand the need for different workflow stop for the final two reviewers, but I would like to have something generic, like "Manager Review" for the step but auto select the right manager based on our custom field Team.

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Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Joshua, love the detailed use case! 🙌 So the assignee (for the manager review step) would have to depend on who was changing the status or what team they're part of?

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Great add on to workflows! 

Could an option be added to remove all previous assignees?

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Stephen

Hi Sean, thanks for your feedback. Currently, the logic is purposefully built this way so that people are added to the task as it goes through stages rather than 'passing' the task on.
 
This suggestion has been logged with our Product Team. For now, perhaps a best practice on your team could be rolled out where the person who is auto-assigned, then unassigns the previous person. It's not the ideal solution you're looking for but it would have the same effect.
 
Thanks for your post 🙂
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First of THANK YOU for this feature.  Once implemented it will be huge for us.  But, having it static does not help automation.

For example we need to route Purchase Orders through our office for Approval.  For us it needs to be:

Post a purchase order --> Review: Project Manager --> Review:  Project Owner --> Review:  Executive Level Sign off --> PO submitted to factory.

Butthe PM and Project Owner change for every project.  We need fields to assign these roles in the project panel and allow the workflow to assign based on those fields.

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Anastasia

Hey Ivan, that's an interesting thought, thank you for sharing! So, basically, this request is for using the same workflow but with different sets of assignees, instead of creating multiple workflows?

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Anastasia, correct. Our problem is we have 8 project owners (our sales team) and 5 pm's. One is not dedicated to the other, but assigned to a project based on schedule and type. So we couldnt build a workflow for every combination as there would be 40 or more of them.

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Yes, Stephanie. Jess's Approval Goes to Cheryl, then John, Then Pam. Ryan's Approval goes to Becky, then John then Pam, Todd's Approval goes to Dana, then John then Pam, and so on. Maybe I've answered my own question here, seems that we could easily automate John and Pam, but the 1st approval would be a little trickier.  It's done by team though so we could have an approval workflow by team - wouldn't be able to track the same on my board unless I could combine workflow status there?

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Joshua, I would think it would be simple enough to create some more fields with a user selected in the project panel.

 

So you can customize the label but have a set number of people assigned in various roles.  I would think 3-5 would be a good number.  And the workflow could be tied to that.

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Anastasia

Thanks for the clarifications, everyone! That info helps 👍

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Hi @Anastasia Z

I just wanted to emphasise how desperately we could use Robert Lopez' suggestion for auto adding to parent folders with status change. We would use this for tracking resource utilisation across teams.

 

Do you have an ETA for how quickly that additional feature could be turned around?

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Just chiming in again saying I would love if the "Assign to Project/Folder" on workflow status change could be rolled out as soon as possible.

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I would love the ability to have auto-assign for a specific status be based on the task creator. For example, we would use this in our IT help ticket process. The "final approval" status typically gets assigned back to whoever submitted the request to verify their issue is solved. We use a request form to create the task, but this would also be useful when manually adding a task (not via request). Final Approval status would just get auto-assigned to the task creator. 

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Also, another thing related to this.

Can you please make it possible to un-assign on status change as well. Sometimes items are only under my control for a short time and then I'm not interested in the subsequent workflow steps.

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I have to agree with Sean and Alexander. Having the option to remove the previous assigned person would be a great thing. Right now our tasks pass through a line of people and the tasks just keep building up lists of people assigned to them. It makes identifying the actual person responsible difficult as the task progresses. 

Thanks.

 

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Jim, I would agree, at least from a Project manager standpoint (you'd have to think about what the status means and who might  be working on it then). But from a task standpoint, a solution could be for the people assigned the tasks, to exclude that status from their worklist or dashboards.  While they are still assigned, they would not see that they have a task to complete, as it is filtered out. Just a thought on a work-around at least for the assignees. Also could use the dashboard to separate out the different statuses to kind of identify the users who need to complete a task.

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Hi Joshua, 

Did anything come of this for you? I also am looking for something similar: Dev > Copy Review > Art Review > Internal Review >  Business Review

As the task moves through the workflow the next person in line gets a 'ding' if you will that its their turn

If anyone knows how to make this happen please let my overtired brain know please!

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Hi Elizabeth. I think the "ding" is the least of your worries.  If you use the workflow to assign the user, then they will be notified they assigned.  So when workflow status changes to Copy Review, someone gets assigned and alerted.  The problem is that whoever was assigned in the Dev workflow stage would not automatically be reassigned. That being said, the new person who gets assigned as the workflow progress cannot be assigned from the beginning or they will not be alerted they've been assigned to the task.  

If they follow the task I would presume they would be able to see the change.  Do you change due dates as the tasks progress through the workflow?  if the due date changes, the assignees should get a notification of that at least. 

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I'd like to echo Ivan's request to define auto-assignees by project.  Our organization also works with multiple projects, each with different project team assignments, but all follow the same workflow.  It would be too much overhead for us to create a workflow for each project, so for now, we're unable to use this auto-assign feature.

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I'm joining Ivan and Elaine.

We also have a project-based team-setup so fixed assignements to dedicated persons is not usefull for us in most of the time.

A way to be able to auto-assign a task to 'project owner' oder 'task creator' or any custom field on status change would be great.

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Want to add my request for the same feature added by many above. Auto-Assign from status based on person who created the task. Or ability to create more logic with these auto assign. 

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Love the ability to assign different folks to steps in a workflow... but it really would be great if we had the option to unassign the past assignee's on the status change as well!

 

Thank you kindly,

Amanda

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I'd like to point out that TargetProcess handles this feature quite well through the definition of Roles and assigning a role to each status. https://www.targetprocess.com/guide/settings/assignments-roles-effort-settings/assignments-roles-add-remove/ 

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