Your Feedback Needed - Data Management in Wrike 🧑‍💻

Currently the main pieces of data we store in Wrike are attributes for our various reports we run. We utilize custom fields today to show what type of report, how we categorize it, what kind of data it contains, when it is run, and much more! We keep info on our recurring work and then we use some of the same and some different custom fields to store information about new requests that come into our queue. 

Most data is project specific. However, we've built a document management system in Wrike, using custom item types for the different styles of documents (work instructions, procedures, etc.), and folders and dashboards to help keep it all organized. 

We primarily use Microsoft OneDrive to store any and all data, documents, spreadsheets etc. For all of my Wrike projects, I create a weblink in the Project Description tied to the corresponding OneDrive Project Resource folder. This is where all of my documents will live for that project. This enables me to maintain consistency with our current workflow and sharing abilities across the company.

It would be really helpful for me to have a "Bookmark" at the project level instead of just at the space level to make these external resources more readily accessible. 

Hi folks, thank you for your feedback 🙌

Maybe you also have a need to store and manage data objects/items/assets that are very different from tasks and projects that may not need standard fields such as Assignee/Date/Status? There may be something you or your colleagues keep in spreadsheets, but you would like to work with it in Wrike as well as you need this information to work on your projects.

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

Lisa most of our data objects/items/assets have existing storage processes, whether a secure document repository that tracks changes for important documents or the Microsoft universe I mentioned previously. I don't have anything top of mind that would require additional data management other than better integration to our pre-existing storage environments.

Lisa I was thinking on this some more. One aspect of Wrike that makes it challenging for data management within a project is that the comment threads get lost in the mix with a project/task's activity updates. This makes it challenging to use comments to attach and readily share documents (and find them!) with colleagues. I have to scroll through the status updates to find the file that I am interested in viewing. 

I realize that this may not be directly related to your query, but if there's a way to separate activity updates from the comment threads that would be helpful for data depositing and management!

Thanks for sharing anyway Tyler Farnsworth, our team is keeping a close eye 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

I like using tasks to setup meeting agendas and a place to take meeting notes. These would not need an assignee/due date/etc. It's just a repository for information that I still want grouped with other tasks in a project. It's easier than having to bounce over to the project details every couple of minutes, and then there's a record in the task view for the project that everyone can see and find easily.

Also, some of our blueprints have tasks for check-in meetings and milestone reviews at particular stages of development. We have a special workflow for these meeting tasks that only has three statuses: To Be Scheduled, Scheduled, and Completed. This makes it really easy to see when setting up a new project or managing a project whether or not the meeting has been put on the calendar.

Our product development team tracks meetings a little differently. Because there's so many updates and new info in those meetings, it's too hard to switch in and out of multiple projects in that setting, so we utilize the notes field in the table view to update info. It's not perfect, and there's a lot of manual updates to tasks after the meeting, but at least everything is at the project level and our execs know where it is and how to find it.

I have three stumbling blocks with data management in Wrike. The first is not being able to setup a question in a request form to send info to BOTH a custom field AND the task or project description. We need the info in a custom field to have reports, dashboards, and our calendar function properly. But not being able to have certain info in the description makes it harder for the people doing the work because that info isn't right there when they open up the task. This means there's a lot of manual effort involved in copying and pasting info captured on a form into tasks.

The second, is related to the first in that there's no way to automate that form submission to copy into all the subtasks in a project or parent task. Sure the info is at the parent level, but it's a lot of extra clicks for someone managing the project or the person assigned to the task trying to find the info. Have an option on the form to include the info in subtasks would be amazing.

The third stumbling block is not being able to automatically copy custom field data at the project level down to the task level. There's times when the information is helpful to have in both places. I can't currently think of a way to fix this, even with automation (once it's available for more custom field updates) because you have to pick if it's for a project or a task and it would need to reference both at the same time. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has an idea! :)

Something we track in spreadsheets that I would love to have in Wrike at some point is purchase orders. They are this weird hybrid of data entry and action items, there's so many people involved, and there's no way to put a due date on those things because shipping takes as long as it takes... It doesn't necessarily make sense to have it as a task, but then if there's no task people forget to update the spreadsheet......it's a vicious cycle lol. Also open to suggestions to manage purchase orders :)

We use the Zoho CRM to track our customer data. I can't see that switching to Wrike unless it had marketing and bookkeeping associated with it. In Zoho, we can connect all our invoice information and also setup workflows to automatically email customers when they meet certain criteria. While it would be great to have all the tasks for our sales team in one place, without those other marketing features in Wrike there's no way we could make that work.

Like Jessie Stith,  I also want to manage purchase orders in Wrike. The difficulty I found was in the request form. We needed the ability to submit multiple subtasks on the same request form with separate custom fields (see request here). Some custom fields need to be duplicated (ex. vendor), while others need to be unique (ex. price, qty). 

Our document management system doesn't follow the typical task/project. We're loading documents that should be referenced to learn how to do a certain task. For managing documents, it would be ideal to tell Wrike when a version is completed and ready to publish. Right now Wrike logs every change as a new version in the document manager, and the latest version of the document is always visible. Typically we want to create a draft in the background, and only up rev the doc number when the draft is completed/published. That's also the time the document should become visible to people. 

We have a tooling maintenance log that is in excel. I'd love for there to be a good way to get this into Wrike. The log is a list by part number where we need to record all maintenance work performed.  

Our audit process is managed through excel. This has some tasks with assignees and dates, but also some forms that need to be filled in and saved. Very similar story with supplier management. Most of the supplier approval process is reviewing and saving forms and marking the supplier as approved. 

We have part number drawings, specifications, inspection documents, and machine programs that are created and saved manually today. I'm looking at either merging these into our ERP system or with document management. These are more items that need better organization rather than files on a shared network drive. 

I can elaborate on any of these further if interested Lisa. Because Wrike is so customizable (with CITs, custom fields, and forms), a lot can be accomplished with the current system, even if it looks a little funny. I set up a process for our marketing manager to enter customer surveys into Wrike through a form. It's just a record that needs to be saved and then queried later for marketing reviews. It doesn't take tasks or assignees, but sort of fits into Wrike, and it makes the data entry easier (no more handwriting and scanning). 

Jessie Stith, Mike Fank Thank you so much for such detailed feedback with examples and use cases, we really appreciate it! 💚 

And thank you for the offer Mike Fank, our team will reach out to you if they need further detail 🙂

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 Jessie Stith thank you for sharing your pain points with us!

I wanted to share some good news regarding the first one, we are planning to release the ability to map the answer to the Title, Description, and custom fields at the same time in Q3.

Gunay Heydarova Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Aprenda sobre as funcionalidades e melhores práticas em Wrike com o nosso Treinamento Webinar Online

Gunay Heydarova Wrike Team member Aprenda sobre as funcionalidades e melhores práticas em Wrike com o nosso Treinamento Webinar Online

Hi again, folks! Our team is currently developing new assets tracking in Wrike. Would you like to help us to evaluate it? We prepared 6 use cases within asset tracking to shape our development. We would really appreciate your responses - please fill out this survey 🙌

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

Lisa it says I have to have a Google account to fill out the form. I don't have one of those, sorry. Please let us know if you supply a form that does not have this requirement:

Gunay Heydarova Thank you!!!!! That is going to help my team out so much 😍 

Hi Jason DAquin, we have now updated the link so you don't have to have to have a Google account 🙂 Apologies for the inconvenience! 

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

Lisa I clicked just now and I get the same message indicating that I must sign in. Maybe there's a new link I'm not aware of?

Apologies Jason DAquin, we've now updated it again and it should work. 

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

I recently created a Client database similar to the Client contact Lisa pointed to above.  The main goal of client list was to keep track of current vs past clients, and use that data to populate a Client custom field that is used in multiple request forms.  I have a request form users fill out when they need to add a new client, and one to change the status of a client.  The Clients are stored on custom item types in a "Client" folder.  This all works great! I have a dashboard that shows me new clients and status changes, so I know what needs to be added or removed from the client list. 
The problem was updating the Client custom field manually got to be a pain.  Since there is no way to automate this in Wrike, I created an MS Power Automate flow that listens for a 'task created' Webhook, checks to see if the task is of the Item Type for a Client, and then adds the client info to a Sharepoint list.  I made a second PA flow that listens for updates to the same Sharepoint list.  When an item is added(or removed), using the Wrike API, I pull the Client custom field data into the flow, check to see if the client exist, and if not, I add it to the list and send it back to Wrike updating the Client custom field with the new list.  I have a third flow that listens for status changes, and updates the lists accordingly. 
This has been working well, but I am not comfortable with this as a long term solutions.  There are many areas for this to break and I have had to reset the webhooks many times when Power Automate goes glitchy. 
I would love to see this kind of data processing native to Wrike.  If I could point a single select custom field to a folder in Wrike, and have it use the tasks in that folder as a datasource, that would be amazing!  I could think of so many uses for this kind of functionality, for starters I wouldn't have had to go through Power Automate to have my Client custom field updated! 
The other feature that I would love to see is automatic additions to single select custom fields.  So when a user adds their own value to a single select field, it would be added to the list for future use.  Of course there would need to be an automation trigger for this as well, so when a value is added, I could do something with that info, like create a new Client card....

Thank you very much for your detailed comment Russell Sprague, we truly appreciate it. I've shared your case with our Product Team 👍

Regarding the automation suggestion, do I understand correctly that the trigger "Custom field changes" is not what you're looking for?

Thank you!