Notepad dashboard widget issues and feedback

Note that I added two more important callouts as I have been testing it further. They are at the top of the post.

1. You cannot easily edit the widget; at first glance, the Discard and Save changes buttons do not appear and you have to do some sneaky stuff to get them to show up (hit Enter or click anywhere outside of the content box)
2. Preview box doesn't edit as you change the content

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Hey Rohan V, thanks as always to you! I had some additional feedback after testing it some more:

• After last week's deminar where they showed the Notepad widget, they mentioned that the Link (Replace note with linked content) feature works with Wrike task and project links. Is it meant to just be for Wrike permalinks for Wrike items? 
• If so, just a piece of feedback that it’s not very clear just by writing “Link” as it reads as though it’s any web link (i.e. we tried to link to our Wiki pages, SharePoint, etc.) and I would recommend either an info bubble that states it’s just for Wrike items or I would recommend changing the word to something that is more indicative of the type of link it can take.
• Note that the info bubble reads "Add an optional link to turn your Notepad widget into a clickable shortcut to documents, tasks, websites or other info". I can't remember if I noticed this before, but in this case it makes me believe that we can link to anything, not just a Wrike permalink. So basically this feedback that I have is just that the info button description should match the actual functionality of the feature; if it's just Wrike items, it should read that, but if it's anything, then we should be able to include any link and have it work.

Moreover, I encountered several issues where, when linking to a Wrike item and replacing the note with the linked content, the notepad would just say No description. I can't remember exactly what triggered this as I fell upon it last week, but I think it was when I linked to a Wrike Project (again, if we can only link to tasks, it would be helpful to mention that information either in an info bubble or change the wording of the button). I tried it this morning and it seems to work so if I encounter the issue again, I'll add it here. 

One other piece of feedback: Once you replace note with linked content, there's no way to remove it. Perhaps it should be a checkbox option instead of a button, or that "Replace note with linked content" can change to something that indicates that it unlinks the content. 

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

I second all of what Anna is saying. I just discovered the Note widget and was also confused by the choice of wording and the lack of clear UI direction. I eventually figured it out, but I would suggest making things more straightforward. 

Thank you for your feedback, Ron Grover! 👍🏽

On a different note, welcome to the Wrike Community. 🌟 Please feel free to explore all our available resources here.

Basudha Sakshyarika Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Basudha Sakshyarika Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

I was going to report a bug with this new widget because the hyperlink doesn't work, but I searched the community first, read this post and discovered the link option only works with WRIKE links. 

This important bit of information should be added to the widget's description to prevent further confusion. 

Feedback from my end is that we would utilize external links more than within Wrike to make this widget useful. A notepad with a rich text editor would be amazing! What I wouldn't give to have a single "quick links" widget with bullet points of hyperlinks! I submitted this idea two years ago in the "bonus" section of my request. :) 

• "You can only add a line break if you hit SHIFT+Enter - not apparent that that's the case".  This is exactly what I came here to find out - I tried everything else - thanks!!

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

I share a lot of the same thoughts as other posts here. I wanted to add some additional ideas.

First, a bit of background. I have a weekly meeting with my manager to go over the status of each project I'm working on. We discuss the phase a project is in (the task we're on in our workflow), the hours spent on a project, due dates, and notes on the project. I've been using a Google Doc to do this, but naturally that involves a lot of manual translation of data from Wrike.

When I saw the Notes Dashboard, I got excited because I could leverage the data from Wrike directly and hopefully save a lot of manual work for myself. However, Notes is currently quite limited, as others have said.

I'd love to see the following features:

• Link data directly from projects so they update automatically as the project shifts: This would function similarly to Task or Project links that already exist in Wrike, but would be related to data within a project or task. Things like the current non-completed task and its associated due date, the final task due date, and # of hours spent on a project. If a due date shifted, this data would automatically push to the Note and keep it up-to-date. When I try to imagine how this could be implemented, maybe it would be like a small widget that would be generated via a project link? Like, you could generate a "Project Overview Widget", check what data you want to be included, and then paste it into a note and that data would link to the project and stay up to date as things change.
• Text formatting options: Other users have noted this as well, but being able to format headlines, color highlights, bullet lists, horizontal lines to indicate sections, and things like that would help keep the notes organized.
• Scrap the Note sidebar and make the whole UI a live text field: Right now, you have a very small text box on the right to make updates, and then those appear in a much larger text area on the left that you can't update. If you just make the Note interface one large live text field, it would remove the duplicative aspect of the current interface, and provide more space for things like a text formatting menu bar, etc. I also think the widget itself could just be a live text box that you can edit without even opening up a separate window. If there is concern that someone would make changes they don't want to save, you could have undo options or prompt the user to save changes when they edit the note.
• Support for multiple links: Like others, the Link function is a bit confusing. When I actually linked to a task, hoping to see the information from that task replicated in the Note, I instead just saw a single link that I clicked on to go to that task. While I guess I could see a use-case for links like these if someone was using Dashboards to split up different kinds of work or things like that, this seems like a less useful version of Pins on the left sidebar. However, if you could add multiple links, it would probably increase its utility. This would require adjusting the interface, but I think it would probably also clear up what Links actually do in this context.

Adding another point:

Sub-bullet points don't retain formatting as they do in the edit screen.

I tried adding a sub-bullet point to an existing notepad widget's bullet point list and while I can see the proper formatting in the text box, once saving, any sub-points don't retain.

Edit window:

Once saved:

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Any update on this?

Hi Colin Hall, thanks for reaching out! A new Text Widget has been released, replacing the Notepad Widget. It allows you to:

• Customize fonts, colors, and formatting
• Create and edit text directly from the Dashboard
• Add helpful links

Please see this Weekly Release Notes post and Help Center Article for more details. If there are any further improvements or changes, we will share an update 👍

Rohan V Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover

Rohan V Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover