Change Task Status when Duplicating Projects

Also agree. Would be extremely helpful (logical) if all tags/statuses built into template project should pass to the duplicated project. 

Is this solved by the new blueprints functionality?

Also agree with this!  We use templates with our Salesforce integration and would love if the status kept with our deferred statuses from our template.  Since we have tasks assigned to specific people, we do not want them to think that their part is active when it is not.

@Gretchen You're quite right, when you're using Blueprints, the statuses that are used in them remain the same when you launch tasks from them 👍

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

Has anyone had success with the task status being maintained using Blueprints? If so, please share. I have a workflow templated in blueprints, but when I duplicate or create from the blueprint, the status still changes on all tasks to active.

@Stefanie Hi, happy to see you on the Community 🙂 Please let me demonstrate how I create work from a Blueprint :

1. I create a Blueprint project, assign tasks in it and choose Workflow and statuses

2. Then I choose "Create from Blueprint"

3. Now I can choose the settings 

4. And finally, I have a new project in my root folder, where tasks are already assigned and have statuses (the same statuses as in the Blueprint project)

Please let me know if it doesn't work the same for you and I hope it 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

Thank you, Lisa. Very helpful. Confirming I am able to do this successfully when the status is considered an active status. However, when the status is considered deferred then the Create from Blueprint activity still transitions the tasks to Active. Am I missing a setting where non-active status selection can also be maintained through the creation process?

Lisa, I am also looking for the option Stefanie is referring to above.  Deferred status tasks in Blueprints appear to always shift to Active status when a project is created off the blueprint.  This causes a flurry of notifications to all of the assignees for every task in the project lifecycle, and it has been causing considerable confusion.  Our goal is to suppress those notifications when the project is created.  Any thoughts on how to achieve this?

@Stefanie, @Dan thanks for getting back and sorry for the long reply here!

I'm sorry I didn't mention it before: if a task has a status from the Active status group, the copy will keep the same status. If, however, a duplicated task is in a status from any other status group (Completed, Cancelled or Deferred), its copy will get the first status from the Active status group in that Workflow.

I’d appreciate if you could explain your use case in a bit more detail. Particularly, what is the reason for keeping Blueprint tasks in a status from a Deferred status group? 

Talking about unwanted notifications - please note that there is a setting that allows you to turn off all possible notifications at the moment a Blueprint is launched. It could be easy to miss since there isn’t one for when you do a regular duplication:

As a solution, I'd suggest keeping tasks in your project Blueprint in whatever status you would want them to be after a project is launched, but make sure that status belongs to the Active status group. Note, the status itself can still be called “Deferred” or "Cancelled" but created in the Active group - this can be done using Custom Workflows 🙂

Please let me know if you'd like to discuss this more, I'll be happy to do it 🙌

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- thank you for taking the time to respond.  Here are answers to your notes/questions from my vantage point.  First, when utilizing a blueprint from a Request Form, I don't believe there is a way to uncheck "Notify Assignees," correct?  I believe this leads to all assignees being notified for all of their assigned tasks when the blueprint is duplicated after the form is submitted.

Our company utilizes large blueprints with over a hundred preassigned tasks for each workflow.  If you think of our workflows like an assembly line of dependencies where B can't start until A is finished all the way down the chain, you can imagine how a sudden flurry of notifications and flooded to-do list items can occur if the status is changed from deferred status group to active status group.  Wrike is severely lacking in automation to prevent tasks from showing as active to-do's until all dependencies are completed, which is not something we need to delve into on this thread...  However, our only workaround right now is to keep all tasks for later phases of a project in "On Hold" status until we enter that phase.  Bucketing the tasks like this in a deferred status group is a common workaround being shared throughout the community right now to reduce the amount of to-do items and notifications until the task is ready to be actively worked on by the assignee.

What I don't understand with blueprints is why statuses need to default to the Active status group when duplicated?  The whole point of blueprints is that we can set the statuses to anything we want them to be when duplicated, right?  Why wouldn't the duplication process (either manual or via form) just clone the blueprint along with the statuses we've set?

Hi All. Im sorry to say but the more I use wrike, the more problematic it becomes. We only use it in a small business. The templates sounded very promising but of course, the status flicking directly on to active and trashing everyones inbox is a deal breaker...wrike giveth and taketh away. I sent 5 emails to try and get just a 2 week trial of business ie for time tracking and never got a reply. 

This is really basic stuff and unless Im really missing something here, I think its time to count our losses and move on to something more suitable. For the cost of business plan with our size team, we can almost go to an ERP system and whilst I have been with wrike for a number of years, its only lately, as our business is growing that the wheels are falling off.

Is there are solution to duplicating templates and not becoming active tasks? The last search is not very promising. Blueprints aside (as its not valid for lower plans)...why is a dupe not a dupe...it just doesnt make sense.

Cheers

Mark

Has anyone found a solution for this issue?

Jaime Bellace 

I spoke with Wrike support recently, this is still persistent. It really restricts the potential uses of the Blueprint function, hopefully they fix soon. 

In my opinion, I think this could this be resolved by adding an application setting to the blueprint feature. For example:

• The default setting or behavior could remain how it is now, i.e. automatically changing the task's status to the first active status.
• The alternative would be allowing the user to turn off that behavior via aforementioned setting where the task's status would remain the same as defined in the blueprint (i.e. preferably deferred).

I understand Wrike's explanation behind the current behavior, however, this is essentially forcing the user to abide by a workflow decision decided by Wrike as opposed to the end user. I thought one of the primary advantages of Wrike was to be flexible enough to empower the user to manage projects/workflows that work best for their team/organization. 

Please adjust this functionality as it would make the blueprints feature much more useful!

Just want to add other voice here.  Projects in Blu-prints should follow the same states as developed.   Our workflow is the same; we have a number of tasks that will come in the future on a project; but at creation we want them inactive in a deferred state.  

This issue still persists and I agree. I'm also having a hard time understanding why creating something from a blueprint doesn't create an EXACT duplicate of the blueprint. It doesn't make any sense.

Hi Cansu, We have been trying to find a workaround for this issue for quite some time. "Notify assignees" is an option, task does not appear in the user's dashboard, however, only works as long as the responsibles remain unchanged after having created the project from blueprint.

In order to proceed we have tried to use automization rules that way that the next task only starts once the previous task has been closed or set to a certain status whereby it is important that the responsibles involved can change. However, the attempts have failed. 

Hi Meike Schnarr, thanks for posting! I see that your Wrike Representative is in touch with you to discuss your setup. Please let me know if you'd have any other questions 🙋🏻‍♀️

Hello Cansu,

Following this topic. We create hundreds of workflows each month from many different blueprint templates. There are several individual tasks that are only assigned if they are required. These tasks have to be manually cancelled for every single workflow after it is kicked off from the blueprint. We then have to manually adjust the gantt chart to cover up gaps in the project deadline for each of the workflows. 

Wrike needs to support copying task statuses as set in the blueprint to make this process more efficient. There is no working around this problem. 

Hi everyone! Thank you for your feedback here. Our team is currently working on new functionality that can be enabled in Wrike Labs - Work Templates. These templates are considered as the next generation of Blueprints and the team continues their improvements, so your feedback comes at a good time 👍 

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

Hello, I don't believe work templates solve the issue as they still change all of my statuses. Have we identified a solution to this?

Hi Rebecca, thank you for posting, at the moment, there are no changes in relation to this suggestion. We'll be sure to let you know here if there are any updates👍🏼

Hi Cansu, Our team also has an issue with this feature. We cross-tag our projects because they involve 5+ teams, each team with their own workflows. To automate cross-team requests, we set up the tasks in our blueprint as backlogged. When a new project is created, the task appears in the other team's inbox but they know not to pick up the task because the task is backlogged. When the 1st team changes the status to new; this is when the 2nd team knows to pick up the task. Is there any way to open this or escalate it?

Welcome back to the Community Caterina Reed 👋 Thanks for reaching out! Our team needs to get more detail on your setup to be able to help, so I've asked my colleagues from the Support team to reach out to you about this in private 👍

Please let me know if I can help you with anything else! 

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 everyone! Any news on this topic?

My team often needs to duplicate projects with tasks in status either on hold or cancelled and the only workaround found is to create a cancelled status defined as Active inside the workflow; but this creates issues including for example the fact that the percentage of projects' completion is not reliable since these tasks are seen as not completed.

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

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