Podcast workflow

Hi Anfernee, Podcasts is a new one I've heard here - very cool. I'd love the know the topic. I'm a big fan of Podcasts 🙃

It would be great to hear the stages of development you go through. This is simple Milestones the Project goes through from 'Not Started' to 'Completed'. 

I guess you need to write a script or programme for the Podcast first so that might be the first status after Not Started. From there, I'm not too sure so it would be great to hear about your process so I can help build this with you 👍

We're actually looking at introducing some podcasts and will need a cross-team solution as well. Definitely interested in following this! 

I think the one interesting thing is that a lot of the work isn't visual (though there are visual components) so I'm not sure the "approval process" would work for audio.

Hi Stephen, thanks for the response.

At a high level, these are the steps we go through for each episode: 

Julian, for us there's an approval required at different stages - like when the editor completes the first edit of the audio, and then before the blog post is published on our website. I guess the workaround would be to link to the audio file and to the draft on the website, as opposted to having embedded audio media in Wrike? How might you do it?

Thanks for this, so helpful Anfernee!

So I don't run Podcasts myself, but going on the guide above and some of the comments here I'd suggest something like the below. There may be more steps and things that happen behind the scenes which you want to include in your Active statuses, and there may be stages where you don't need to include some of these statuses, but it might give you some ideas on where to start. It's always good to think: where does the project 'stop' i.e. being worked on or waiting for some confirmation/info - it's at these points, having a status to refer to is most useful to your team.

Active status: These are the stages of when the project is actually open and being worked on.
Not Started
Confirming Guest
Interview/Guest Confirmed
Recording in progress
Recording Complete
With Editor
Editing Started
Draft 1 Approval
Editing 2
Draft 2 Approval
Editing 3
Draft 3 Approval
Note: Depending on how many approvals and re-editing usually occur you can add more 'Draft # Approval' statuses so you know how many re-edits were needed - usually three stages of edits are more than enough)
Audio Approved.
Artwork & Notes
Artwork/Notes Complete.
Uploaded to server
Publishing Ongoing
Published to channels
Promotion in Progress

Completed Status: 
Podcast Completed and Published.

Canceled Status:
Podcast Canceled. 

Deferred Status: If you don't plan to work on it right now.
Podcast Deferred.

You can also create an auto-assign by Status so the right people are assigned to tasks at certain stages.

Also; For using Proofing and Approvals in Wrike for audio, you can easily upload to YouTube and then use Wrike's full proofing tool with this YouTube video. There's plenty of Youtube tutorials on how to upload audio to YouTube, I like this process 🙃

That's looking good Stephen. Wasn't aware of the auto-assign by status - that's brilliant.

Will have a go at putting this together in the next 2 weeks and report back. Can't wait to use Wrike workflow for the Bean Ninjas podcast 😎

I listened to the Yoga and Mindfulness podcast Anfernee, really interesting stuff. We facilitate mindfulness activities like Yoga classes here at Wrike too so we totally agree with you guys, it's so important to discover ways to relax and 'switch off' for a little while.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with the Workflow and status processes above. Don't forget to pop back to let us know how you get on or if you want to discuss this a little more as you build it, I'm more than happy to discuss 🙌

@Julian, have you thought about the Youtube solution I posted? I understand it's not ideal for audio but it's actually a cool way to manage this type of work 🙂

Just reporting back @Stephen and team.

I tried to get a workflow happening but it got too messy and confusing, (probably because I haven't had the time to fully learn the functionality of Wrike yet) so here's what I've done instead.

1. Create Podcast project with default milestones - New, In Progress, Completed, On Hold
2. Created a task that I'm calling "[PODCAST TEMPLATE] Episode XX - Guest Name / Title", and within that, I've added sub-tasks for everything that needs to be done for each episode. (See attached image)
3. For each episode, I simply duplicate the template task, rename the new task and work through that. 

I'm sure there's probably a better way to do this so that I can get proper reporting on how the overall podcast project is going and where things are being held up, etc. So open to your suggestions. For now, this is working for us 😉 

Hi Anfernee, thanks for coming back.

This looks great and if it works for you, that's great. Wrike is super flexible so it's really up to you which way you want to set this up. For me I usually create a Project, with tasks, rather than tasks with subtasks, but that's not the right or wrong way, just my preference 🙃

Now you have the project set up to work on, I'm wondering if you need to report on these projects? What does the report like look when you do this? Are you leveraging Dashboards or any other Views? Perhaps Calendars? Calendars are a great way to visualize this in a quick way.

Love to hear your thoughts on the post-project completion steps 🤓

Each episode has a series of tasks associated with it, so I can either

A) set up each episode as a project and then duplicate the project for each episode, or

B) set up each episode as a task with sub-tasks within it

I already have too many projects that I have visibility to for marketing (and non-marketing), so I've gone with option B which is cleaner for me.

I think I can get by for now without reporting on this particular project, as it's obvious if there's a delay with podcast episodes or not.

I do want to create a content/editorial calendar which includes the podcast tasks as well as other content we're producing.

Just checked out the calendar function. You're right, that's a good way to visualize what's coming. Thanks for the tip Stephen! 

Anfernee Chansamooth Do you have any updates to how your podcast team is using Wrike now? I'm curious to hear how it played out over the past few years.