Recurrences: Limitations to formatting, due dates, and assignment functions
Recurrences are a lifesaver for the most part, but there are some issues my team keeps finding that are causing odd/unforeseen issues for the team:
1. Recurrences must be set for a specific number of work/business days. As a result, monthly recurring tasks must be shorter than the shortest month. For example, our recurrences all skipped February this year because the holidays at the start of the year caused the recurrences to bleed into February.
Requested fix: Add the ability to set a task to run through "the end of the month"? This seems a lot more intuitive and would avoid odd glitches/skips in recurrence.
2. Editing a recurrence makes formatting (see: checkboxes) disappear. I love checkboxes in tasks, but we inevitably have to make updates to recurrences from time to time. Right now, our only option for fixing formatting is to recreate the recurrence from scratch.
Requested fix: Allow formatting changes to carry over across multiple edits.
3. Recurrences cannot be assigned with followers or statuses. Wrike tutorials recommend assigning tasks to only one person; however, I would like to assign certain tasks out to my team automatically without having to manually re-assign every month. My only options right now are to 1) assign to multiple people, or 2) assign to myself and reassign on a monthly basis. Likewise, we have to manually update statuses after assigning tasks instead of assigning tasks to the status that makes the most sense.
Requested fix: Add more features/fields, including followers and statuses, to our recurrence options.
4. Dependencies do not get along with recurrences. I would like to set up multi-step processes via blueprint, including a few that would operate using recurrences, but dependencies seem to be restricted to manual setup.
Requested fix: Enable recurrences to spawn with dependencies.
Thanks in advance for your help!
I really agree with #4! We use a ton of dependencies and would love to have this as an automated option within recurrences.
Hey Andrew Castaneda, these are some great suggestions! They've been passed on to our Product team 😄
#4 Dependencies do not get along with recurrences
I need a recurrent task to have a dependent start and end date, and the number of iterations adjusted accordingly.
Hey Finlay Small, thank you for this use case! It's been passed on to the Product team.
I struggle with our recurrent daily departmental meeting template every time something changes and I need to make an edit. Our meetings are based on a three-week rotating schedule (each task has a recurrence of "Repeat every 3 weeks on [this day]" for example), so every time I need to make an edit to the meetings, I have to re-format fifteen days-worth of schedules for ten people. There's a lot of formatting in these large templates, so I have to carefully check the schedules contained on them before re-constructing the recurrence for each day. It's very time-consuming. If I could count on the "edit recurrence" to keep all my formatting, this would take a fraction of the time to do.
Hi Michelle, thank you very much for sharing your use case with us. Unfortunately, I believe I don't fully understand what data you'd like to change using the "edit recurrence" option. May I please kindly ask you to elaborate on what "formatting your templates" implies in this case, so we can provide you with an accurate reply?
Would you consider that automation rules could be of help and might serve as a replacement for the recurrence?
Looking forward to your reply!
Hi Michelle, sorry for mentioning you two times in a row, I've seen this other message you left about the same topic and now I perfectly understand your case. I'll leave you a reply in that other thread. Thank you!
Thank you, @...!
I strongly agree with #2. All formatting seems to be lost when I want to edit the recurring task description. I should be able to edit without losing formatting like checkboxes. The workaround seems to be: Delete/cancel the recurrence. Duplicate the most recent task. Update the task description. Setup the recurrence again. Is there a faster way to do this?
Hey Anna Schild, I've asked our Support agents to look into this 👍
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Torne-se um especialista em Wrike com o Wrike Discover
Thank you Lisa, much appreciated!
Another vote for this! So frustrating that the formatting doesn't hold and that check boxes are not an option.