Gantt Chart Printing Features

Hi, just adding my support to this request for better printing/offline/PDF options.

Thank you again for creating a separate post for this Jason Pontius. And thanks for supporting, Michael Cartmel!

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

We need to add the ability to only print a specified date range. 

supporting this. I know for a fact how much time and effort you've put on this, Jason. 

We need all the metioned too. Plus the ability to scale it up and print it as A0.

Why am i getting poor resolution when i print a large Gantt chart?  Export looks fine but when i print a PDF text is in poor resolution??

Hi Omar A. Morales, welcome to the Community, and thank you for posting. May I ask what is the size of the print? Thank you!

Hello! Trying to manage a €20 million euro project in Wrike. Our greatest pitfall, amongst others, is the gantt chart. We don't want to use MS Projects because that means our project managers need to update data in two separate softwares - the purpose of Wrike is to streamline our digital workspace. How does Wrike call itself a Project Management tool if it cannot offer a timeline/gantt chart feature that meets it's clients needs? Why are the developers, and maybe management, so obsessed with AI developments but continue to bench this basic feature of project management.

We print our planning to A0, for complex projects of anywhere from 3 months to 10 months. Please?

Soraya Jung  I agree with you completely. I have been on this topic ever since we joined the Wrike community. It is severely lacking. They got our hopes up the other year with a promise that changes were coming to the Gannt printing, but it was a very minor improvement and didn't come close to addressing what the users are asking for. It is literally the equivalent of a screen shot saved to PDF. If you want to print out an entire project, or print the report large, or control the layout, you are out of luck. It's unacceptable in my opinion and I have tried to get the community to take a stance, but either not enough people are raising their voice or Wrike just really doesn't care to have this core, basic PM feature. Wrike is too focused on trinkets and not on core features. This is one of several really big lacking features in Wrike compared to most PM tools, such as MS Project. I have never worked on a project with vendors, construction contractors, or the like where proper printed Gantt reports were not part of the required workflow. I don't understand why Wrike cannot get this, it's PM 101. 

@... Thank you for your understanding of our needs with the Gantt chart. I appreciate the fact that there are a lot of requests and that the team must make decisions about what is important. The frustration with many users looking for real PM features, is that the priorities and decisions being made do not line up with what is important.

We have been asking for proper Gantt chart features, including printing, for years. Yet, it continues to not be taken seriously. While at the same time, we see things like the creation dialog is now in color, and the Invite link is added to the +Create button menu, and the Wrike Assist menu is revamped. These are all nice, but they are not critical, not feature additions, nothing to do with pure PM functionality; they are just minor nice-to-haves.

We are frustrated that Wrike doesn't take the core PM feature set seriously enough to focus on these functionalities while the competitors do. You have lost customers due to the lack of Gantt printing, the lack of real time workload impact (vs. planned workload), and other PM functions that really should be absolute requirements.

Jason, I have long come to realise that Wrike don't want to listen to the community on this issue. It has been years.... YEARS. I don't recommend Wrike anymore. We will be moving to another platform as we plan migration of our projects.

I am pretty sure this is my 3rd post now on this topic.  I am using rudimentary methods to print and display things the way I need to in order to communicate to my customers such as doing a screen shot and pasting it on a slide.  This is just unacceptable. Just ignoring the request for this feature is insane...I too have thought about looking elsewhere.

David Hoffman and Jennifer Breitbach  Thank you both for chiming in. I agree with your comments; it has been years and they refuse to take it seriously and it really is unacceptable in a tool like this. The sad thing is even with the threats of leaving Wrike for a competitor, and for talking about this until we are blue in the face, history has shown that it doesn't make any difference. The threads on this topic go way back; I have spent time on calls with Wrike representatives explaining this multiple times; we continue to say that THIS IS WHAT WE WANT; and we still get no action.

But thank goodness we have updated icons! That's so important.

Jason Pontius and Jennifer Breitbach... total agree with both comments.  And yes updated icons are very important.  I saw zero posts asking for this change and it is great to see it has finally been implemented.  Most of my clients were not asking for print outs of a gantt... they were asking for updated icons.  It was quite amazing actually how the icons created coordination between teams and highlighted the plan to the team in an effective way.

Obviously sarcasm here, but probably all this thread has left to give.  Take it easy guys.

I would like to challenge Wrike to present who on their team has real world project management experience managing large scale construction, deployment, roll-out, or other physical projects and has experience using MS Project, Procore, or Primavera. Primavera is one of the leading large-scale products, MS Project very popular with smaller to medium size applications, and Procore is construction focused. 

Does Wrike have real PMs on staff with experience using these tools? If so, they should understand why we are frustrated with the lack of core features in Wrike.

Oh my gosh, David Hoffman, love the comments. I am quite sarcastic myself, and your take on it hits home with me. Thank you for giving us something to laugh about.

@...  Thank you for the optimistic feedback on what your team is working on and we look forward to the Table view ideas coming soon.

I hate to continue to hammer this topic, but once we are getting the same canned message year after year after year; "not in our current roadmap" and "get back to this idea in the future". When is the future? When will it ever be on the roadmap? We have been told the same thing for years.

You say that "this year" your team is focused on table view improvements. Is there only 1 team and Wrike can't work on multiple improvements at the same time? Because you are working on table view this year anything else has to wait another year?

As we have pointed out in previous posts, Wrike is working on new features and improvements that are not critical features, while this missing core feature of any project management software is missing, and yet it's not important enough to address? I don't get it.

The Betas and More forum has items such as New Design Concepts. This proves our point. Wrike would rather spend resources tweaking the layout of the home page and adding a dash of color and changing icons, than to address the fact that you can't print a proper Gantt chart. What is more important? Tweaking the home page is a nice-to-have, not a must-have. Telling my client that I can't submit a Gannt report but at least we have new colors in the UI is ridiculous.

I have been using Wrike off-and-on since about 2015. I have brought Wrike into different companies that I have worked at over teh years - some of which have been quite large. I work in Construction Management and I can tell you not a single person will touch this software after they discover the printing issues. We have been requesting this since day one.  I am currently in a new trial after starting at a new firm to see if you all have made any improvements and I am here to shout from the rooftops - THE ONLY FEATURE YOU HAVE THAT WORKS WELL IS YOUR GANTT CHARTS; NOT BEING ABLE PRINT THEM TO PDF RELEGATES YOUR SOFTWARE TO NEAR USELESSNESS!  If any leadership at Wrike is listening, please understand that you may as well burn what little money you have left because you have made it clear that, as one of many PM software solutions in a crowded marketplace, you cannot prioritize critical issues.

The whole snapshot thing is a great idea in theory, but my clients, managers and co-workers all complain when they receive a link because JUST WANT A PDF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have the ability to print pdf's to all architectural sizes and when attempting to print to pdf, I get about a page and half of data.  That is all.  Maybe it is a limitation of spooling memory in the browser, maybe the code you all are using is limited and you don't want to invest solving a known limitation?  I don't know, but it's clear you have a massive problem on your hands that goes back nearly a decade.  What sucks the most is that you have pile of people in your forums who have believed in your product enough to show it to co-workers and colleagues, they care enough to waste their time writing up feedback here - FOR FREE - and you are year-after-year giving us the "yeah, yeah... here is a SR. Developer who is going to tell it to you straight... except that he won't say anything of substance and will just end up re-directing to "improvements."

This is akin to a surgeon coming out to explain to the patient's family that unfortunately he couldn't help their loved one, but he was able to paint his toenails - and they look super pretty. This is the last time I try your product and I will focus on professional solutions for my industry. If I was y'all, I'd hire Jason Pontius because that dude has been giving you valid feedback for years now and you look like clowns ignoring him.  C'est la vie my dudes.

HD Shepherd  Can't agree with you more. I have been making this claim ever since we started using Wrike. It's unbelievable that a core feature like this continues to go unresolved with Wrike while their competitors have had this basic feature since day 1. They just don't get the fact that industry contractors like Gantt reports, not lame PDF screenshots and definitely not "shared access" to an online platform. They want the real deal. And there is no way to generate something from Wrike that would be taken seriously in a construction meeting or presentation with a client. The PDF screenshot is a joke, and after several years of feedback, they finally announced that there was going to be an update. Yay! Right? Wrong. It was only an addition of the data table on the same screenshot export; no real change.

I have a project that lasts several years and the PDF export actually won't open in Acrobat because it extends beyond Adobe's page size limit. Seriously? Come on. These things are useless.

Thanks for your plug to my feedback; at least someone listens to what I take time to share. I have quit providing feedback to Wrike because it goes nowhere. It's a waste of my time to explain why something should be better and providing examples of how it could be better just to fall on deaf ears.

Hey, but at least we have new icons, new colors, rounded corners, and so many other great and useful additions to the software! Even when they invest time in redoing the views, they miss the mark. The new Table view doesn't have all of the same data that the old table has, so again, useless until they fix that. How can you not show Time Spent in the table? How else can you track your time against the tasks? Go and run a report every time you want to see the status of the tasks in a project? Isn't that defeating the purpose of having views of the project in the first place?

Oh, and how about yet another redesign of the home page, only to get scrapped and pulled back because it didn't go over well. Instead of redesigning layouts, JUST ADD THE FEATURES YOU ARE MISSING!!!  This isn't rocket science.

Eventually, we, like many, will have to once again go shop the competition and find a company that's actually putting function over style.

Jason Pontius Hear-hear to all of the above.  I am walking into a new position at firm grossing half a billion annually and I will be laughed out the door if I present this as a solution.  I had high hopes that they had figured this out because I actually like many of the features included - but this issue means that the software is only half-baked.  But, hey, they probably have other markets locked in. Maybe.

My ultimate frustration is that they come so close to getting it right and then just kind of lay down.  The end zone is right there! Pick up the ball and run or get off the field! It is a waste of everyone's time by failing to support these truly basic use-case scenarios. I have no doubt that this is a much harder issue than it appears to an armchair critic such as myself, but you know what isn't hard?  Transparency.  I would be fired in heartbeat if I pulled this with a client. Accountability and ownership are core principles of good project management; what does it say about a company hoping to provide Project Management software solutions that doesn't understand this?  We are talking the most core, basic principles in the PM realm.  I will just keep looking at solutions for my industry.  I mean, why not just out source the pdf generation to a third-party like Chaos does for their rendering engines?  At least actively attempt to provide a solution to get mouthy jerks like me to pipe down!

Anyways, this their loss where your feedback is concerned.

HD Shepherd  For a company of that size (half a billion annual gross), I would look at some major platforms like Primavera by Oracle, or possibly NetSuite by Oracle, depending on what all you need to do. NetSuite is more business and financial focused. Primavera is the industry standard for large project scheduling and management. It's expensive, but it's one of the top end platforms.

I've noticed that Wrike has slipped a little in their ratings compared to some of the competitors. Even so, they compete with lightweight limited platforms, not the real deal. For pure project management they can't touch MS Project, Primavera, and others. Sure, the learning curve is lower, but so is the return on functionality. Wrike competes with Monday.com, Asana, and Smartsheet.

Wrike has made it clear that they do not care to be the best core PM platform, they just want to have a nice app that general people can use, and not try to be a real PM solution with all of the core functionality covered. Year after year they choose to work on interface enhancements and not functionality.

One thing to point out is that we tried playing with their API for a bit and realized that their backend data structure is a mess. It's all over the place. I believe that by tacking on changes over the years, they now have a beast of a backend to manage. I think this is their roadblock for dealing with real functionality requests. The reason why they won't try to fix certain shortcomings is that it would be very difficult with the data backend they have. It may require a complete revamping of their data and middleware to be able to continue to move forward with development. They just don't want to tell us that. So they continuously kick the can down the road because they know it would be too hard to implement certain requests without major modifications.

Just about every feedback or request I have made over the years has been deemed "not now" over and over. I don't know why many people complaining about the same issue for years isn't enough to get them to act. People, like yourself, threaten to leave, or actually do leave, and they don't care. They still won't address the shortcomings. We are told "priorities". Seriously? How can new icons, new layouts, new colors, new styles be a higher priority than making the dang Gantt charts printable like most every other legitimate software out there? Insane.  And yet, here I am wasting more of my time preaching to the choir. Maybe that's actually more the definition of insanity.

Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that I just got off the phone with Michael, a sales rep at Wrike.  He was calling because my trial is expiring on Monday and he wanted to see if he could help me choose a plan to continue my subscription and keep using Wrike.  I took the opportunity to share with him what I love about wrike, where I think they get it right, but also that I am ultimately frustrated with the inability to print a Gantt Chart to a pdf that is usable. 

Michael informed me that he works with tons of contractors and has never heard of this being an issue.  I asked him if he spends anytime on the forums because this issue is documented to go back for years. He said (I am paraphrasing a bit) "...in the two years that I have worked at wrike,  it has never come up as a problem.  you can print to a PDF, by the way - have you tried zooming out to weeks, quarter, months to make your views more manageable?"

I replied that you cannot print to a pdf view showing the task in a table format that isn't simply a screenshot - and that the task table is needed by every person who may want to. use this information and parse a complex schedule. 

Michael's response was to reiterate that this is an isolated issue that he has never heard it to be an obstacle.  Sorry I can't help. Bye.

I wrapped up our conversation by politely asking that he spend some time in the user forums to better understand the product because I find it hard to believe that he has never heard of this being an issue - one that a sr. developer has weighed in on no less to explain that this is not on the roadmap. 

So there you have it folks, if you deny the problem exists, it doesn't exist!  We must all be crazy or too dumb to figure out the masterful work around every one else sees so plainly as viable. I was actually looking forward to reasonable pitch from wrike on some ways that this solution could work for me and my organization. I was a tiny bit surprised he was as eager to get off the phone with me as he was.  I am sure he sensed I wasn't going to be an easy sale and I was burning up his sales per hour ratios.  

I guess I will just have to go find a provider that hears is community. Like I said, c'est la vie, my dudes.

HD Shepherd Thank you for sharing this experience. If I didn't know any better, I would say this is unbelievable. But, knowing the history, I completely believe it.

This is unacceptable and ridiculous. Such a topic of discussion for years now and this person claims to be clueless about it? How can our feedback be so overlooked that the Wrike staff don't even know how important this is to many of us? We are told that our feedback is heard, discussed, considered, shared with the dev team, and eventually back-burnered, and yet the Wrike staff knows nothing of it? How can this be?

This illustrates some of the issues internal to Wrike. If this is true, then there must be a problem with some of the internal processes and communication. I would think that sales, support, and development would all know about what requests are being addressed and which ones are kicked down the road. 

To further your points on printing to PDF, this is useless. It doesn't work for larger projects (creates a PDF too big for Adobe to even open), it doesn't page, it doesn't create a common page size for any printer. It's nothing more than a poor screenshot. No contractor that we have worked with will accept such a report.

Miachael's lack of interest and overall attitude towards the call is very disappointing. If he really cared, and he really hasn't heard about it before, he should respond with "oh, tell me more about this so I can raise the issue", not "can't help, bye". 

I believe Wrike will never address the harder issues and will only continue to give us new visuals like icons and layouts. The feedback on core missing features I have provided since starting with Wrike have not been addressed. I stopped holding my breathe a long time ago.

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 Thank you for your response. I understand that requests have to be prioritized, but what I don't understand is how a new table layout with very little difference in functionality other than style, is a priority. How does this become so important when it doesn't add any functionality? Yes, it affects everyone, but in what manner other than "hey it looks different?"

There are numerous requests that are 5 years old that address core functionality of PM software. Why are these not more impactful or important than visual enhancements?

We (users) continue to not understand this logic.

I understand your sentiment Jason Pontius! In development, our team always tries to combine their priorities, company vision, and customer feedback. It may not always be the easiest task, but we still do release some of the suggestions, just not all or most of them. 

This year, there have been several released ideas, like clickable links in request forms, hyperlinking in comments, links in custom fields, and some more. These have also been posted here in the forum a while back, and we were very pleased to release them to our customers. I completely understand that what seems to be the most important feature to others may not be that significant to you, and vice versa, but we do try to keep this balance between multiple factors. 

We appreciate all the feedback you've shared with us here and when supporting other ideas. 

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

Any update..?