Custom Workflows

Piggy backing on this question. I am going to introduce Wrike to our Marketing soon.

As an organization, we have 13 plus the default which includes 5 different departments in Wrike. The area I'm in, we use two custom workflows for projects involving developing data interface transfers from hospitals to us. One is a project workflow and the other is a task workflow. We also utilize the Ticket and Helpdesk Workflow. They are very specific to our process but happy to share:

We have 20 workflows - some teams have multiple that they use for different types of work, some teams share a more generic workflow. Some workflows are designed specifically for tracking at a project level rather than a task level. 

Basically, if there's a best practice for only having X number of workflows, we don't know about it yet.

Most teams never look to change a workflow for a task or project, because we have assigned a default workflow for tasks or projects at that parent folder level, and it is the correct workflow for that team. 

We have 25 Custom workflows of varying complexities. After working with custom workflows for the last few years, my advice is to keep workflows as simple as possible. We have run into a tendency to overdo the number of workflow states to capture only minor changes. We are now trying to keep workflows at a more macro level and are utilizing custom fields to capture sub-process information (checkboxes to indicate if a step in the process is complete, etc.). This method has allowed us to capture parallel processes. 

For instance, we utilize tasks for our machine shop. These tasks contain information and processes to machine fabricated parts. We have a specific workflow for the machine shop - a "standard" workflow would not work. We refine the workflow periodically and have found a good balance between the workflow states and utilizing custom fields. 

We have multiple workflows based on our projects, much like others that have commented. Our basics are Task, Risks, Issues and Portfolio. Each one has a specific workflow to ensure clarity and understanding of the whole team.

I'm still fairly new to Wrike so I'm not sure if my team is using Custom Workflows.

We have nearly 50 custom workflows. As we have several company sides each side uses own workflows.

Thank you, everyone for commenting and sharing your current state on custom workflows. It's great to see how various organizations and teams are using them within their own settings. I'll definitely be reviewing with my leadership team. 

We have around 45 workflows - some probably aren't used widely anymore, but many are. We have project based workflows and task based workflows. I don't think there is necessarily a downside to having many workflows. My suggestions would be

• Name them wisely (so you don't accidentally update the wrong one)
• Audit them on a recurring bases (e.g. annually) to retire any that are unused
• Have teams be willing to update their workflows when they find they can simplify or when they need to add another step
• Having separate workflows per department actually gives that department more flexibility to have the process that works for them. If they need to tweak something and everyone works off the same workflow, you have to gain approval from every department before implementing it.

We have many custom workflows for our different teams and business units - very helpful to be able to customize tp uniquely fit the process needs of each team/group!  And we just saw the "transition" lock feature to be able to customize certain statuses so that they can only be changed to a few statuses - this will be really powerful and yet simplify the process for many users!

Hi Tracey Perry,

we try to use the default project workflow (New - Green - Yellow - Red - etc) for all project, to have a simple way for reporting projects.

On the task layer we use many custom workflows to be able to specify more detailed information. There is a workflow for developing tasks, for editorial tasks, for purchase / goods management, for tickets and so on.

Were using this, but would like to see more examples of workflows that are helpful for my department.

We have a LOT of custom workflows - I tend to work with the team that will be using them so they can understand each workflow step. We use colors across the company to signify different statuses. 

We've just started to use custom workflows and have found that the hardest part of getting one up and running is:

• Agreeing on the workflow steps
• Selecting the colors for each status (who knew?)

We are using workflows to track the current status of a project—from preparing an offer, through the whole project until billing.

Our Wrike account encompasses 5 units within University Communications and Marketing. We have 13 different workflows used between all of them. Our web team has 7 for different types of work/requests, Creative Services has two, Marketing uses two, and Communications uses two.

I work in Creative Services which houses Design, Photo, Production Video, Event Video, Print, and a student Print Shop. When we first started out, we had a different workflow for each of these units. We found that to be problematic when two areas were collaborating on the same project so we simplified it. We now have two workflows - one for the student print shop and one for the rest of Creative Services. 

We presently have 53 Custom Workflows. With nearly 6,000 active users right now, we have many many different needs. The ability to automate assignment, add approval workflows and integrate the concept of unique workflows with custom request forms to build very specific solutions to multiple use cases necessitates the need for workflows. 

We leverage a specific project and request form to have individuals submit their custom workflow requests. This way we have a very specific location to review who requested a workflow, when, etc. 

Like some of the other comments, being very specific in the name of the Workflow is important. 

Wish for custom workflows:

1. Give me an easy custom workflow report

• This report could be automated to send to specific admins on a scheduled cadence
• This report would include all custom workflow names, how many unique spaces it is leveraged in and the last time the workflow was used

2. Allow me custom fields associated with custom workflows

• This would allow me to associate details with a custom workflow (like who requested it, when, etc that we currently track separately)

We have 2 custom workflows that we use: one for our tasks/subtasks (below) and one for the Project level. We only have about 48 active users (which seems pretty small compared to some of the comments I see here!), maybe 15% of those users don't even use the workflows or statuses, so I purposely tried to keep it as simple as possible for the team.

The Project level one I believe was one that was pre-set when we signed up and it has just stuck around. We really only change the status of the project level if it's either cancelled or completed, so we only have 3 statuses in that workflow.