Lightspeed Custom Field Layout Change

Hi Mary Jennison, thank you for your feedback!

Our team is currently working on some updates that will hopefully be welcome, please check out this post for details 🙂

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

I agree completely.  The new layout for custom fields in lightspeed makes them unusable.  I'm not sure what we're going to do once lightspeed is forced on us, as we use custom fields in everything we do.

Thank you for your comment. I'm pleased to inform you that our Product Team has considered the feedback shared by you and other users, quickly reacting to provide you with the option to choose how you wish to display your custom fields, using the Mode Switcher. Here is how it works 🙂

If you have any additional questions, I'm here to help. 👍

Yeah, not a good solution.  Custom fields used to be compactly displayed at the top of a task.  Now they're buried down the side, pas the wrike id and other useless stuff.  Custom fields are updated on almost every task every day, and now they're going to be buried down the side with a scroll-bar.  So much less visible and efficient.

Hi Dirk Schoellner! Could you please let me know if you've tried using the mode switcher? You can choose to have your custom fields displayed in a rolling-down section (under the task title) or on the side. The "More/Less" state will be saved for you as well. 

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

Yeah, mode switcher really doesn't help much.  If I've got 5-10 custom fields that I update regularly, then the rolling section just displays them down the side and off the screen.  So I'm now scrolling up and down a lot to see the description and custom fields - its just really inefficient.  Normal wrike can easily display 5-10 custom fields at the top without shoving the description off the screen and without the need for a scrollbar. If the "more fields" button in the rolling down section could be used to hide the silly fields that push the custom fields lower, that might help solve the problem.  I don't know why wrike isn't making the rolling section editable so we can select what to see in that column.  Overall currently custom fields are much less efficient and harder to use in Lightspeed.

Thank you for your feedback Dirk Schoellner! You can use custom item types to set up which fields should be shown on the item type. Can this help you? 

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

Here to chime in that we don't like the new way that Custom Fields are displayed on tasks or projects. We utilize a large number of custom fields in order to do any type of reporting on the work that is being done and we can't do the reporting with the data dropped into the Description of the item, so we put it in a CF; but then we can't easily understand the scope of work being requested in the item without seeing all of the data in the CF without scrolling all over. We liked having more compact fields that displayed all the CFs at once at the top of the task or project. 

Hello Sarah Dungey, thank you for your comment. With custom item types, you can choose which custom fields should be displayed by default - leaving the rest of the available fields under this "More" section. 

Could this option be helpful for you? Additionally, as Lisa pointed out, the mode switcher may also be of help. 

Looking forward to your reply!

I don't think custom items solves anything, since we're sharing tasks across different spaces and departments regularly.  Every department/space wants to be able to see their custom fields easily displayed while they're working on a task.  So to use a custom item won't fix the display issues.  Mode switcher is pretty terrible - with the fields displayed across the top the task description isn't visible, and with the custom fields down the side we have to scroll in order to see important custom fields, as everyone else above has said. We'd just like custom fields to be displayed as they were pre-Lightspeed.  Honestly - there's so many bugs currently in Lightspeed we'd really like to see the upgrade cancelled entirely.

Ok, I thought maybe I was little quick to dismiss using custom items to fix the custom field problems in lightspeed, so I tested it more this morning - it's still a bad fix at best.  A custom item does let me display which custom fields are at the top of the task, but that would mean each department would need their own custom item.  When tasks get tagged to my department, they aren't going to be the correct custom item type, and other departments won't have theirs correct when I share tasks with them.  Custom items are really only useful in this case for tasks that are self-contained with a department/item location, and really doesn't help at all.  Really wrike just needs to return custom fields to how they were previously displayed.  Would be nice if they'd spent more time checking with customers instead of writing code to make confetti appear when a task is completed.

Hi Dirk Schoellner, thank you for your detailed reply. Custom item types were designed exactly with the purpose you have described: to cover every department or sector's needs. The possibility to customize them accordingly provides different teams with a wide set of options. 
Would you please confirm if you have used the mode switcher to display your custom field on top of the description section? Please, see the images below for reference:

Show fields in main view:

Show fields in side panel:

Please, rest assured that we are passing all your feedback on to our Product Team and your comments are essential to continue improving our platform 👍

Looking forward to your reply!

Hi Juan,

Thanks for the comment back.  So we typically have a task that goes through 3-4 different departments sequentially, each with their own custom fields that updates internal information they need.  Before lightspeed, a typical task looked like this - there's three departments involved, and while there are 10 custom fields, they're all easy to see at a glance when anyone opens the task, and yet the description is also visible.  So everything is efficient, clear, and easy.

When I switch to lightspeed, the UI spreads out the custom fields ridiculously, so that I can't see custom fields and description at the same time - it's just less efficient and usable than it was.

If I use mode switching, it just changes the problem.  Now I can see the description but still have to scroll to see the custom fields we use every time we open a task.  So now I'm still scrolling every task I open - just a decrease in efficiency.

Yes, I can use a custom item to create a task for my department that has my custom fields at the top, which helps me a lot - like the screenshot below.  However, this doesn't help any other department.  So if I'm department A and use a custom item, then departments B & C still have all the same problems above when they receive the task.  The only alternative would be for them to each switch the item type to their own custom items types as they receive.  Which is very inefficient, and doesn't solve anything if departments B & C both need to be working on it.  I just don't see a use for custom item types within a department when a task is going to get shared across departments - then each task just has all the fields in different locations and everyone spends time looking for them - again less efficient.

The solution here is to just go back to the very nice and efficient display method that was the UI prior to lightspeed - pretty much every experience I've had within lightspeed is that it requires more clicks and menus and is slower in every way.  Not just custom fields - this is true of so many aspects.

Hi Dirk Schoellner, thank you very much for your detailed reply. I've shared the details about your case with your Customer Success Manager so that they can assist you with this, you will be contacted shortly.

In the meantime, if you have any additional questions, please let us know 👍

Hi Juan,

Thanks for the response.  Our customer success manager is very aware of our feelings about lightspeed, as we've had several calls.  It's unfortunate he doesn't have the ability to exempt us from the forced upgrade.  If you could please pass along our experience to the product managers and programmers, it is important they know that they're making the product worse and less efficient with their current design path.

Hi Dirk Schoellner, absolutely. We've shared your feedback and we appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us here. If there's anything else we can do to help, please don't hesitate to ask. 

Elaine Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Узнайте о самых популярных функциях Wrike и советах по его использованию

Elaine Wrike Team member Узнайте о самых популярных функциях Wrike и советах по его использованию