[New To Wrike] Roll up Dates on Gantt Chart Is Now in Wrike Labs

So unfortunately I think the developers got this backwards 🙁

The logic should be that a parent task should look at all of the subtasks and match the earliest start date and latest end date so they encapsulate the entire phase of work.  It is of no value to have all subtasks aligned to the stretch of the parent task.

@Stephen so excited about this release!

@Ivan I think that what you're describing is actually exactly how it works 🙌. So if you have: 

- Parent Task 1 

--Subtask A (Sept 1-5)

---Sub-subtask B (Sept 2-7)

If you choose to roll up dates for parent Task 1, its dates will be (Sept 1-7). It's going to take its start date from the earliest start date of its subitems and its end date is going to be the latest end date from its subitems.

Is that the behavior that you're looking for?

Hi Ivan, from the Help Center description, it looks to be correct (Roll Up Dates on the Gantt Chart).  I just hope this becomes the default in the future rather than having to update each project independently.

Cheers!

Trevor

Got it, guess I read that wrong here!  We'll give it a shot!

@Ivan, I've updated the text to try to make it clearer, thank you.

@everyone, don't forget to drop back to let us know what you like and what you'd like to see enhancement or improved. Your feedback is very valuable 👍

@Stephen, First bit of feedback I have is the following:

1. Obviously I'd like this to be the default behavior.
2. If a sub-task is modified, the parent task does not automatically update until selecting Item Rollup or Branch Rollup again.  This should be an on/off function, not on-demand imho.
3. Need to test more, but it seems to rollup when increasing time of sub-tasks, but does not when sub-tasks time is decreased?  I will test more to make sure I'm seeing this correctly.

This is a step in the right direction, but definitely needs some refinement.

Cheers!

Makes sense Trevor. As always thank you for sharing, the Product Team are keeping a close on eye the feedback posted here for future enhancements 👍

@stephen

Would love this feature to be default or on/off. 

Today I noticed what I think is a glitch. 

It looks like the roll up feature in the gantt chart only takes into account what is shown on the screen – for example, if the automatic “all active” filter is not removed, performing a rollup will change the start and finish dates of tasks and projects  unintentionally

 See example below.

No filter – project start and finish 11/29 – 12/24

W Filter -  project start and finish 11/30 – 12/24 (task one is complete, no longer visible & project start date was adjusted)

I think the roll up feature should take into account ALL tasks active or inactive regardless of the filter? It seems crazy that a “view” can affect the data.

Hi Claire, thanks for the feedback on this, I think an on-off feature might be something that others can use.

I think I understand why you're seeing the Project start date change here. When rolling up dates, Wrike only takes visible items into account when rolling up to Project level. This then gives you a timeline that encompasses the dates of the visible dates on the Gantt chart. 

If you review the filters to also take 'completed' or inactive tasks then you should see the dates at the Project level set by the original dates.

Let me know if this is the case and/or if it helps for now. The PM team are keeping an eye on feedback here so thanks for detailing the on/off option here for their review 👍

Hey Steven

Yeah that is what I am saying - you are effectively changing the data of a project based on a view only. A start date of a project shouldn't change just because you have filtered the inactive tasks. What is the value of that? Once a job has started that is a set date which shouldn't change. Just because I have completed half my tasks, my total project duration isn't getting shorter, just the time to completion is. 

A filter is for view and ease of access to certain information, it shouldn't have the ability to affect the over project data. And when you take into account the "default" filter of active tasks only (that's another issue I have, why make that a default that is global that should at least be a company choice in their software setup) there creates a massive risk of someone "rolling" up a project, errors are introduced and all reports are now invalid. Fixing that would be a nightmare. 

I totally understand where you're coming from Claire. 

This is an experimental feature so your use case and feedback is exactly what we're looking to hear and this thread is reviewed by the Product Team responsible for the feature. 

For now, if you think this feature runs a risk to your Projects, I would avoid using the feature across your team and work on manual input of Project or parent task dates.

I'll pop back here with any changes or updates as I get them. Thanks for your input!

@stephen yes please will be great to be kept in the loop. And as an additional comment manually updating duration's of parent tasks adds almost the same amount of risk to a schedule as the slightly flawed roll up dates feature, it just becomes a human error now. And adding manual edits takes away the efficiencies we hoped to gain with signing up to Wrike

I was glad to find this labs feature as to me this is a critical issue.  However, how do I invoke the roll-up to actually happen?

Hey Ryan, thanks for posting.

Here are the steps found over on our Knowledge Base. Have you tried the below?

To roll up an item's dates:

1. Open a Folder or Project and switch to the Gantt Chart.
2. In the table portion of the Gantt Chart right-click the parent Task or Project whose dates you want to roll up.
3. Select “Item Roll up”.

Why can't the item rollup be setup so that it automatically rolls up when enabled. This is just a one-time feature, so if I update the date of a subtask, I have to right-click and item rollup again. I have many many summary tasks and when I change one date, the dependencies change all dates of the subtasks, but not the parent tasks which I have to manually update each time (which is prone to human error).

Hey Casey Livingood, thank you for this use case. It's been passed on to the Product team.

I'd recommend creating a thread in the Product Feedback section about this suggestion. This way, other users can vote on implementing this feature in Wrike 😊