Improvements to Google Apps Marketplace: Wrike Goes Side-by-Side

November 19, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Wrike Enterprise: Harnessing the Power of Big Data and Real-Time Collaboration

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As you might’ve heard, today Google launched an improved experience for the Google Apps Marketplace™.  We're excited to announce today that Wrike is taking the lead as one of the first vendors to be a part of this Google Apps Marketplace experience! 

 

The updates are aimed at improving the entire user experience. One example of this is that third-party applications (like Wrike) are now available right from the Google App admin console. There are lots of other great improvements, as well. 

 

Wrike has been a part of Google Apps Marketplace for a long time. We’ve gathered tons of positive reviews from Google apps users and became one of 10 Top installed apps among hundreds of other tools. Besides popular Wrike features like interactive Gantt charts, Workload views, and task timers, Wrike offers a set of features that Google apps users specially will appreciate, like our Gmail gadget and integrations with Google calendar and Google Drive.  

 

So if you or your friends are looking for a Project Management tool integrated with Google Apps – Wrike is definitely the way to go. And don't forget to add your review to the Google Marketplace to help others harness their productivity with Wrike.

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Wrike Enterprise: Harnessing the Power of Big Data and Real-Time Collaboration

December 17, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: From Big Data to Actionable Progress Insights: Instant Progress Infographics

≪ Previous: Improvements to Google Apps Marketplace: Wrike Goes Side-by-Side

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Today thousands of diverse organizations, including dozens of Fortune 1000 companies, use Wrike to successfully manage their projects and tasks. The beauty of Wrike is that it scales up and down smoothly. In addition to dynamic start-ups that are using the software on the go, there are large enterprises managing thousands of projects in the system.

Granted, sending out e-mails and scheduling team meetings every time you want a status report is outdated and unproductive in today’s fast-paced environment. It gets exponentially more difficult for large teams that are spread across several cities or even continents. Those large and often distributed teams struggle on a daily basis with challenges, such as the need to coordinate the efforts of multiple teams, for all-around visibility and for granular control over corporate data security.

That is why we introduced a plan that delivers the solutions to all these needs – Wrike Enterprise.

Above and beyond your favorite Premium features, Wrike Enterprise brings Big Data into the picture, allowing you to instantly get reports on work progress, along with actionable insights.

The Performance Chart can help you estimate a realistic project completion date. The Current Status Chart makes it easy to spot the bottlenecks of your project and the tasks that require immediate action. The Baseline Chart comes in handy for identifying how far ahead of or behind the planned schedule you are. The Work Progress Chart helps you keep a finger on the week-to-week work results of each member of your team.

Here's a quick overview of the new features we brought to Wrike Enterprise:


Progress Reports as Actionable Infographics

We store about a million updates each day, and successfullyparse all that historical data to help you run your business more efficiently. "How is our progress looking, compared to the original plan? When should we realistically expect to complete the project? Who completed the most tasks?" Answering these questions requires processing thousands of work activity records. Wrike does it in a blink of an eye for you.

The new reporting engine gives out valuable business insights on employee performance, realistic completion dates, critical areas that need a manager’s attention, baseline comparisons, and more -- all in the easily digestible format of infographics. This helps managers spot project bottlenecks instantly and provides stakeholders with highly visual performance updates. Our philosophy has always been "make complex things simple." That's why you don't need to spend time configuring these beautiful reports. They are already pre-configured in Wrike Enterprise, for any project you run.



Sharing Made Easy via User Groups

If you needed to share a project with five people, you'd probably pick them from a list one-by-one. But what if you need to share a folder with 50 or 500 colleagues? To save time, Wrike Enterprise allows you to organize users into a hierarchical directory with user groups.  You can include employees in multiple work groups by project, department, or any other ad hoc basis, and then share the needed data with the whole group in one click.



All Schedules Visible on Custom Calendars

Managing a larger team means keeping track of a lot of variables when creating a project schedule.  With the help of the custom calendar, you can keep track of your colleagues' vacations, PTO and extra working days, allowing you to avoid schedule overlaps and build more accurate plans. 



Corporate Identity in E-mail Notifications

When it comes to your corporate identity, consistency matters. That’s why you can now add your company logo, or any other brand image you see fit, to all work updates sent to your employees from Wrike. Branded e-mail notifications now round out your corporate communications.



More Data Security with Extended IT Controls

Responding to the needs of our customers with 1,000+ seat deployments, we empowered IT with extended security controls. In Wrike, everything works out of the box the day you start your trial, but when you need more controls, the Enterprise plan gives your IT team options to configure which e-mail domains and app integrations employees can access. 



Advanced Permissions

Exciting news to share: a long-awaited feature - read-only permissions per folder - is already on its way! We will gradually roll it out in the next couple of weeks. This feature allows Wrike Enterprise customers to select read-only access when they are sharing projects.


Here's a little video to show in action how Wrike Enterprise can give you valuable insight into the work progress, increase your business velocity and help you coordinate your teams more efficiently.  



Want to get started with Wrike Enterprise? Drop us a note at sales@team.wrike.com!   

From Big Data to Actionable Progress Insights: Instant Progress Infographics

December 18, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Holidays, Vacations and PTO? No More Scheduling Headaches

≪ Previous: Wrike Enterprise: Harnessing the Power of Big Data and Real-Time Collaboration

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Wrike Enterprise was designed to help large organizations manage their workflows more efficiently. Actionable Progress Insights is the flagship feature of this new user plan that adds even more control and visibility into the work progress. The new reporting engine crunches millions of work activity records and provides essential project data in the form of gorgeous infographics. 

 

As your projects grow, tracking work progress by sending e-mails and taking notes at meetings becomes increasingly more difficult. And you don’t need to! Now you can see where your project stands at any time and find answers to the critical questions about its status with Wrike's Actionable Insights. 

 

How do you estimate a realistic project completion date? Take a look at the Performance Chart. What are the trouble parts in the project? What tasks require immediate action? Identify them in an instant on the Current Status chart. Are you keeping track of milestones and goals like a quarterly plan? The baseline chart shows how far you are ahead of or behind the planned schedule. How did the performance of your employees evolve over time? The Work Progress Chart shows you the week-to-week work results of each team member.

 

Let’s take a closer look at how this feature makes reporting and progress-tracking a stress-free experience.

 

Actionable Progress Insights provide you with key indicators for your project progress. They serve as a powerful tool for management and stakeholders, saving you time collecting and analyzing the most up-to-date project data. Tasks overview, performance over time, changes in the schedule, the work progress of each team member -- all these parts help you capture the full scope of a project’s health.

 

Progress infographics are available for any project you have in the Wrike Enterprise account. Simply click on the chosen folder and select the Progress Insights view at the top of your workspace.

Current Project Status
 

This chart is a great starting point for monitoring your progress. After a quick look at the key project metrics, you are able to reveal trouble parts and know where to narrow your focus.

• The tasks digest gives you a quick visual of task statuses in the folder. By seeing the important, overdue and unassigned tasks at a glance, you can take immediate action.

• Milestones remind you about an approaching landmark to your project's completion.

• Duration of all tasks in the folder and total number of tracked hours are helpful stats for allocating time and workload.

• The top 3 performers (those with the most completed tasks) are highlighted, so local productivity heroes always get noticed.

Project Performance Chart
 

Tracking work progress has never been this convenient. On the chart you can see how the project’s performance has evolved over time. So you can identify peak and low productivity periods and estimate more realistic completion dates. You can even create historical reports with the data up to two years old. This infographic comes especially handy when you want to estimate realistic project completion date, because it allows you to adjust the project plan knowing the REAL work pace of your employees.

Baseline Chart
 

When you need to pinpoint how your actual progress compares to the original plan, check the baseline chart. You will always know if a project is ahead of or behind the schedule and can look at what changes were made to the plan and by whom. The stroked bars indicate the baseline and the multi-colored bars reflect actual task statuses in the folder. For example, the baseline chart is helpful when you need to evaluate your performance on the quarterly plan and share the changes with the stakeholders.

Work Progress Chart
 

Tracking employee’s performance? Wondering how to allocate the workload in the most optimal way? Take a look at the Work Progress chart. This visual displays the top five people with the most number of completed tasks and indicates their stats on active, completed and overdue tasks. The graph on the right visualizes how the task structure of each team member has evolved over time. You can then easily pinpoint productivity ups and downs, identify a project’s top performers, or simply note those who need a little more motivation. In addition, you can look up the work progress of EACH user by clicking on the "Show all users" button. 

With this new, impressive Enterprise feature, insightful data is available at any organizational level at any single moment. Now you can make decisions much quicker, always having solid insights on hand.

 

Wrike Enterprise comes with many more features to empower your team’s performance. Don’t miss such updates as user groups, custom calendars, extended admin rights and branded e-mail notifications!

Holidays, Vacations and PTO? No More Scheduling Headaches

December 19, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Coordinate Multiple Teams Efficiently with User Groups

≪ Previous: From Big Data to Actionable Progress Insights: Instant Progress Infographics

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Managing large teams means more challenges, especially with employees spread out across departments, cities or even continents. There are a lot of things to keep in mind in order to avoid schedule conflicts. To help you track all the different variables (from national holidays to vacations and sick leaves) and even let you choose the day when your teams’ working week starts, we've introduced a new feature within Wrike’s Enterprise plan– custom calendars.  

 

Admins: Adjust Schedules on the Account Level
 

The new feature allows admins to customize working calendars on the account level. For example, easily mark Thanksgiving, Christmas or all-day corporate events on the account's global calendar so important milestones aren't scheduled on these dates. 

Admins: Adjust Schedules of Individuals
 

Because we want you to set more accurate deadlines and distribute the workload more efficiently, admins can now log four types of calendar exceptions on employees’ individual calendars. They are: extra work days, paid and non-paid vacations, and sick leaves. Each one is set to a different color for easy scanning. For large teams, the search box allows you to find someone’s calendar quickly.

 

These changes are instantly reflected in the workspace. For example, you won’t be able to schedule a new task for dates when the assignee is on vacation. No matter what view you're in, if you try giving them a deadline on their vacation days, you will end up with a conflict that will need to be rescheduled.




Users: Adjust Your Own Schedule
 

Users can add vacation days, sick leaves and extra work days to their personal calendars to make sure that tasks are assigned properly. These adjustments will reflect in the global calendar of the account, too.  Moreover, users can edit their regular workweek and identify non-working days, something that may benefit part-time workers. 

 

Wrike Enterprise’s custom calendars create an efficient way to track team schedules, distribute the workload and plan milestones. Moreover, the calendars provide a helpful tool for accounting departments that need to generate payroll.   

 

In addition to flexible calendars, Wrike Enterprise delivers many other helpful features. Drop us a note at sales@team.wrike.com to see it in action. And don't forget to mark the coming holidays on your team’s schedule!

Coordinate Multiple Teams Efficiently with User Groups

December 19, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Wrike Enterprise Brings Extended IT Controls Over Contacts & External Apps

≪ Previous: Holidays, Vacations and PTO? No More Scheduling Headaches

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The bigger the team, the more difficult it is to coordinate. Inspired by suggestions from customers with large deployments, we've introduce user groups as one of the killer highlights in the new Wrike Enterprise plan.  This feature lets admins organize users by project, department or location, allowing you to share data with multiple users effortlessly. 

 

Buckle up and we'll give you the quick tour!

 

Where to Manage User Groups 
 

If you’re an administrator in Wrike, you'll find the “Groups” tab on your workspace. This is where you will manage users in the account, get detailed overviews of groups and users, invite new users, and add users to groups.


 

 

Default User Groups: Overview of User Types  
 

By default, every user in your account is categorized into one of these 5 groups based on the user license:

 

1)      Regular users can access all Wrike features and see other users’ info, such as their time spent on tasks and their scheduled tasks on the timeline, among many other things.

 

2)      External users have the same abilities as regular users, except they can only see the info of users who have shared folders with them. 

 

3)      Collaborators can view and complete tasks, add comments and attach files. Just like external users, they can only view the people with whom they share folders and tasks.

 

4)      The Invitation Pending group includes invited users who haven’t signed up yet. Consider resending or canceling the invitation.  

 

5)      Ungrouped users are not included in any custom group (see the next section). 

 

 

Custom User Groups: Visualize Your Organization’s Structure
 

While default groups are predefined and identical for every account, custom user groups and subgroups represent the actual employee clusters in your organization. Dividing users into groups is also extremely useful for selective data-sharing, as it helps managers quickly adjust user access to folders and tasks.

 

Note that you can include one user in several groups at once. One of your developers, Emma, may decide to take part in the next volunteer event and thus should be included in the “Developer” and “Volunteers” groups.

 

Each group receives a default avatar. However, feel free to upload an image that better expresses the spirit of each group (and makes it easy to distinguish them in the group list -- hit two birds with one stone).

         

Need some ideas on group structure? Here you go:

 

 

 

Best Practices for User Groups

 

1.       “User Group” Thinking 
 

You can save a lot of time and effort if you think in terms of groups, rather than users. Next time you create a project folder, share it with a group, rather than individual users. This way, all your designers can follow the updates to a new brochure.  

 

Keep in mind that if you share a folder with a group:

•         the folder becomes shared with all subgroups under the main user group.

•         you won’t be able to unshare the folder from a subgroup or from a person in this group.

•         it’s impossible to unshare a subfolder or any task in this folder from this group.

 

This way, you’re sure that important data cannot be overlooked or mistakenly unshared by any of the group members.

 

2.       One-Click Onboarding Process 
 

In fast-growing companies, new employees join up on a regular basis. This is a challenge for project managers who need to provide newcomers with access to the data they need to hit the ground running. User groups make it easy. As you add each of the new employees to a group (say, new copywriters added to the “Marketing” group), they instantly get access to all the folders shared within that group.  

 

Pro tip: Create a special “Welcome” folder with materials for newcomers (guides, official instructions, onboarding documentation, lists of crucial tasks) and share it with the “Newcomers” group. This way, new employees can see it the minute they are added to the “Newcomers” group.

 

3.       Organizational Chart
 

Using groups as a hierarchy is a great way to illustrate your team's structure. Whether you choose to group users by project or location, one look at the group tab is enough to glean insight about the different teams in the account.  

 

Overview done. Now go manage your user groups like a boss.

 

Wrike Enterprise Brings Extended IT Controls Over Contacts & External Apps

December 20, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Add Your Corporate Identity into Emails from Wrike: New Customization Options

≪ Previous: Coordinate Multiple Teams Efficiently with User Groups

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It has always been important for us to make Wrike flexible enough to fit any company’s needs. So when we received requests from our largest clients, asking for more granular IT controls, we decided to make it a priority. With the release of Wrike Enterprise, we've given admins extended IT controls, allowing you to decide which e-mail domains, file repositories and app integrations your team can access.


Fix Inaccuracies in Contact Data

To err is human. But what if your team member made a typo in his own name when creating a Wrike account? An unfortunate slip like that can confuse the rest of the team. In Wrike Enterprise, you can verify the names and e-mail addresses that your team members use for Wrike signup. And if any contact data is inaccurate, admins can now correct it.



Moderate Access to App Integrations

Wrike is a central hub connecting all your files that are spread across different apps. However, if there is ever a need to restrict team members’ access to Box, Dropbox or Google Drive integrations, then Wrike Enterprise allows you to solve the problem in just a few clicks. 


Overall, Wrike Enterprise gives you the extended controls to make your corporate data extra secure and allow you to customize even the tiniest details. Drop us a line at sales@team.wrike.com to try the new plan in action!

Add Your Corporate Identity into Emails from Wrike: New Customization Options

December 20, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Goodbye, Successful 2013! Hello, Ambitious 2014!

≪ Previous: Wrike Enterprise Brings Extended IT Controls Over Contacts & External Apps

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As we talk to customers, especially large corporations, we often hear how they’d like to have customization options to help them brand their work in Wrike. Responding to these suggestions, we introduced branded e-mail notifications within the Wrike Enterprise plan.

Now you, as an admin, can add your company logo or a brand image to all work updates sent to your employees from Wrike.

But don't just limit yourself to the logo. Remember that instead of the logo you can add any custom image -- be it a pet, a unicorn or a motivational picture with a sunset -- to illustrate a point or simply cheer up your team (because let's face it, everyone loves sunsets).



Branded e-mail notifications are just one of the customized features of the new Wrike Enterprise plan. Drop us a note at sales@team.wrike.com to see it in action!

Goodbye, Successful 2013! Hello, Ambitious 2014!

December 26, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Managing Complex Schedules with Recurrent Tasks

≪ Previous: Add Your Corporate Identity into Emails from Wrike: New Customization Options

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As 2013 approaches its end and the holiday season begins in earnest, it’s a great time to look back and evaluate all the important events that this year brought us.

Buckle up for an exciting ride in Wrike’s time machine!



Growing with Customers, Growing the Team

 

In 2013, we worked hard and moved fast. The number of customers like you that enjoyed the premium version grew by more than 60%, and today we’re happy to serve over 4,500 organizations of different sizes, including brands like PayPal, Ecco and Google. In fact, thousands of new companies try Wrike every month, and we hope that our family will keep growing. 

 

Just a couple of weeks ago, you helped us reach another remarkable milestone – the number of tasks managed in Wrike exceeded 20 million! 

 

Alongside growing the number of customers, we've been growing our capability to better serve you by adding team members in charge of customer success, sales, marketing, operations, and product engineering.   



 

Releasing Features that Rock  
 

This year alone, there were 30+ big and small feature releases, as well as hundreds of important improvements that aren’t immediately visible on the front end. 

 

In August, we launched Wrike Graphite, and it's not just hype to say that this release contributed to shaking up the online collaboration space with features such as project infographics, timers with live status broadcast, task dependencies, and lots of other powerful, but easy-to-use tools.

 

Driven by your needs and the suggestions of other customers with large deployments, we introduced the Wrike Enterprise plan just last week as our year-end finale. With the help of big data technologies, we've made it easier to manage large, distributed teams and complex projects. Get a high-level overview in this short video.






Wrike and Bain Capital Ventures:
More Than Just Funding

On the strategic business side, one of our key milestones this year was receiving $10 million in funding from Bain Capital Ventures, which gives us the resources to grow even faster in 2014 than we did this year.  

 

Spreading the Word
 

Our feature-filled releases didn’t go unnoticed by the press. Over the past several months, Wrike was featured in business and tech media giants such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, and Venturebeat, to name just a few. Overall, Wrike received almost twice as much coverage this year, compared to last year ... and we're still counting. 

 

So to all of you customers and friends, a big thank you for supporting and believing in Wrike. Your patronage and feedback are extremely helpful and always very much appreciated.

Happy holidays to you and your families. And see you in 2014 with a couple of big releases just around the corner. 

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Managing Complex Schedules with Recurrent Tasks

December 30, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Folder Permissions: Greater Control Over Data Editing Rights

≪ Previous: Goodbye, Successful 2013! Hello, Ambitious 2014!

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When it comes to managing deadlines, many teams struggle to balance between keeping to up-to-date priorities and meeting strict, non-negotiable deadlines in time. Wrike makes accurate planning possible in many ways. There are tasks with and without due dates, prioritizing, milestones, and dependencies. And today we want to add one more helpful tip that a customer shared with us regarding managing strict and changing deadlines with the help of recurrent tasks and milestones. 
 

Scheduling Challenges at RPBA

Ricardo da Palma Borges & Associados (RPBA) is a Portugal-based law firm that knows a lot about managing complex schedules. In their projects, they deal with two types of deadlines: those imposed by clients on consulting or planning projects and those imposed by courts and other public entities on litigation. While the former may change in the course of the project, the latter are strictly non-negotiable milestones.
 
“It is sometimes impossible to keep to prior schedules when the default term for any tax litigation development is 10 straight days. We have to constantly adjust previous deadlines in view of more pressing matters,” shares Ricardo da Palma Borges, a partner and specialist lawyer at RPBA.


Unique Solution Using Recurrent Tasks

The team found a unique way to deal with this challenge in Wrike. Any time there are legal proceedings, they create a recurrent task with two occurrences.  The first occurrence is a strict immovable milestone, typically used for court hearings or deadlines for filing documents. The second occurrence is merely a task with a prior due date that is used to adjust the project schedule internally in order to achieve interim goals.   
 

 
The team seamlessly collaborates on the case in the first task occurrence and reschedules it according to their current priorities, while the milestone always remains at the same place. This way, the timeline always reflects an up-to-date schedule with both interim and strict deadlines, and team members can quickly evaluate if they’re on track to meet them.
 
If you face the same deadline challenge in your industry, what about trying this tip for planning your tasks? Let us know if it works well for your team or if you want to share another best practice with our community! 

Folder Permissions: Greater Control Over Data Editing Rights

December 30, 2013, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Wrike and Github: Collaborative Coding Gets Much Easier with Wrike’s API

≪ Previous: Managing Complex Schedules with Recurrent Tasks

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For many of you, Wrike has become the central hub for collaborating with team members, contractors, freelancers, clients and partners. But as companies grow and projects begin to involve more and more people, many of you began asking us for the ability to provide more granular control over data management in Wrike, allowing you to keep company structure under control, while still giving departments a space to work without bureaucratic restrictions.

 

In this case, the brand new Wrike Enterprise feature, folder permissions, comes in very handy because it allows you to choose what different users or user groups can do within the shared folders.

 

Two Access Levels: Full and Limited

Imagine you've just launched a big project. You've carefully thought out its main phases, defined possible task statuses, set up milestones and reflected all this neatly organized project structure in Wrike.  Now you face a challenge. You need to keep this structure unchanged while sharing project data with people you need to collaborate with: employees, clients and third-party vendors. On the one hand, you need to limit their access to data by restricting their rights to move and delete folders, but on the other hand, you need to give departments the full freedom to manage tasks within their areas of responsibility. This challenge can be easily handled with Wrike's folder permissions. You can easily customize user rights for each folder.
 

Let’s take a closer look at this much-awaited feature. Wrike Enterprise now gives an individual user one of two levels of access to a folder: full or limited. 

 

A user with FULL access has exclusive rights to share the folder with others and change the access levels of other users. Your current experience when sharing folders is quite similar to full access, but without the ability to set other users' access levels. 

 

LIMITED access restricts users' editing and sharing rights for a certain folder (including all its subfolders and tasks), so that they become limited to Collaborator’s rights. It means that users can still view tasks, add comments, attach files and mark the task completed in a certain folder, while they won’t be able to edit or manage the tasks and subfolders in it. 

 

So why add the “Limited access” option for users if we already have the “Collaborator” license in Wrike? Because these two license options have several significant differences:

	Collaborator	User with “Limited access” rights
Right to create and edit tasks and folders	Can’t create or edit any tasks or folders in Wrike	Adjustable on the folder level (The admin may allow the user to edit some folders, while providing limited access to others)
Premium feature access (e.g., the Gantt chart, dashboard, advanced filters, etc.)	No	Yes
Price and amount	Free and unlimited	According to the subscription plan

 

This way, in terms of price and functionality, a Collaborator license may be a great option for working with freelancers. At the same time, a User license with the limited access is a better alternative for collaborating with clients because it allows the client to create and maintain a backlog of tasks, and even track the project progress on the Gantt chart, building customized reports with the help of advanced filters. 

 

Extra tip: Consider providing your newcomers with limited access to main folders. It helps you avoid issues with erroneous renaming of tasks/folders and accidental reorganization of folder structures. The same principle is valid for a cross-functional team. If one department just needs to reference the work of the other department (e.g., your marketing and analytical departments), then consider providing them with limited access to other departments' folders.

 

Making it Work for You

 

Here are some insights that should make access rights distribution more efficient:

 

Use case	Action required	Examples
Private folders that shouldn’t be viewed by anyone	Don’t share folder with anyone	* Personal to-do lists * Top secret business data
Folders with tasks that need review, discussion and tracking without editing task content and folder structure	Set limited access to users	* Cross-functional projects * Collaboration with third-party vendors  * Newcomers
Work in progress tasks and folders that should be managed and edited	Provide users with full access to folders	* Team members  * Outsourced workforce (consider external user licenses)

 

Setting the Access Level

 

Who exactly is responsible for giving users access rights?

 

All the users with full access rights who share a certain folder can adjust the access rights of other users for this folder and all its subfolders. 

 

What about setting an access level for user groups? 

 

In Wrike Enterprise, access can be set at both the individual user level and the user group level. Just remember that rights are always upgraded, never downgraded. So if a group has full access rights to a folder, then you can’t downgrade a single group member to limited access to that same folder. On the other hand, if the entire group has limited access, a user with full access can upgrade the level of a particular user.  

 

 

To safeguard against folders becoming black holes where no one can make any revisions, there will always be one person with full access to a folder. The last user with full access won’t be able to downgrade his or her access rights (or unfollow the folder) until he or she has given full access to at least one other user.  

 

 

Important Facts to Remember
 

• A users’ access rights are inherited by all subfolders of a particular folder. If a user has a full access rights in a particular folder, all subfolders inherit the same access rights. The same logic works for limited access levels. Remember that you can change users’ access levels to a subfolder from limited to full, but never vice versa.

• If the access rights of different user groups in a particular folder vary, a user who is a part of these user groups will always inherit the higher access level. For instance, if a folder is shared with two user groups with different access levels, and you are part of both groups, you will always have full access rights. The case with different folders is very similar. If the folder is included in two others that are both shared with you (but you have different access rights for each), you will always inherit full access to this folder.  

 

Hopefully this gives you an idea how Wrike Enterprise can give you more control over data editing rights. Remember that a granular approach to the data-sharing in your company makes collaboration much smoother. To best understand folder permissions, you should take it for a test drive right now.  Drop us a note at sales@team.wrike.com!  

 

Wrike and Github: Collaborative Coding Gets Much Easier with Wrike’s API

January 9, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Visual Guides for New Users: Getting Managers, Team Members and Collaborators Up to Speed Quickly

≪ Previous: Folder Permissions: Greater Control Over Data Editing Rights

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Many software teams use services such as Github for collaborative coding. These services are a great help when it comes to sharing code repositories, collaborating on them together, and syncing developers’ efforts. However, project managers of teams using Github often don’t have special tools for keeping projects on track and reporting the progress.

 

LiveNinja solved this problem with a single ninja throwing star: they combined Github’s social coding environment with Wrike’s strong project management features. With the help of Wrike’s API, they now automatically transfer every task they create in Github to Wrike, allowing them to organize their work in a more productive way.

Let’s take a look at their smart solution!

Two Tools, One Up-to-Date Picture

 

LiveNinja builds and maintains a platform that allows users to find experts in any field -- everything from cooking to law to graphic design.

 

Despite daily stand-up meetings, maintaining transparency with a growing team soon became a real pain. Team members couldn’t quickly review up-to-date plans and couldn’t always keep track of current priorities in ever-growing Github task lists. Besides, there was no smooth way to sort overdue tasks or tasks completed during a certain time period.

 

“At some point we realized that instead of a clear project picture, we just had a daunting list of never-ending issues,” says Emilio Cueto, Chief Technology Officer at LiveNinja.

 

To get their work more organized, the team started using Wrike as it had all the features they needed. And in order to avoid the redundancy of logging tasks in both tools, they used  the Wrike API to unite both tools. Now whenever someone creates a new task, adds a comment or completes the task at Github, the changes are automatically reflected in Wrike.

How LiveNinja Benefits from the Integration

Here’s how LiveNinja’s project management changed for the better after integrating Wrike and Github:

 

1. Easy prioritization of bugs and urgent issues
 

Prior to integration, every new bug that was added to the already sizable list of bugs (each one needing to be fixed right away!) got labeled “Urgent,” “Priority,” or “Critical.” The list of all these urgent bugs had grown too big to handle in a standard list format within Github. 

 

After integration, LiveNinja now tags all issues according to their importance in Wrike (e.g. with standard labels P0, P1, and P2), and then prioritizes each list. This way, they have a clear understanding of which bug to tackle next.

 

2. Instant access to an up-to-date roadmap
 

Wrike’s interactive timeline is irreplaceable for planning new features and important milestones. While the team’s manager creates dependencies between related tasks and quickly adjusts current plans, Wrike ensures the team is automatically notified about all  changes.

3. Comprehensive insight into the team’s progress

 

Custom reports are a great time saver for Emilio Cueto. They enable him to sort any data he needs for evaluating the team’s progress in mere seconds using filters such as: completion date, particular team member, or tag (e.g. browser version, particular feature, etc.).

 

Suddenly, LiveNinja could look at their task list and Gantt charts and quickly find answers to questions such as: “Will this next release be on-time?” or “When is it feasible to start planning that new feature we have been talking about?” 

 

In a nutshell, the integration allowed developers and project managers to enjoy the best of both worlds: the code collaboration platform of Github and the project management tools of Wrike.


Get the Code

If the integration code sounds interesting to you, you can get the files here. LiveNinja is open to any improvements to the code suggested by other Wrike users. And if you decide to use it, don’t forget to send a thank-you tweet or a Facebook message mentioning #LiveNinjaDotCom.

 

Thanks, LiveNinja, for sharing your code with the Wrike community and helping to make life better for other Github and Wrike users!

Visual Guides for New Users: Getting Managers, Team Members and Collaborators Up to Speed Quickly

January 15, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Find Tasks Quickly, Right from the Dashboard

≪ Previous: Wrike and Github: Collaborative Coding Gets Much Easier with Wrike’s API

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As the number of Wrike's new users grows everyday, we want to ensure that every new user can pick up the key functionalities and hit the ground running as swiftly as possible. After all, the faster you learn how to use Wrike, the more efficiently you can collaborate with your team on all the tasks that need to get done. 

 

We put together three separate Quick Guides to Wrike -- for managers, for team members and for collaborators -- to make it incredibly easy to begin using the tool. These easy-to-read visual manuals contain screenshots and tips to help you understand Wrike’s features according to your role within the team or project:

 

AQuick Guide to Wrike for Managers teaches managers and team leaders how to master the tools for progress tracking, reporting, time tracking, planning, and workload allocation. If managers want to ensure the smooth adoption of Wrike among all stakeholders, we recommend they point their employees and collaborators to the other two manuals below.

 

A Quick Guide to Wrike for Team Members introduces project members to the basics of the workspace and the different views, and includes tips on effectively collaborating on tasks, tracking individual work progress, and optimizing your dashboard widgets.

 

A QuickGuide to Wrike for Collaborators gives collaborators a brief overview of the workspace, and an introduction to reporting on task progress as well as tracking work progress within Wrike.

 

For further details on Wrike features described in the guides, such as the dashboard, search,  filters, Gantt charts and more, check the other adoption materials, visit our help section or watch the video tutorials on Wrike TV.

Find Tasks Quickly, Right from the Dashboard

January 22, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Grab the New Android App: Native, Fast, Tablet-Optimized

≪ Previous: Visual Guides for New Users: Getting Managers, Team Members and Collaborators Up to Speed Quickly

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For many of you, the dashboard is the main staging ground where you track the most important tasks. And even if you prefer accessing your tasks by navigating to folders, the dashboard is still the first place you see when you log into Wrike. 

 

When things are moving fast, you need a quick access to particular task right from your starting point. And that's what this new feature brings. Now you can simply input the keywords and run a search right from the dashboard view. Wrike will then look through task and folder titles, task descriptions, even comments to present you with the closest-matching results. 

 

There are still several ways to search for a particular task in the system. You can click on the account name in your folder pane, choose "show descendants" and then search through the entire account. Or you can navigate to the precise folder where the task is located. 

 

But when you need to get to a task on the fly, searching from the dashboard is the way to go. The new feature truly brings search functionality to every corner of Wrike. And it speeds up your workflow, so you can get things done more efficiently!

Grab the New Android App: Native, Fast, Tablet-Optimized

January 23, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Wrike Featured as 'Cool Startup to Watch' at IBM Connect 2014

≪ Previous: Find Tasks Quickly, Right from the Dashboard

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Having on-the-go access to your work is mission-critical in today's business environment. That is why easy and accessible mobile project management has always been one of our priorities. After reviewing your feedback, we worked hard to make our app even better for you and your teams. Now it's here and ready for you: Wrike's entirely new native app for Android. And trust us, the results are worth seeing!

Featuring a new layout, new navigation and a more intuitive approach, the new Wrike Android app will make your mobile project management experience even more convenient and efficient.

The first thing you'll notice is the sharp UI - a familiar sight to those who use Wrike from their computers. In terms of user experience, you'll love its increased speed and stability. Moreover, the new app has been optimized to bring our enhanced user experience right to your tablet.

Creating, scheduling, editing, and discussing tasks on the go is a breeze with our new mobile app. For your task-tracking purposes, we present to you the newly released mobile dashboard. With this feature you can now overview the most important tasks in just a couple of seconds.



And your old favorites are still at your service. Keep everyone in the loop with push notifications; rely on the interactive mobile Gantt chart to adjust project schedules in a couple of taps; attach files from your phone or tablet, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box; take advantage of the cool mobile-specific ability to snap photos right from your tasks (you'll never lose those ideas scribbled on coffee house napkins again.) Wrike makes mobile project management simple.

Our great new app is still in beta. After you try it out on your Android device, we'd be glad to hear what you think at support@team.wrike.com. And if you love it, don't forget to give us a high-FIVE on Google Play!

Wrike Featured as 'Cool Startup to Watch' at IBM Connect 2014

February 6, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Checklists Make Your Tasks as Easy as 1-2-3

≪ Previous: Grab the New Android App: Native, Fast, Tablet-Optimized

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Last week myself and a few of my team members were able to attend the annual "IBM Connect" user conference in Orlando. This is our second time attending the event on behalf of Wrike, and it was great to be back in the IBM community.

Wrike was selected by IBM as one of the "Cool Startups to Watch," giving us the privilege of showcasing our company and product at a special session featuring other social, dynamic companies. Our fearless founder and CEO, Andrew Filev, presented Wrike's social project management software to an audience of IBM customers, alongside four other startups: Hype, TemboSocial, Hootsuite, and Temasys.



This year's theme "Energizing Life's Work" brought together companies committed to reinventing businesses of all sizes with better collaboration, just like IBM and Wrike. On the expo floor, we had a great time connecting with IBM customers, partners, and other tech companies that, like Wrike, integrate with IBM's tools for enhancing day-to-day work. It was also an invaluable opportunity to meet face-to-face with fellow Wrikers like Mizuno and Hootsuite!

Being in a room with so many innovative leaders who value collaboration is always refreshing. We're excited about the relationships we've built, and look forward to working with some of our new friends throughout the year!



Of course, for a company known for it's geeky innovation, IBM sure knows how to throw a party. Special thanks for their accommodations at Hollywood Studios in Disney World. We all had a blast!

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Checklists Make Your Tasks as Easy as 1-2-3

February 7, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Top Five Project Management Myths Busted [NEW INFOGRAPHIC]

≪ Previous: Wrike Featured as 'Cool Startup to Watch' at IBM Connect 2014

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When tasks have multiple components, it can be challenging to track what has been completed versus what is still in progress, especially when different segments must be completed by different people. To help you make these tasks more structured and easier to track, Wrike added a new, useful feature. Now you can further break down your tasks into to-do lists or step-by-step instructions with the help of checklists in your task description.

To take advantage of checklists, find the new checkbox button in the task description's formatting panel. This feature will add another level of depth to keep your tasks organized and clean. When listing the task's components in the description, it's up to you to order your list to suit your preference, whether that be by due date, assignees, importance, or simply as ideas come to mind. Once a component is completed and you check its box, theitem turns grey to fade out of focus. With checklists, all collaborators can easily see what has been finished and what needs to be done before the entire task is completed.

One of the cool things about the checklists is that they can help you avoid confusing scenarios when a task is assigned to several employees. Before, one employee would mark an entire task as completed when only his or her individual contribution was done. Now, when you create one task and assign that task to five different people, add a checklist to your task description for clearer workload distribution. Use this feature and kindly remind John to go to the checklist within the task to indicate that he has finished only his portion. When everyone has checked off their separate line items, the last contributor or task author knows to mark the entire task as completed.

Have you heard of small wins? Psychologists say that completing several smaller tasks one after another has a powerful motivating effect when you're in the middle of a large assignment. See how that works for you and your team with the new feature!

And for additional benefit, we hope checklists can serve as your convenient alternative while we continue working hard to bring subtasks to your workspace.

Top Five Project Management Myths Busted [NEW INFOGRAPHIC]

February 12, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Apple Mail Add-in Is Now Tailored to OS X Mavericks

≪ Previous: Checklists Make Your Tasks as Easy as 1-2-3

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What do local advertising firms have in common with booming global enterprises? They all have to run projects. And where there are projects, there are people who need to manage them. Though integrated into most professional work environments, project management is still surrounded by a lot of misconceptions and myths. They say project management is typically just paperwork, or that frequent meetings are necessary for project updates, and so on. However, research stats provide a different picture.

Drawing from the results of multiple studies, Wrike put together a new infographic that debunks the top five project management myths and shares a couple of useful productivity hacks along the way. Consider these myths busted!

Apple Mail Add-in Is Now Tailored to OS X Mavericks

February 13, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: People, and Folders, and Tasks, Oh My!: "@" Mentioning Does It All

≪ Previous: Top Five Project Management Myths Busted [NEW INFOGRAPHIC]

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Mac users, rejoice! Our Apple Mail add-in that easily turns e-mails into interactive Wrike tasks is now updated, so it works flawlessly in the latest OS X Mavericks.  

 

According to a recent study by McKinsey, we knowledge workers spend about 28% of a workday interacting with e-mail accounts, which means e-mail takes the largest chunk of time spent at the workplace. Even with social collaboration tools being used more and more in companies, e-mail still remains an important component in the communication toolkit. So instead of trying to replace it, it's always been one of our priorities to let you smoothly collaborate via e-mail.

 

The Apple Mail add-in allows Mac users to collaborate on Wrike tasks straight from their inbox. With one click, you can create new Wrike tasks, and they'll be fully interactive right in the e-mail client. You can add the description and even schedule these assignments. For tasks that need your input, you can type comments straight into the comments box at the bottom of the e-mail notification. Attachments can be added to tasks by dragging and dropping right into the e-mail. 

 

See for yourself how much time this tool can save you. Download and install the new Apple Mail add-in and get more things done without leaving your inbox!

People, and Folders, and Tasks, Oh My!: "@" Mentioning Does It All

February 17, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Advice to Friend: Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency

≪ Previous: Apple Mail Add-in Is Now Tailored to OS X Mavericks

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The employee mention feature within task comments has existed in Wrike for a while, so now we've added some great new functionality to spice up your sharing. Previously, you could call a specific coworker to attention using @TeammateName. Now, you can also take advantage of "@mention" with folders and tasks for easy reference!

 

During conversation on a task or project, sometimes you may want to discuss previous tasks or even entire project folders. That's where the updated "@mention" feature comes in. If you search @TaskName or @FolderName in the comments section, Wrike creates a drop-down list of related task and folder names for you to choose from. Choose the item you wish to share with your colleague, and the permalink is automatically added into your comment to quickly provide the full context during work discussions.

 

The drop-down list of suggestions continues to function the same way it did for the @TeammateName feature, but now related tasks and folders are listed right beneath your teammates' names.

 

Important note: If your colleague did not originally have permission to view the task or folder you @mention, you must manually share that task or folder with them before they can click to enjoy.

 

Many our customers are already excited about this handy enhancement. “Things move pretty quick at Sevenly. Using @mention allows us to quickly cross-reference tasks without having to hunt and find the task in another folder, copy its link and paste it back in the comment. Super pumped to have this feature!” says Andrew Hartman, Director of Strategic Projects at Sevenly.com.

 

Avoid the hassle of manually finding the permalink for your tasks and folders. By utilizing the "@mention" feature, Wrike can do the work for you. Happy mentioning!

Advice to Friend: Best Practices for Seamless Wrike Adoption from Full-Service Ad Agency

February 20, 2014, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Our CEO's Guest Post on Inc.: Why Collaboration is Integral to Success

≪ Previous: People, and Folders, and Tasks, Oh My!: "@" Mentioning Does It All

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In early February, I interviewed some of our long-term customers to learn what makes them successful using Wrike.

 

Scott Struber, the VP/Operations of Yamanair Creative, a full-service ad agency, deployed Wrike to his team in March 2012. Scott now runs easily 80% of the business in Wrike, effortlessly collaborating with a team of 20+ spread across the country.

 

In my conversation with Scott, I asked "If your friend in another company or department was implementing Wrike, what advice would you give her to get up and running quickly?" His response was both insightful and helpful for any new or existing business using Wrike.

 

Understand your Business Goals
 

First, make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish and how Wrike helps achieve that goal. Then, become as well educated about Wrike as possible. Stay aware of what your people need to know and need to do in Wrike. The users need to understand how this will work within the organization and at their team level. Finally, lead by example. You got to use it yourself if you expect others to use it. Be an ambassador for Wrike. 

 

Position for Productivity
 

Positioning Wrike appropriately is very important. Don’t say, “Here’s something you need to learn.” Instead, roll Wrike out and share, “We found something that’s going to boost our productivity and allow you to move through the day with less stress, and go home without worrying about what you may have missed." Wrike is a tool we use to help make our jobs easier. Put another way, we let the software do the heavy-lifting when it comes to remembering.

 

Be Firm on Team Adoption

When implementing Wrike, it’s important to be firm about team adoption. As I shared with my team, “If it’s not in Wrike, it didn’t happen.” Not using Wrike was not an option. Simultaneously, encourage and help your people to get past the learning curve and they’ll be happier and more compliant.

 

Empower your Users

Make sure the users know where to get answers. Wrike offers great support through a variety of channels. Inform and empower your users to be self-sufficient or you’ll end up answering all of their questions.

 

Ask for Feedback

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Work to figure out how well Wrike is working overall and how it’s working for individual people. Don’t assume the way you set it up is awesome and perfect and the one and only way to do it. Be open and flexible to changing the process. We have revised the work flow many times over, always for the better, and often using suggestions from team members.