Now we’ve prepared some efficiency tips for you from a project management professional — and, of course, a devoted Wrike user! Francesco Mangone, with 15 years of experience in the business consulting field, shares how he saves time and makes the most of our cloud-based solution. Here’s an overview of Francesco’s main ideas: #1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally Of course, you already log all important tasks and milestones into Wrike project management software. But we bet there are some minor tasks or personal to-dos that you still keep in your head, thinking they aren’t worth logging. The devil is in the details, for sure. No matter how tiny they are, they still take away some of your attention and make you wonder whether you have forgotten anything or not. Francesco suggests taking them off your brain completely so you can perfectly concentrate. Don’t spend even a few seconds thinking of whether the task should be logged or not – log it right away. “My memory is as long as my pencil. Basically, as all things are logged into the system, there’s no chance I can forget anything,” Francesco says. By the way, with our quick task creation feature, logging all the assignments you have on your mind takes just a few seconds: [caption id="attachment_460998" align="aligncenter" width="461" class="center"] Wrike's Quick Task Creation feature helps you get everything off your mind[/caption] #2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment Thanks to Wrike, you have a 100% transparent picture of all your current projects. Let everyone else have it, too! Grant user (or viewer) licenses not only to your team members, but also to all your clients and contractors, and don’t forget to make sure they see just as much as needed. The goal is to save your precious time on keeping the team on the same page and answering status requests from customers. “Now I can avoid all those e-mails about the current state of things or the schedule. [My clients and teammates] simply log into Wrike, and they can instantly see what’s going on,” Francesco Mangone shares. #3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks The task activity stream is a powerful tool both to brief a new person on what’s going on and to keep others in the loop. [caption id="attachment_461011" align="alignnone" width="772"] Wrike's Task Activity Stream provides a complete history of updates[/caption] Don’t keep your team’s brainstorming ideas and interim file versions locked in the assignees’ inboxes or buried in the history of instant messages. Instead, simply put Wrike in the CC field when sending them to each other. See our cheat sheet to learn all the great things you can do in Wrike project management software from your inbox. Lately, the full task history may be very useful to make the final decision. “[Keeping the conversation within a task] is a huge time-saver and helps eliminate a lot of e-mails. You no longer need to search for the related e-mails by subject. You just look through the task newsfeed and tap your comment – that’s it!” Francesco comments. #4 - Don’t waste time downloading files Nowadays, people are moving a lot, and it no longer makes sense to keep your important data on numerous PCs. Make the most of the ubiquitous power of the cloud and attach all files you create through Google Docs or MS Office to tasks in Wrike. [caption id="attachment_461018" align="alignnone" width="831"] Wrike can keep documents in the cloud, attached directly to the relevant work[/caption] As your team edits them online without downloading from wherever they are, all stakeholders automatically see the up-to-date version. Finally, confusion over file versions is left far behind, along with all those additional clicks to save, attach, and send files. We’re sure your time is worth so much more! “I chose Wrike primarily because of its integration with Google Docs. You can attach a file and collaborate on it with a team no matter where they are. This feature makes Wrike so powerful!” Francesco shares. #5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports Now when you have all tasks, task details, and docs in Wrike, running reports and supervising the progress is simply a piece of cake. To get a complete picture of the project progress, use your advanced filters in the right pane of your workspace. Here you can flexibly combine any criteria to create reports by different time frames, number of assignees, particular projects and much more. Any tiny detail can be easily retrieved. And don’t forget to check on your personal efficiency as well, using the “Tasks completed by me” criteria! “I have to confess I like to push things forward a little bit. And Wrike’s reports are a really big feature for me. They are super-fast, easy to use, and they make me instantly see what has been done so far,” Francesco comments. Want to know Francesco’s insights into how you can improve your team’s performance with the help of Wrike? Tune in to our podcast now: [audio m4a="https://www.wrike.com/blog/content/uploads/2012/05/interview-with-Francesco-Mangone.m4a"][/audio] "Back then, when I just started my business, I was heavily using spreadsheets and Outlook for e-mails and building task templates. What can I say? Of course, there’s nothing that you cannot do with the help of these tools, but Wrike offers an absolutely different prospective … It’s simply an evolution of project management! The technology is here, and it’s time to move on and make the most of it!” — Francesco Mangone With his IT and business consulting experience, Francesco Mangone loves to teach just as much as he loves to learn. He helps small and medium businesses customize their task management systems for different types of organizations and efficiently manage up to 80 projects at once, in groups and individually.
If you have just started using Wrike, at first some employees may forget to log and update their tasks in the system. Don’t worry, Andatech’s best practices will help you deal with this problem quickly!If you have just started using Wrike, at first some employees may forget to log and update their tasks in the system. Don’t worry, Andatech’s best practices will help you deal with this problem quickly! Andatech is one of our customers, and it wholesales a vast variety of innovative electronic products for home in Australia. There are several teams within the company that are working on completely different projects, and the same employees take part in several projects at once. Prior to Wrike, the general manager spent several hours every week on collecting updates across different projects and putting them together into a general overview. Now, every team member keeps their tasks up-to-date in the system, so it’s a matter of a click or two to see how things are going. This approach is beneficial for both managers and the team, as everyone is on the same page and is moving faster. We've asked Andatech's team to share how they managed to make logging tasks into Wrike a habit so quickly! Leverage e-mail integration Andatech managers wanted an easy way to track all work that has been done, especially by remote team members. So the first thing Andatech did was to create a simple rule: Any task that takes more than half an hour should be logged into Wrike. Making this happen was easy. A lot of the team’s communication takes place via e-mail, so logging new tasks from e-mails into Wrike is literally a matter of a click, thanks to Wrike’s Gmail gadget. “Most project management tools are hard to adopt right away because people think that it’s actually more work for them. But with Wrike, the biggest thing for our staff was understanding that it’s not just a separate platform. It naturally supplements other habitual tools, such as e-mail, easily converting e-mails into tasks,” says Sunil Joseph, the head of digital strategy at Andatech. If your team is used to communicating issues via e-mail, make sure everyone on your team knows the fastest way for them to turn e-mails into Wrike tasks. This means the add-ins for Outlook and Apple Mail users, the gadget for Gmail users and simply forwarding an e-mail to [email protected] for anyone else. Update tasks in Wrike after everyday standup meetings When tasks are logged into the system, at first people may still forget to update them. So Andatech managers decided to update tasks right after the everyday standup meetings. They created a folder called “Morning standup,” where the project manager puts tasks that need to be done today and prioritizes them after each meeting. After the meeting, team members also check that all updates they have reported during the meeting have been logged into the system. If they have previously forgotten to log something, it's high time to put it into Wrike, making sure the project picture is complete. This approach makes it easier to collaborate with remote team members, as the manager can quickly show them today’s agenda and the team’s priorities. The manager also sees the overall team’s progress in one place and can quickly measure the progress for any given period with the help of Wrike’s advanced filters. Suggest that employees create personal folders for the most important tasks Quick access to all current tasks is vital to set the priorities correctly and get things done in time. That's why every Andatech employee has a special widget on the Wrike dashboard with all tasks assigned to them (by default, you only have tasks assigned to you for this week). The widget automatically shows the up-to-date list of tasks with every login. If you want to create such a widget for yourself, all you need to do is go to “My folders,” click on the Descendants button, filter tasks assigned to you and click on the “Create a widget” button. This is a good exercise for all team members! :) The widget automatically shows the up-to-date list of tasks with every login. Sometimes there are too many tasks assigned to one person, so it's hard to quickly grasp the ones to focus on. Andatech's employees have come up with a solution! Some of them created the personal “Most important” folder (not shared with anyone else) and put the most important tasks from different projects there. This is easy to do, thanks to the ability to put one task in several folders in Wrike. Within personal folders, people can drag tasks up and down the list to prioritize, and then complete items on the priority list from top to bottom. Following these three easy principles, Andatech’s team adopted Wrike quickly and smoothly! In turn, Wrike helped them greatly with tracking work progress, prioritizing things and figuring out what needs to be done and when. Learn more about how the Andatech's team successfully uses Wrike for their workflow in our podcast with Sunil Joseph. What are your team’s best practices in making task-tracking a habit? Do you have any particular rules in using Wrike and tracking the progress? With Wrike, it gets easier to share and collaborate on any kind of data. We’re sure that the relevant people will see what needs to be seen, and things will get done in time.” — Sunil Joseph, the head of digital strategy at Andatech.
A typical day often includes an ongoing chain of small activities rather than one huge task. The more tasks there are, the trickier it might be to keep them all straight, so you need to organize them in such a way so that nothing gets forgotten. Wrike’s Timeline and Workload views are great helpers for this issue. Today, we are happy to announce a great improvement to these tools: a super detailed zoom that lets you schedule small tasks with pinpoint accuracy. A typical day often includes an ongoing chain of small activities rather than one huge task. The more tasks there are, the trickier it might be to keep them all straight, so you need to organize them in such a way so that nothing gets forgotten. Wrike’s Timeline and Workload views are great helpers for this issue. Today, we are happy to announce a great improvement to these tools: a super detailed zoom that lets you schedule small tasks with pinpoint accuracy. Managing tasks and projects on the timeline got even easier. Now, you can not only get a bird’s-eye view of all your work in Wrike’s charts, but also drill down to a daily schedule. When you need to see how your tasks are allocated throughout the day and set dependencies between them, you will definitely appreciate the benefits of the detailed zoom. You can access this tool in the top right corner of your Timeline/Workload view. Just move the slider to the left or right and get the necessary level of detail. Workload view Timeline view Since a typical workday for most teams lasts 8 hours, Wrike visualizes your schedule on the Timeline with that prerequisite. So, if you enter the task duration as 16 hours in the task details, you’ll see a 2-day task on the Timeline. The same works for tasks that you schedule right on the Timeline: When you build dependencies between tasks, everything that goes beyond 8 hours is scheduled for the next day. Zoom in on your Wrike experience and try the new feature now!
Sorry, this content is unavailable due to your privacy settings. To view this content, click the “Cookie Preferences” button and accept Advertising Cookies there.
Cookie Preferences