Improving Wrike's usability and accessibility
Updated October 08, 2023
Improving Wrike's usability and accessibility
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Wrike
Project and task management, we use Wrike to connect stakeholders, requestors and creators. We also use it recieve different project request through an intranet page.
- Project request
- Time management
- Reporting
- Project tracking
- User interface, can be cleaner
- cleaner and more intuitive URL
- Project codenames thru query string eg. EM-2042
- User centered dashboard, e.g. highlighting projects that are overdue etc.
- Positive: We have more projects and time is budgeted, however heavy involvement is required for the manager to distribute tasks.
- Positive: Project will never be burried on emails, however, this can still happen. Can we have alarm clock that alarms a few days before the project is due?
- We can classify a project then, a prepared working time is assigned to each classification. For example, web page is due Dec 01, alarm will trigger at Nov 30 since web pages have a 3 day working period.
- Negative: too much visibility that employees become too lean on tasks, with high probability of burn out.
Well, Wrike is our team standard. However, the only problem are some contributors (guests) cannot collaborate. Smartsheet might be another choice for us, since Wrike is more expensive and requires all collaborators to get accounts.
The only thing why I personally, would recommend and hang on to Wrike is because we have been using this for a few years now, and If I would recommend, I will choose the one with less steeper learning curve. Wrike also feels more a bit for marketing teams compared to Trello and Jira.
The only thing why I personally, would recommend and hang on to Wrike is because we have been using this for a few years now, and If I would recommend, I will choose the one with less steeper learning curve. Wrike also feels more a bit for marketing teams compared to Trello and Jira.
Do you think Wrike delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with Wrike's feature set?
No
Did Wrike live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Wrike go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Wrike again?
Yes
Wrike Feature Ratings
Wrike Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - From a chaotic tasks from emails, some of the team members are hesitant at first to adapt to this new product management, this is also due to the requestors are hesitant too and Wrike does not have that human interaction element that MS teams and emails create. However it took a while to implement it seriously, it is also a matter of the requestors and the leaders to promote and make sure that Wrike is our standard way of tracking and receiving tasks.
- Hesitation by requestors
- Rejection and hesitation of the teams
- Learning curve
- Invisibility of what is happening to Wrike in the process
- Leadership have to really work on pushing Wrike especially on their own project
Using Wrike
40 - Marketing, Content and Advertising, team of email creators using eloqua, writers who writes for web and graphic designers who design graphics, 3d, animation, video production and interaction design. We also have events management, project management, product development teams and UX designers and researchers. However, some web developers are also using Wrike along with Smartsheet and Jira.
30 - Just basic project management, company is running using Agile or hybrid version of agile and waterfall. Among us, people using Wrike are from project managers which oversees projects/tasks and the team divisions e.g. graphics, 3d, motion, web, ux, content, writing, web authoring and others.
Also we have department stakeholders which in Wrike profile, they are the requestors.
Also we have department stakeholders which in Wrike profile, they are the requestors.
- Project management
- RACI Matrix/Collaboration
- Project Request
- Project update
- Project request menu which contains different services our inhouse team can offer.
- Creating of agile based project steps that revolutionizes collaboration and output quality
- Project chat
- Project/task alarm
- Project assistant
- Things to do today
Evaluating Wrike and Competitors
Yes - Smart sheet, we want to replace Wrike before due to its requirement of having a guest to have an account to collaborate, which is a seat and will incur charges, this guest is just a one-off requestor. During that time, we have so much users yet, Wrike was unable to create a solution for us. That is why we looked at Smartsheet. now a few writers are on-board on Smartsheet.
Yes, I remember during that time, our boss advocates heavy adherance to Agile, and is development centric. Jira was being utilized by a lot of other vendors and is cheap to create new account, based on what I have heard, 8 years ago. Honestly my first impression of Wrike is that is too wordy. the ui does not hide unecessary content. for example. file attachment section can be hidden, you only need to see those if you really need files, correct? I also want a drag and drop overwrite. Wrike keeps duplicate filenames in one sheet.
Wrike Training
- No Training
No, it was not easy especially if you are coming for an agile-less team. it should be clearly stated that a bit of agile idea is necessary. But since our team is most of the time lean, we just learn things that we need, disregarding some of the features in Wrike which I learned with curiousity.
Configuring Wrike
No, I don't think so. I think Wrike widget was a product of initial thought and not tested or surveyed what users really need. Wrike does not even have customization about the role, like specialist, manager, director, executive.
If I can suggest, I would like the users start of by creating widgets and configurations. This way, user gets familiarized on what fields are there in one Wrike request.
If I can suggest, I would like the users start of by creating widgets and configurations. This way, user gets familiarized on what fields are there in one Wrike request.
Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - I was able to do themes, but I would also like to customize list displays white space, I think the project list looks dense and busy. In some of the list on my dashboard, my portrait is repeated multiple times, I do not think that is necessary since it is my dashboard. This is just one example, UI cleanup should be done on all the views and modes.
No - we have not done any custom code
None, I think the filters for the widgets are too limited, most of the times, logical customizations does not yield results which seems odd. For example, I have set the status into one of our customized statuses, let's say, "in progress" and selected myself. I know there are in progress requests that were there, yet I do not see any results from the filters.
Wrike Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
None | None |
No, I never found any issues on Wrike, except on their app which uses chromium. our computers do not have admin rights and blocks other browsers, so Wrike app does not work now. However I do not think this is due to get Wrike premium support. I do not think I will ever need premium support since I think it does not come free.
Not me, but another team mate notified that Wrike has been eating a lot more ram than chrome and photoshop, it turns out that Wrike app was not updated, and of course updating has resolved it. I think the support channel used was emails. I too have seen this ram hogging but I never complained, I just used Wrike on browser.
Using Wrike
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Technical support not required | Unnecessarily complex Difficult to use Not well integrated Slow to learn Cumbersome Feel nervous using Lots to learn |
- file versioning
- subtask creation
- status customization
- date selector
- file format that requires you to wait especially word and ppt. upon clicking give users option to download it rather than loading it on wrike.
- dashboard should be segmented, tools arranged on the left. short description of the tool and what benefit it offers, eg. calendar shows a calendar icon. how about an instruction video?
Yes - For me, not good enough, Wrike mobile just deliver messages. I would like to see a Wrike-inspired tasks list for the day, I hope that Wrike would think that it is a project management platform and what they do is not about messages but about tasks reminders. If possible wrike can also host outlook meetings that are linked to the tasks.
Wrike Reliability
Upgrading Wrike
Yes - No it did not went smoothly, I found out that the wrike app is just using chromium tech.
I also found wrike app sometimes to hog ram which is sometimes higher than photoshop or illustrator, turning off some tabs does not solve it. You have to refresh wrike app by closing it and reopening.
I have been using an enterprise computer with limited rights of access, therefore, wrike app was blocked due to it using an old version of chrome. This will be simply resolved by upgrading wrike app, correct, I just mentioned that we were not allowed to upgrade the wrike app without IT intervention, which is a hassle. I am now just using the browser version which is to me, more stable and better when it comes to opening attached ms office documents.
I also found wrike app sometimes to hog ram which is sometimes higher than photoshop or illustrator, turning off some tabs does not solve it. You have to refresh wrike app by closing it and reopening.
I have been using an enterprise computer with limited rights of access, therefore, wrike app was blocked due to it using an old version of chrome. This will be simply resolved by upgrading wrike app, correct, I just mentioned that we were not allowed to upgrade the wrike app without IT intervention, which is a hassle. I am now just using the browser version which is to me, more stable and better when it comes to opening attached ms office documents.
- Cool colors, better usability due to more prominent buttons
- More user friendly interface, but still wordy
- I would have thought about making the text 'formatable' like ms outlook since on our end, it replaced outlook in tracking projects.
- Well, I have said on the prior prompt, ability to format the text similar to outlook
- support files such as .ai, psd
- faster loading of ms office files
- Ability to make filters better to create a more sensible dashboard, and yes, did I say the filtering needed to be improved.