Wrike

Keeping track of projects in a collaborative environment can be a challenge. Keeping track of multiple simultaneous projects is even harder, especially when you have to use different tools for project management, task management, and document management. Wrike is an SaaS service that solves these problems directly.

By combining project, task, and document management with collaborative teamwork and discussions, Wrike becomes the control panel for your workday. Wrike’s support for multiple projects means that the information you need isn’t siloed and you can see the bigger picture of your and your team’s work.

Wrike also gives you a central location to manage your work across all your projects, so you can stay on top of things and prioritize your tasks more intelligently. And thanks to Wrike’s real-time collaboration, discussion, and document sharing workspaces, you can collaborate with your teams more efficiently.

Many major companies have put Wrike to work on their projects, including well-known names like:

• PayPal
• Capgemini
• PureStorage
• Hootsuite

In this review I will take you on a whirlwind tour of Wrike. You’ll get a sense of what Wrike can do for you, and find out how you can sign up for a free trial.

What Wrike Can Do for You

Wrike offers a large collection of capabilities that allow it to serve as both a Task Management tool and a Product Management tool. Because you can handle both of these functions in one one product, you can work more efficiently, whether solo or with your team. Here we will look at some of the key features and benefits of Wrike that help you get your work done better and faster.

My Work

The My Work area is your home base on Wrike. All your to-do’s from all of your projects appear here. You can also add tasks directly into this space when they are not connected to a particular project (Clean Your Desk and that kind of thing for example).

To help you prioritize and organize your work, My Work lets you drag-and-drop tasks into these different areas based on their due date:

• Today
• This Week
• Next Week
• Later

The Dashboards

Dashboards let you monitor activities with Wrike. You can add any of eight pre-built widgets to your Dashboard so you can control which tasks appear there. If you use the Enterprise version of Wrike, you will also be able to define custom data fields and build custom widgets to display the data from those custom fields.

Beyond these task-oriented Dashboards Wrike supports a variety of additional ones designed to help with project management concerns like Gantt, Burndown, and Performance charts.

The Task Manager

The Wrike task manager lets you plan and track all of your work in one place. You can do everything from creating your to-do list up to collaborating on a team project. If you need to create subtasks, or define a schedule, you can do it here. Even better, you can attach files to tasks or subtasks, as well as track the progress of the work.

More and more, work depends on collaboration between people in different locations, even different organizations. But Wrike’s task manager doesn’t let you down. Everyone on a project can collaboratively edit documents, while simultaneously holding live discussions and editing the team’s tasks.

The Stream

In this part of Wrike you can see what has happened in all the projects you are part of. This information is updated in real time, giving you an easy way to catch up with the activity on fast-moving projects and tasks. The Stream includes a set of filters to help you manage the flow by focusing on any of these types of information:

• Everything
• Everything I follow
• Assigned to me
• My conversations

Reports

This is a feature of the Enterprise version of Wrike. Here you can create customized real-time reports showing exactly what’s going on with your team and on individual projects.

Mobile

Wrike offers apps for both iOS and Android devices. I have been using the Android app for a few days now and it is working smoothly for me with no problems.

Integrations

A product like Wrike is powerful on its own. But when it can integrate with the other tools and services you use, that multiplies its power and value. At the time of this review (early May, 2016) Wrike supported 35 integrations with different categories of products and services. The categories include:

• Accounting & Invoicing
• Automation
• CMS (Content Management Systems)
• Customer Support
• Email – Create and manage Wrike tasks and projects from within Apple Mail, Gmail, or Outlook
• Export/Import
• Extensions
• File Storage
• Forms
• Instant Messaging
• Mobile Apps
• SSO (Single Sign On)
• Social Media

The exact integrations you have access to depend on the Wrike Plan you choose. In the event that there is not an integration you need, Wrike has an API you can use to create your own.

Security/Encryption

Wrike offers a range of security features to ensure that your data is safe. Your data is physically stored in redundant, secure, physically separated data centers. Wrike follows applicable standards for network and application security, including 256-bit SSL encryption using AES in CBC mode with a 2048-bit server key. In short, your data is safe with Wrike.

Enterprise

The Enterprise version of Wrike includes the complete set of product features and is designed to handle anything from 5-person teams to companies with 50,000 employees. This version offers numerous improvements over the Professional version, including powerful capabilities such as:

• Custom Fields and Workflows
• Workload view
• User groups
• Extended security controls

In addition, Enterprise customers are entitled to benefits like Professional Services and Support, Advanced analytics (including Critical Path visualization), and enterprise-grade security.

Examples

The Examples section of the Wrike website is interesting. It is broken down into specific categories of Wrike users. In each section, you’ll find use cases, success stories and resources that address the use of Wrike in that specific industry. If one of these categories describes you, the information here could be invaluable.

The categories are:

• Marketing
• Marketing Agencies
• Product Development
• Project Managers
• Team Leaders

You can reach these categories by scrolling to the bottom of any Wrike webpage and looking under the Examples heading you will find there.

Blog

The Wrike Blog is a great resource for learning what’s going on with the service as well as all sorts of business tips and advice. It is searchable and also categorized, so finding information that is relevant to your interests is easy. With the company continuing to roll out product updates frequently, you may want to monitor the New Features category even if you aren’t ready to invest in Wrike today. You never know when that one killer feature that’s perfect for your business will arrive!

Pricing

Wrike offers three pricing plans. Each plan builds on the previous in that you can have more users, and get more features as you go. The three plans are:

• Free Plan. This plan supports up to 5 users. It includes the basic features of Wrike, along with a basic set of integrations and 2GB of storage space.
• Professional Plan. This plan supports up to 15 users. It includes everything in the Free plan, plus additional features, additional integrations, and 5GB of storage instead of 2GB. This plan costs $49/mo, which is billed annually.
• Enterprise Plan. This plan supports an unlimited number of users. It includes everything in the Professional plan, plus additional features, additional integrations, and at least 100GB of storage. You need to speak directly with Wrike to determine the pricing for this plan.

Conclusion

Wrike is a powerful tool for managing your own tasks and projects, as well as those of your team. It makes keeping track of your team’s work easier, while reducing the need for status reports and meetings. You will be able to create custom workflows and get real-time reports on every aspect of your projects, down to the workloads of individual team members.

Working together is simple with Wrike’s collaborative Document Editor, Activity Stream, and “@notifications.” Thanks to Wrike’s iOS and Android apps, you can stay in the loop and continue interacting with the team while you are on the move.

Keeping track of your personal responsibilities and priorities is easy thanks your personal My Work space. You won’t have to go digging through 8 different projects to be sure you didn’t miss something with Wrike.

But having cool features isn’t enough. A product has to actually deliver in the real world. Wrike gets strong reviews here on DiscoverCloud. Users laud its project management abilities, with several of them talking about how they have switched from other popular products to Wrike. I am using Wrike right now to collaborate with a consultant on a project and am finding it to make my life a lot easier.

Try Wrike. We think you will be impressed. You can start a free trial of the Professional or Enterprise plans by clicking here. You can also sign up for the Free plan there.

Read more about Wrike on DiscoverCloud in our knowledge base.