Web based Project management software WRIKE

WRIKE: Web Based Software
(Case Study Analysis)

Introduction
Wrike is an exemplary Software that has significant relevance for the field of Planning and Urban Development in terms of process / meetings / participation like public engagement / education, Project management or client communication.

Wrike is web based project management software that gives us full visibility and control over the projects, teams and businesses. It is also regarded as an intelligent E-mail engine that boosts the team’s productivity. Wrike’s interface is very straightforward and it does not over think things. “We do things two times faster than we did before Wrike” per Nick Borders, director of digital development, Entercom.

Wrike integrates project plans with tasks created via email that provides us relief from routine tasks like updating files frequently.

We can create and update tasks without logging in to the system. Simply CC the emails with tasks to wrike@wrike.com.

It saves the time and energy by sending automatic task reminders to the employees.

It helps team become more organized and effective by issuing daily to-do emails.

It fosters the team collaboration through automatic notifications about changes in tasks.

Besides being fun to use Wrike is also a quick-loading and easy to input the data per Stephen Smith, writer, productivity and web 2.0.

Wrike also gives us a 1,000-foot view of what the team is working on.

It lets our team avoid missing important tasks in email in-boxes by automatically visualizing them on a shared time line.

Wrike saves a lot of time on scheduling projects.

Changes in the plan are automatically communicated to team members.

According to Nick Morse, marketing and communication manager at the University of Washington, Wrike has drastically increased the productivity of their team. It has also the following benefits like,

It helps us avoiding headaches from checking multiple files, emails and web workspace to get a clear picture of projects.

It merges emails, employees’ to-do lists, project schedules and quarterly plans into a linear work-flow.

Wrike gives us the maximum visibility across many projects in one account.

We can break complex tasks into smaller action items and thus coordinate every tiny detail of our project.

It gives us full insight into the business by letting us know selectively share any part of the task hierarchy with your team members and clients.

Wrike also possess a unique flexible structures like we can build a hierarchies of tasks and simultaneously put a sub-project and a task in many projects. It also lets us sort tasks in various ways like by projects, by responsible team members, by departments such as planning, Architecture, IT etc.

Benefits of using wrike
Wrike provides equal benefits to Executives, Project Managers or all the Project Team Members. It bridges the gap between strategic plans and everyday jobs of the employees. Its unique features gives us a complete picture of the business from other parts like projects, employees to-do lists or department’s quarterly plans. The picture is updated in the real time by the managers and employees as they email each other and collaborate. It does a lot of routine works like reminding the employees of their overdue tasks, composes individual schedules etc. Neat Gant Charts are automatically built from the emails by Wrike’s Intelligent Email Engine. This Email Engine creates online shared space from emails that we send to our peers and it also works with any email software including Blackberry, Web-based email and all email clients.. Together we can share and discuss files, organize tasks in the way we like. It is different from its competitors due to its ingenuity that manages to increase drastically the efficiency and productivity of managers worldwide. This can be achieved by a set of special features such as automatic task reminders, CSV export and import templates, flexible structures, task assignment and task sharing, intelligent email engine and 256-bit SSL data. Wrike wants to be a management solution for small to middle size companies. However customizable subscriptions are also available for larger corporations. By increasing the efficiency of any business it makes the task of managers a much more simple undertaking, and for this reason it can be of extreme use. It is not just a mere addition application. Since it increases the productivity, all of the business owner using Wrike will find it as almost a necessity, especially in these days where business is handled over the internet.

Wrike V. other Similar tools aka web based project management software tool
Universal membership only need one log in no matter how many client accounts. The other tools like Basecamp needs one log in per account. Due to this facts it can be a huge benefit for a consultant who works with many clients.

Excellent organizational system. Tasks, milestones, text and attachments all together under one hierarchy. Basically there are two things in the Wrike universe. The first one is a task which has a little text, a start date, end date, duration, assignments and status. And the second one is a group which contains an arbitrary number of tasks and/or groups, some text and its email notification status. We can set it to alert ourselves via email when certain things happen in the group. Also any group or task can be contained by multiple groups like if we want to organize things by client we can create client based groups and if we additionally want to organize by task size then we can put everything in size based groups too.

Create tasks via email. So it is a super convenient way to get things into Wrike where as Basecamp support no email of any sort. Here every group and task can have arbitrary attachments uploaded and associated with it that allows us to very conveniently keep things together. If we get some email from a client that need to turn into a task, we just have to forward it to a particular Wrike address and we can also put an optional group we want to put on.

It also allows us to edit any group and task due to big text area. It also allows cooperative writing like Wiki style. The main problem in this context is that there is no version control, no sense of what it was in the past and who has been editing it.

Due to its extraordinary benefits to the users, Wrike has been declared the first winner of the tool of the month award, recently established by the Clever Tester Network, one of the largest independent software testing resources on the web. For two months in a row, Wrike was the most popular tool among the visitors of tester tools, one of the Network’s Web Sites with an impressive lead over hundreds of other competing applications in the number of trials. The tough judges for any software tool are among the software testing and quality assurance engineers and the target audience of the clever Tester Network. This enhances the quality of the awards.

Wrike’s New Social Version
Recently the full new version of Wrike has been released with its full glory. The new Wrike merges advanced project management functionality with social network like interactivity and ease of use. During the development of the new Wrike, the approach to the usability design has been redefined to help the user create a social network like a friendly and effective solution. It’s innovative interface and enhanced collaboration platform will help us to boost the productivity of every member of our team like never before.

The most notable innovations of Wrike Social are as follows;

Wrike’s new interface:
In Wrike Social, a new innovative 3-pane layout has been introduced which gives us access to more information on the screen. We can easily navigate through the folders, see full task details for individual tasks and folders all on screen. We don’t have to loose time and focus while switching between different pages and windows.

Profile Pictures:
Wrike’s new interface also includes avatars to bring extra social network-like friendliness to our workspace. Personal pictures bring online communication, a step forward and allow people to identify the author of a task or who the task is shared with etc. with just a quick glance at the workspace.

Interactive Dashboard:
Wrike Social has a new dashboard, which gives every member of the team an unparalleled visibility of where they stand at any point in time. This easily customizable tool shows information about scheduled, overdue and backlogged tasks and also provides the news about the most recent activities of our teammates. With this powerful easy to use tool task management becomes more easier than ever.

Activity stream and micro-blogging feature:
Wrike’s Activity Stream is a powerful tool that provides a news feed about the most recent activity in real time, which makes sure that everyone stays in the loop and has easy access to the latest information. It also allows people to exchange short messages giving them the ability to hold informal discussion within the same workspace. In addition to comments every task in the new Wrike also has an activity stream for that particular task built in. Everyone can see the full history of changes and therefore has greater control over the work-flow.

Backlog:
In the newer version of Wrike, backlogged task has been introduced. The ability to create tasks with no fixed start dates and due dates allows us to easily store and keep valuable ideas and make sure that they are not lost in the work-flow. We can set tasks as backlogged and come back to them and schedule in the future or just use them to accumulate project ideas or other information.

Prioritizing and customizable search:
In the new Wrike we can customize our search and filter criteria. This allows us to build task list with only those tasks that we want to see, sorting and filtering them by nearly every possible detail. Most importantly we can now sort our task by priority, rearrange them with a simple drag and drop function.  People can now arrange their tasks as needed and focus on what is most important.

Application of Wrike:
In order to use Wrike a simple registration is required. We have to create an administrator account that takes about a few minutes. We just need a valid email address for the usual confirmation email. The software provides a 30 days free trial account. We don’t need to download or install anything. No credit card is needed for this trial version. We can test the software during this trial period. There are also some of the paid accounts available and these accounts provide some additional features such as unlimited viewers. All accounts including the free trial come with real time data backup and free email support for more than 99% cases. All subscriptions allow the management of an unlimited number of tasks and projects, the organization of a hierarchy of tasks and the possibility of selecting particular information that can be shared with other users.

There are three kinds of paid subscriptions available;

•    A) – Unlimited Viewers ($9.95 per month) – allows for an unlimited number of viewers that can view tasks and receive notifications.
•    B) – Collaborator ($9.95 per month per user) – allows collaborators to create and modify tasks and view and update project plans. It also includes 500 Mb of file storage.
•    C) – Manager ($19.95 per use per month) – allows managers to have complete control over projects and reports. This includes 5 GB of file storage.

Conclusion
Wrike is one of the smart software that has been developed to meet the necessity of this modern web-based world. It has been proved to be one of the most effective tools through the experience of various business director, entrepreneurs, Managers etc to speed up the work pace of every individuals. Various experts have testified this facts.