Projects

External and regular users on all account types can create projects.

⏱ 6 min read

• Overview
• Projects vs. Folders
• Create a Project
• Project Attributes
• Roll Up Project Dates
• Roll Up Time Spent on a Project
• Projects on the Gantt Chart
• More Info

Overview

Projects are one of the main ways to organize, manage, and report on work within Wrike. Use projects to manage a group of tasks that are part of a larger goal. Projects enable you to track the status and due dates separately from your tasks while adding information directly to the project itself: project owner, start date, end dates, custom fields, plus any attachments or conversations that the project team will want to access.

Quick Tip! Check out our article on Archiving for information on how to archive projects. 

Projects vs. Folders

Quick details below, but check our page Building Blocks: Tasks, Folders, and Projects for more detailed information on when to use each item.

• Use Spaces to group projects and folders together as one building block. For example, Spaces can contain projects, folders and tasks and that are related to each other. Spaces can include data related to your team, department, a specific project or whatever other organization processes.
• Use folders to categorize work. For example, folders can be used to group projects and tasks by team, client, stage of work or however fits your team best. Folders can contain subfolders, projects, and tasks.
• Use projects to manage a group of tasks that are part of a larger goal. With projects, you can track the status and due dates of the project separately from the individual tasks and can store files and notes that need to be accessible to the project team.  
• Tasks are the activities you need to complete. Tasks can be stand-alone activities or part of a larger project.
• Finally, subtasks are the steps you need to take to complete a task. Subtasks are particularly useful if different people are responsible for each step.

Create a Project

Create a new project

1. Click the “+” next to the Space name in the left-hand Navigation panel. Alternatively, click on the big “+” button in the upper left corner of the workspace.
2. Select "Project of folder" in the pop-up window which opens.
3. Enter your project’s name.
4. Specify additional project attributes:
   • Choose the project's default view.
   • Specify who you want to share the project with.
   • Specify the project's start and finish date.
   • Add additional project owners.
5. Click "Create."

Convert a folder into a project

1. Right-click a folder in the left-hand Navigation panel. 
2. Select “Convert to Project.”

To easily distinguish projects from folders, projects have a clipboard icon  to the left of their name in the Navigation panel.

Convert a subfolder into a subproject

You can use the same steps as described above or:

1. Right-click a subfolder in List view.
2. Select "Convert to Project".

Project Attributes

You can access and edit a project’s properties from the project info. Just select a project from the folder tree 1 and a panel with the project’s information 2 automatically appears.

From here you will be able to view and edit the project’s:

Owners

The "Owners" 1 attribute allows you to clearly indicate the person or people that are responsible for a project. To add a project owner, click on “+” 2 next to the “Owners” field. Begin typing the name of the user you want to add and then select their name from the dropdown when it appears 3. When you add someone as a project owner:

• The project is automatically shared with the user (if it was not shared previously). You will see a pop-up notification with the “Undo” button on it. If you click the button, the project will be unshared from the user immediately.
• They receive an email notification about the change (depending on their email notification settings).
• A note is added to the project's Activity Stream.
• The user's profile image appears in the "Owners" field.

Status

Use project statuses 1 to indicate how your project is progressing. As your project advances, change its status to one of the project’s default statuses 2:

For accounts created before 4/15/2019 these 6 status options are currently available:

• Green: the project is on track and will finish on time.
• Yellow: minor setbacks, the project deadline may be affected.
• Red: the project is behind schedule, the deadline will be missed.
• On hold: the project is on hold.
• Cancelled: the project has been cancelled.
• Completed: the project has been completed.

To select a status: 

1. Hover over the status field.
2. Click the dropdown arrow that appears.
3. Select one of the status options.

The status you choose will display in the status field and a thin bar, in a corresponding color, will appear across the top of the Project info panel.

For the accounts created after 4/15/2019:

• New: For (newly created) projects you intend to work on, but on which you haven't yet started working.
• In Progress: for projects you are currently working on.
• Completed: for projects which have been completed.
• On Hold: for projects which are postponed or temporarily on hold. Projects can be marked as "on hold" even if they have scheduled start and due dates.
• Cancelled: for projects which are no longer relevant or which no longer need to be completed.

To select a status:

1. Click the status field
2. From the dropdown menu that appears select one of the status options.

The status you choose will display in the status field.

Users on Business and Enterprise accounts can choose a status from any of their Custom Workflows:

1. Click the status field.
2. Click the “Change workflow” button that appears at the bottom of the dropdown menu.
3. Hover over the workflow from which you want to select a status.
4. Select the status from the list that appears.

Wrike Tip! You can filter out completed and cancelled projects so they don't clutter your left-hand Navigation panel.

Start Date

Help keep your team on the same page by setting a start date 3 for your project. To add a start date: click in the field next to “Start Date” and then enter a date.

Finish Date

Signal when a project needs to be completed by. To add an end date 4 click in the field next to “Finish Date” and enter a date.

Roll Up Project Dates

Project dates rollup is available on Business and higher accounts. Regular users can enable dates rollup for projects.

Instead of manually setting up project dates, you can enable dates rollup. Wrike will automatically check the start and end dates of all subprojects, tasks, and subtasks within the project and set the earliest start date and the latest end date for the project.

To roll up project dates:

1. Select a project on the left-hand navigation panel.
2. Click on the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner of the project info panel.
3. Select “Enable Dates Rollup.”
4. In the window that appears click “Enable and reschedule.”

The project’s dates will be set automatically and you’ll no longer be able to change them manually. If you or other users change the start date of the earliest task, subtask, or subproject or the end date of the latest one, the rolled-up project dates will be adjusted automatically.

To disable dates rollup for a project, select “Disable Dates Rollup” on Step 3 described above.

Note: This way you enable/disable rollup only for the project you selected in Step 1. Its subprojects do not automatically get rollup enabled or disabled.

You can enable/disable rollup for multiple projects from the Table view:

1. Select a Space, folder, or project that contains all projects for which you want to enable dates rollup.
2. Switch to the Table view. 
3. Locate the “Start date” or “Due date” column.
4. Click on the caret icon next to the name of the column.
5. Hover over “Rollup.”
6. Select “Enable/Disable for all projects.”
7. Confirm your decision in the pop-up that appears.

Dates rollup will be enabled or disabled for all projects that are currently on the Table view.

Roll Up Time Spent on a Project

Time spent rollup is available on Business and higher accounts.

The "Time spent" column on the Table view allows you to see how much time was spent on any selected task.

For tasks within projects, you can roll up the values and see the total number of hours spent on the project. To do so:

1. Open the project you want to roll up time for in the Table view. If you need to roll up time for multiple projects, open the project, folder, or space where all the projects live.
2. Enable the "Time spent" column so it's visible in the table.
3. Next:
   
   • To roll up time for one project, hover over the cell in the "Time spent" column and click the "Enable rollup" icon that appears.
   • To roll up time for all the projects in the table, click on the caret next to "Time spent," hover over "Rollup," and select "Enable for all projects."

You'll see the total number of hours spent on a project in the cell.

Note: To edit the values, switch to the Timelog view or open each task separately and edit the values from the Task view.

Projects on the Gantt Chart

Switching to the Gantt chart 1 can help you visualize how your project and its tasks are scheduled. 

• To appear on the timeline portion of the Gantt chart, projects must contain at least one task with scheduled start and end dates (or a milestone task ).
• To view all the projects in a specific Space, click the Space name in the left-hand navigation panel and proceed to the Gantt chart.
• To view all the projects shared with you that belong to all the Spaces in the account (public or private), click on “Shared with me” section in the left-hand navigation panel and proceed to the Gantt chart.

How Projects Appear on the Gantt Chart

• The project’s title is visible on the Gantt chart and the project icon 2 appears to the left of the project’s name.
• Scheduled tasks are displayed underneath the project’s title.
• A bracket, designating the project's time span*, appears underneath the project’s title 3. The bracket’s color corresponds with the project’s status.

*If the project has start and end dates scheduled, then the bracket spans from the project’s start date to its end date (regardless of when task's within the project are scheduled). If the project does not have start and end dates scheduled, then the bracket spans from the earliest start date to the latest end date of tasks within the project.

Details regarding how tasks and subfolders appear in the Gantt Chart can be found here.