Bookings

Bookings are available on accounts with the Wrike Resource add-on and the Wrike for Professional Services or Wrike for Professional Services Performance package. The feature can be enabled from Labs by the account owners and admins. 

This is an experimental feature and as a result, it: may have bugs, is subject to change, and may be discontinued at any time. Please feel free to use the feedback links in Wrike Labs to share your thoughts on this beta feature.

• Overview
• Enable Bookings
• Add Bookings
• Edit and Delete Bookings
• Reassign Bookings

Overview

Bookings are a separate entity in the workspace to store effort estimations. Use Bookings to reserve blocks of time based on how much effort you think the work might take for each assignee or job role in a project. Each booking is linked to a single project and assignee, and each assignee in a project can have only one booking.

Bookings also have a separate schedule. When you add a booking, you set the start and end dates during which you estimate the assignee will work. The schedule for a booking will be affected by any changes to the assignee's Work Schedule.

You can see and use Bookings in Resources view, Workload charts, and the horizontal Backlog Box.

Bookings vs. task effort

Since bookings aren't connected to tasks, they're not necessarily a replacement for task effort. Instead, they're another way to store estimations of work. You can use both bookings and task effort in your account depending on what kind of estimations you need.

Use bookings when:

• You want a high-level overview of projects and their effort on the Workload chart instead of adding effort in individual tasks.
• You need to forecast resources before actual tasks are created in the project.
• You don't need a granular estimation of effort for each task, or you find that you often need to adjust these estimations due to changes.

Task effort and effort stored in bookings are added up on Workload charts, where you can see an overview of the total allocation for your team. Bookings effort can also be rolled up alongside task effort in Table view.

Wrike Tip! We recommend using either bookings or task effort for each project, not both at the same time. Task effort is ideal for short projects without too many moving parts. Bookings, on the other hand, are ideal for longer, more complex projects.

Enable Bookings

Account owners and admins can enable Bookings for their account.

1. Visit Wrike Labs.
2. Scroll to "Bookings."
3. Click "Enable."

Wrike Tip! You'll get the most out of Bookings if you have Resources view in your account. You can also enable the view from Labs.

Add Bookings

All account users, except for collaborators, can add bookings in projects that they have access to unless it's restricted by their access role (the required permission is "Edit task dates and dependencies")

1. Open the relevant Workload chart. Alternatively, open the relevant project in Resources view if you have it enabled from Labs.
2. Expand the row of the relevant user or job role. If you're adding it in Resources view, you may need to click the "+ Add user" button to add the user or job role first.
3. Click the "+ Add booking" button. Note: To see this button on Workload charts, you need to enable grouping by project.
4. In the pop-up that opens:
   • Enter the estimated effort in hours. Note: Currently, there's only one effort mode available for bookings, which is equivalent to the Basic effort type in tasks.
   • Set the dates during which the assignee is estimated to work. Keep in mind that these dates can be affected by changes to the user's Work Schedule.
5. Click "Add."

Repeat this process for all users and job roles who are planned to work on the project. After you add a booking, you can see it in Resources view, Workload charts, and the horizontal Backlog Box.

Wrike Tip! Bookings are also available in Blueprints. You can create blueprints for recurring projects and, in the Resources view, add effort estimations based on bookings.

Edit and Delete Bookings

All account users, except for collaborators, can edit and delete bookings in projects that they have access to unless it's restricted by their access role (the required permission is "Edit task dates and dependencies").

1. Open the relevant Workload chart. Alternatively, open the relevant project in Resources view if you have it enabled from Labs.
2. Locate and click the relevant booking.
3. In the pop-up, edit the effort or dates of the booking and click "Save." Note: The title of the booking can't be changed.
4. To delete the booking, click "Delete" in the bottom-right corner.

Reassign Bookings

All account users, except for collaborators, can reassign bookings within projects that they have access to unless it's restricted by their access role (the required permission is "Edit task dates and dependencies").

You can reassign separate bookings in Resources view:

1. Open the relevant project in Resources view.
2. Locate the user or job role with the relevant booking assigned.
3. Hover over the user or job role's name and click the three-dot menu button that appears.
4. Select "Reassign."
5. In the pop-up, click "+ Select user."
6. Select a user or a job role from the list.
7. Click the "Reassign" button.

If you reassign the booking to a user or job role that didn't have a booking before, they'll appear on the view, and the user or job role you reassigned it from will disappear.

If you reassign to a user or job role that already had a booking in that project, the two bookings will be merged:

• Effort will be combined and reallocated according to the date of the booking and user's Work Schedule.
• The start date will be the earliest start date of two bookings.
• The end date will be the latest end date of two bookings.

Wrike Tip! It's not possible to reassign separate bookings on Workload charts since the bookings are linked to projects. Instead, you can reassign projects and the booking will be reassigned alongside the project's tasks. The same applies to moving tasks from the Backlog Box when you staff projects on Workload charts.