Custom fields for recurring tasks

It looks like custom fields are not duplicated from the original task when tasks are made recurring. Is there a way to have the custom fields automatically recreated for recurring tasks?

help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/articles/209603769-Make-a-Task-Recurrent?flash_digest=d69dbc73c69490e902ac99cca926db04db834a80

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Marj Downey

Tagging this one as i'm interested in the answer as well.

Marj Downey

Claire,

I created a task, added a custom Field and then made the task recurring. The custom Field was in all the recurring tasks. I did apply the custom field to the FOLDER where the task is located and duplicates to under New Table.

Not sure why yours would not duplicate as well.

Michael Michalak

Same, I wonder if this has to do with the place you add the custom field as well. Good suggestion Marjorie!

Claire Brosius

Thanks, Marjorie. I wasn't as clear above -- the custom field itself was duplicated, but the content of the field was not. So if the Custom Field was "Budget Dept." and I wanted every recurring task to say "HR", the original task had the custom field entered in as "HR", but all subsequent tasks just showed the custom field with no content. "HR" has to be manually entered for each recurring task.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

@Claire Hey, thanks for posting!:)

The Custom Fields are duplicated in the Recurring tasks, but values have to be put in manually. It would be great to hear how you're using Custom Fields values in the Recurrent tasks! As I understand, they don't change from week to week?

Claire Brosius

@Lisa yes, that's correct. The custom field values don't change from week to week. We're using the custom fields to be able to track recurring report submissions on our team. Some reports are annual, monthly, weekly, and even daily. Most of the information for the reports to be submitted is included in the Description, but there are some values - like the person responsible to review the report, and the department who owns the report - for which we'd like to have Reports, which requires a Custom Field to be able to filter fields in a Report, as far as I know. Any recommendations for being able to create Reports on the department or other factors without having to create Custom Fields, which must be manually entered?

Elizaveta Bogdanova

@Claire thanks a lot for your explanation 🙂 What if you create a parent Folder called Departments, then create subfolders corresponding with all the departments that can be responsible for a Report, and then tag Tasks from different Folders/Projects with a particular department subfolder? That way you can create a Task-based Report on these subfolders separately, and you'll see all the Tasks a particular department is responsible for. The Recurring Tasks will inherit the tags from the parent Task.

Please let me know if that can help you.

Josh Tyler

Hello!

My company is having the same exact info. There should be a way to have a task with SET custom fields that show, for our use, information that does not usually change that is necessary to have when doing that task. Is there a work around for this? The sub folders idea mentioned above would not help in this instance.

Thank you!

Josh

Elizaveta Bogdanova

@Josh Hi, welcome to the Community, happy to see you here 🙂

If that's the info that is needed in all tasks like this, why not include it in the description? You then will be able to make that task recurrent or duplicate it with description. You can also create a Blueprint task/project and use it as a template. Please let me know if you'd like to discuss this further, I'll be happy to help 🙌

Will Mann

Hi Lisa,

We need to be able to sort independently by each of the different variables in custom fields, having them in the description doesn't allow us to do this. We're creating an inordinate amount of busy work for ourselves currently duplicating the tasks so that we can have the data in the custom fields in new "recurring" tasks. Since duplicating a completed task reverts the new duplicate back to the new status we're effectively manually making recurring tasks however it's become a huge time suck.

Will

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @Will, happy to see you on the Community 🙂 Thanks a lot for posting your feedback here!

@All, I think it might be a good idea to move this thread to the Product Feedback forum so that our Community members could upvote the idea. What do you think?

Alex Walton

I think this should go to the product feedback forum. My company would also benefit from having the value of a custom field copy over in a recurring task.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thank you for sharing your thoughts here, @Alex Walton! I'll go ahead and move this post to the Product Feedback section 👍

Jack Allen

Hi - chiming in as another user that thinks it would be very beneficial to enable the duplication of custom fields' content in recurring tasks. Our firm tracks budgeted and actual time to complete tasks very closely, and it would be very helpful for the recurring tasks that we create to show the same budgeted time that I entered (in a custom field) whenever that tasks recurs. It is not helpful to have the budgeted time in the description, because I use that custom field to create a report that sums up the amount of budgeted time for total tasks per week so I can see how full my employees' plates are. Currently I cannot achieve that without re-entering their budgeted time for every recurring task (and there are so many that I do not have the time to do this).

Really hoping the product development team will do something to update this!

Kristen Gundersen

My team would also benefit from this! Let me know if there are any further developments!

We have tasks filter into an editorial calendar, which is mapped from the custom field in each of these tasks. It would be great if I didn't have to set these manually once the recurring task was created. We have two custom fields for these types of tasks--one does not change (this is the one I wish would duplicate with the recurring task) and one that change based on the content we are sharing (and would remain a manual selection for each recurring task).

Samantha Gorosh

My team would also love this--- it's such a silly, tedious, manual task right now.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hey again everyone!

I've checked with the team - they don't have this in their short-term plans. At the same time, this suggestion is definitely on their radar; I continue to pass on all new feedback and the number of upvotes (please don't forget to 👍 the suggestion). Any updates, I'll make sure to let you know!

mdr

Jessica Lewis

Yes same here. We have estimated times for certain tasks to actual time spent and when we use recurring that is gone. And yes, we could put the estimated time in the task description but then someone would have to add it back to the custom field, that step could be missed, so we could do the math against time spent.

We also have another custom field that we use for outputs - ex. report, social, email, SEO, etc. So we can see what people are spending their time on. Again, this field does not pull through with recurring. We've been manually fixing every time but people forget. Would love to see this added to development - would be huge!

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thanks a lot for sharing your feedback and use-case here, @Jessica Lewis 🤗

Denise Miller

I have added my upvote. My use case is below.

We have a custom field that is shared only with PMs. The title of the Custom Field is "Agenda Task," and it is a checkbox. We create tasks to track our meeting agendas. PMs put a checkbox in that custom field so that I can report on project meetings across the board. Many of our projects have recurring weekly meetings, and the agenda task is a recurring task with the appropriate template agenda and attendees. With today's workflow, each PM has to remember to check the Agenda Task custom field in order for our reporting to be accurate. It would be most helpful if the Agenda Task custom field in the recurring tasks was checked automatically (given the field is checked in the original task).

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi @Denise Miller, thank you for adding your support and sharing your use case. I've made aware our Product team of it 👍🏼

Austin Headley

This is a need for my team as well.

Can't use recurring tasks for any deliverables in our system because they all require custom fields to show up in reporting.

Manually have to duplicate the task for the next month at the moment.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thanks a lot for supporting here @Austin Headley 👍 Please make sure to upvote!

Denis Zimmer

We are currently looking for a way to filter out recurring tasks from certain dashboards using a custom field since we need to create the recurring tasks upfront to be able to see them in the workload. But since the value is not copied and there is no bulk action for changing custom fields it comes down to manual work. So this here would help get our other workaround running and would already help a lot. I have put a separate post up for vote on our workload recurring task issue.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thank you for your detailed comment @Denis Zimmer, really appreciate it. We will pass your feedback to the Product team 👍

Nick McGowan

I'd also like to see the ability have recurrent tasks keep custom field data. Upvoted.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thank you @Nick McGowan, and welcome to the Community 👋

Wrike Help Desk

Hello,
Having the ability to have custom fields included with recurrent tasks would be extremely helpful. Thanks, Tattiana H.

Cansu Yetisgin

Hi Tattiana, thank you for sharing your feedback here! @Wrike Help Desk

Naomi Bush

We also need variables inside custom fields to carry over to new recurring tasks. We use each task for ordering supplies each week, and we need each variable to stay the same in the custom fields from week to week or task to task.

Recurring tasks are also buggy, I hope they plan on implementing variable carry-over in custom fields in recurring tasks.. and fix the bugs that occur when creating multiple tasks up front.