Automatically Move Completed Task (and Projects) to Archive Folder

In order to properly track timelogs in a project report on a monthly basis one must manually move all completed tasks from last month out of the project folder (or create a new project every month which requires moving uncompleted task to the next month project) to see timelogs for this month only. I realize that this really only affects retainer projects that renew every month but I know a lot of people have repeating or retainer projects. This feature request could also help people who want to automatically archive projects as well.

It would be extremely easy for Wrike to implement a function that says:

If xTask in xFolder has been completed for xDays or at xDate (like the end of each month) move completed task from xFolder to x[Archive]Folder. This would be extremely easy to implement. The same function could be done for Projects.

This would let us decide when and where completed tasks (or projects) in a folder need to be moved. It's really very simple and I bet the API could do this now if someone wanted to take the time, but it would be best as a core feature.

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Comments

Dylen Campbell

This. Yes, please.

Our team schedules time every month to manually go through all our projects and move completed ones to the archive folder. This presents two problems:

1. Our department folders are flooded with completed tasks that make parsing through them difficult.

2. Once the project has been moved to the archive folder, generating reports (eg. All completed Marketing projects in Q1) is nearly impossible to make.

I'd love to see this process automated, but also to see projects moved into a relevant Archive folder that still pertains to the department it came from. Would allow reporting to be simpler and for better Wrike QoL.

jeff heywood

I'd love to have a workflow on a project. So that when a project goes from green to completed, we can move it to a Mastering folder. Being able to trigger moves at the project (parent) level would be useful to us. I think it is similar to what you are requesting.

A.J. Hartless

I am also looking for a way to automatically move projects from one folder to an "archive" folder once they are marked complete. Until that feature is built - what is everyone else doing as an interim process?

I think I will just create an Archive Folder with more sub-folders to match out existing folder tree so that I can still locate projects later down the road. Is this similar to what others are doing?

Thanks!

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi everyone, thank you for your feedback and examples here, that's really helpful. The suggestion is logged with the relevant team; I'll get back to you here when I have any updates 🙌

Diana Gonsalves

Hi Lisa,

Is there any update on auto-archiving?

Thanks

Diana

Michelle Palomares

Yes, is there an update on this request? This would also be very helpful for us.

Kelly Irving

Is there an update on this? We get a lot of tasks in 1 day and would love to be able to auto archive so they dont show up in the dashboard.

Katie Magee

We really need this too. Thanks.

Enrico Gebauer

Would love to have this feature as well.

Sarah Dungey

Is there an update on this?

Courtney Spears

I am also interested on when this might be available to use. I would love to have a workflow that automatically moved tasks to different projects once the status is changed.

Elaine McDonagh

Hi all, we don't have any updates for you at the moment, but thank you for your feedback! It's been passed on and we'll be back in touch as soon as we have some news 👍

Mo Masoud

I don't understand how there isn't a native way to automatically archive projects after completion. I mentioned this to our Wrike rep(s) several times now. I personally have to spend time every week/month to move completed projects to the Archive folder we created manually, based on the implementation team's recommendation.

This wouldn't be a problem if there was an easier way to move projects en masse. Right now I have to drop and drop projects individually (can't multi-select projects) or go into each project clear the folders and type the archive folder.

Generally speaking, controlling and filtering projects is a nightmare. I truly can't believe how this was not sorted out in year 1 of the software.

Yesterday I logged in to our Basecamp account to collaborate on an existing project and realized how much I miss the simplicity of project and task management of BC. I'm in utter disbelief that our workspace is getting more disorganized or cumbersome to organize now than before Wrike. Organizing is a time commitment of itself.

Every time I request this or ask about it I get the same "not on our roadmap" response.

File me under the "Not a Happy Customer" folder and mark me "Needs to speak to the manager."

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @Mo Masoud, thanks for reaching out! We'll be passing your feedback to the team, and I'm also arranging a chat with your Account manager on this.

Donna Dunn

Having the functionality to automate a project moving to "archive" once it's marked complete would be super helpful.

Permanently deleted user

Hi @Donna Dunn, thank you for the feedback! It's been passed on to the Product team.

Christina Fischer

Hi everyone,

we are just beta testing something called "Automation Engine" in our Wrike account, which enables trigger-based actions, defined in automation rules.

One of these rules would allow for a task or project to be moved to another folder (or Space) based on the change in status (workflow status could be "Archived"). This feature is still in a very early stage, the private beta goes until end of July 2020 and then it might hit Labs after that (not confirmed by Wrike).

I'm not sure what the plan is, on which subscriptions Wrike will add this feature, or if it will be a paid add-on. But this might be the solution for you.

Hayley Coxon

100% need this. We moved to Wrike from Asana after much internal campaigning on my part. But this is the one feature I though Asana actually did better than Wrike. In the same way you can Duplicate a project in Wrike, there was an Asana option to Archive the project. When you archived it, it didn't move from the folders it was in, but it disappeared in the Folder view (and there was a filter option to see all archived projects). It worked pretty much the same as Tasks in Wrike work when you complete them.

When you're running dozens of projects through Wrike each week, the time it takes to manually move projects to an Archive folder quickly becomes unproductive and unacceptable.

Allegra Jackson

Any updates on this functionality? It would be so helpful and cut down on hours spent moving projects manually to an Archive folder each week.

mdr

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi everyone! Our Product team is now working on a feature that should help with this use-case, so thanks a lot for providing feedback! 🙂 I will let you know more in the coming weeks!

mdr

Jeff Krigstein

Thanks, Lisa! Looking forward to this feature being a reality. It looks like there are already a lot of willing participants for any Labs release of this feature, too.

Steve Davies

3 months since the last official post - Any chance of an update on this most basic of features? How about a screenshot of the project being tracked in Wrike? 😉

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hey everyone! This is now possible to achieve with Wrike's Automation:

Please let me know if you have any questions, I'll be happy to discuss!

Steve Davies

Thank you - I clearly missed that when it arrived.

Allegra Jackson

great news! Anyone have thoughts on creating an Archive folder vs an Archive Space with this new functionality? Pros/cons?

Jeff Krigstein

Thanks, Lisa. I had a training session on this method with my Wrike support liaison yesterday and I have some feedback.

For clarity, this is the method we discussed:

- Create a space called Archive.

- Setup a custom workflow called Archiving. (Active / Archiving as the two available states)

- Create an Automation trigger so that when a project is moved to the Archiving state it automatically is moved to an equivalent folder in the Archive space.

Some challenges with this method:

- If you have a robust/complex folder structure, you still need to create the equivalent folder structure within the Archive space. As your primary folder structure grows or changes, you still need to manually keep this updated within the Archive space.

- This also means you need to set up a separate automation trigger for each equivalent folder. I was advised that there is a limit of 50 automation triggers total that we can set up, so if you have many different folders and you want to maintain the same structure within your archive, you'll very quickly eat into this limit.

- There are also challenges with visibility permissions, where you need to ensure that everyone that had visibility of the original project now has visibility of the Archive location as well, or else the folder won't appear to move for them. If you have complex visibility permissions set up, this means that there's a lot of matching to do to align the visibility within the equivalent Archive too. You could always set the visibility permission of the archive to 'public', but this can lead to its own challenges within an organization that requires you to maintain visibility permissions.

This is still definitely progress, so a big 'thank you' to the Wrike team for that, but in my opinion, this still isn't as easy as archiving could be.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

@Steve Davies No worries, I'm happy to help 🙂

@Allegra Jackson Thanks a lot!

@Jeff Krigstein Thank you for sharing your feedback, I'll pass it on to our Product team!

Julie Plonski

Is there still not a way to move items to an archived folder based on status change AND the task has been completed/cancelled/etc. more than 30 days ago. We don't necessarily want all of our "Done" items instantly moved to archive; we'd like to preserve them on the board for a limited amount of time and then automate when they get cleaned up and moved to the archive.

Basudha Sakshyarika

Hi @Julie Plonski! Welcome to Wrike! 🎉

Currently, Wrike allows for automation rules to move tasks to an archive folder based on status changes, but not based on a combination of status changes and a specific time delay.

As a workaround, you can have a different status in the completed status group, such as 'Archive,' so that once the item gets cleaned up, the status change can move it to the Archive folder.

Will that work for you? Let me know your thoughts. 😊