🧱 Custom Item Types in Wrike: The Power Tool for Tailoring Work to Your Team’s Reality

Maroun Adam

If you’ve ever felt limited by standard task or project types, Custom Item Types (CITs) are the feature that changes everything. They let you design work items that match your team’s language, structure, and process — not the other way around. Whether you’re running creative requests, IT tickets, campaigns, or approvals, CITs bring clarity and consistency to every workflow.

🧠 What Custom Item Types Actually Do

CITs allow you to create your own types of work items with:

• Custom fields
• Custom workflows
• Custom layouts
• Custom automation triggers
• Custom icons and naming
• Custom default assignees, effort, and structure

Instead of forcing every task to look the same, you can create items like:

• “Design Request”
• “Bug Report”
• “Campaign Brief”
• “Client Onboarding”
• “Video Production Task”

Each one behaves exactly the way your team needs.

🛠️ How to Use Custom Item Types Effectively

1️⃣ Create Item Types That Match Real Work

Start by identifying the categories of work your team handles repeatedly.

Examples:

• Creative teams → “Copy Request”, “Design Revision”, “Video Edit”
• Marketing teams → “Campaign Brief”, “Asset Production”, “Landing Page Build”
• IT teams → “Incident”, “Service Request”, “Change Request”

Build CITs that reflect these real‑world patterns so your team instantly understands what each item means.

2️⃣ Customize the Layout to Show Only What Matters

One of the biggest advantages of CITs is the ability to simplify the task view.

You can:

• Show only relevant custom fields
• Hide unused sections
• Add instructions or guidelines
• Pre‑configure effort, job roles, or workflows

This reduces noise and ensures every item is filled out correctly.

3️⃣ Pair CITs With Custom Workflows

Each CIT can have its own workflow — which is huge for clarity.

Examples:

• “Bug Report” → New → Investigating → Fixing → Testing → Done
• “Design Request” → Intake → In Progress → Review → Finalized
• “Campaign Brief” → Drafting → Approval → Ready → Launched

This keeps your reporting clean and your dashboards accurate.

4️⃣ Use CITs With Automation to Enforce Process

CITs become incredibly powerful when combined with automation.

Examples:

• When a “Design Request” is created → auto‑assign the designer
• When a “Bug Report” enters “Testing” → notify QA
• When a “Campaign Brief” is approved → create a project from a Blueprint

This turns your CITs into smart, self‑running workflow engines.

💡 Pro Tip

Use icons and color coding for your Custom Item Types. It dramatically improves visual scanning in lists, boards, and dashboards — especially for teams handling high volumes of requests.

🙌 Why This Matters

Using Custom Item Types consistently leads to:

• Cleaner, more intuitive workspaces
• Faster onboarding for new team members
• Fewer mistakes and missing information
• Better reporting and analytics
• Processes that scale without chaos

CITs are one of the most transformative features in Wrike — once you start using them, you’ll wonder how you ever worked without them.