Request Form Workflow Refinement

Question

Hey everyone, we use Wrike's request forms to process some material requests from one of our departments. Long story short, I am hoping to improve tracability. Currently, a request is made and submitted to a few people for approval. As you may know, the requests are given a seemingly random ID such as 4512039827. When we approve these requests, the approver approves the request with a comment containing the tracking/shipping numbers (Such as 108833544) of the material. When the material arrives, the recieving team logs it in a different section of wrike by the shipping/tracking number.

I am seeking a method to search for the original request. Wrike's search function does NOT appear to be capable of searching comments or desicions on a request (or tasks ect for that matter). In a perfect world, I should be able to open Wrike, Hit Ctrl+K and enter '108833544' and see the original request (4512039827) form, and the log our team inputs into Wrike.

I am open to any ideas on how I can improve this to make tracability work. I haven't experimented too much with automation on the request forms (Or request forms themselves for that matter), so there might be functions I am overlooking.

Thanks!

Amy Hunter · Answer

Hi @Thomas Burdon I agree with everything @Daisy Hibbard has suggested.  We always update the name of our requests to reflect our naming conventions so in this case adding the tracking ID to the project name would work well and definetely make it easier to search for.  We also make great use of the custom fields and love that we can view this as part of the table view like daisy mentioned above.  If these things are implemented you will be able to easily find the original request and cross tag with the task when the material arrives (if you want to link these).

Hope you find something that works for you.

Daisy Hibbard · Answer

Hi @Thomas Burdon, I might have a solution for you! Two things come to mind, the main one being that this is probably a job for custom fields. However, you mentioned the random ID that gets assigned to a task via a request form and I want to pause there first.

* If this ID is annoying and you're not already aware of this feature, you can set a Form question to become the new task name. See screenshot below of our standard intake process regarding how we name our tasks. Just "add answer to" the Name field - circled in the bottom-right. :)
* Based on how I read your challenge, it sounds the the EASIEST way to handle this is to just have the approver add the shipping/tracking ID into the task title itself, like a naming convention. So if that's an option for you guys, that might be a great MVP solution to test out!

If none of that is helpful or not a great way to solve your challenge, here's where custom fields come into play. The trick with my idea below is that you need those shared tasks to either be in ONE space, or build the view below in a place where you can edit the Data Source (Locations) so it will always find the task you're looking for.

* Create a Text-Type custom field and train your approvers to put the tracking/shipping number in there instead of the comments where it will get lost/isn't searchable (at least, not easily). 
* From there, set up a Table view that is filtered by your new text custom field set to "is". (you might have to populate it with dummy text to get started)
* Save the filtered view as its own tab.
* Whenever you need to look up a tracking number, just edit the filter to search by the number and it'll pull up the task!

Here's what this idea would look like in practice (imagine my "Status Update" custom field in our project space as your "Material Shipping/Tracking ID" custom field):

If it's valuable, you could also set up a second text-type custom field for "Shipping/Tracking ID" for the receiving team to also track the second number. At least that way it keeps the info tidy and not buried in descriptions or comments. Hope this is helpful and best of luck to you architecting a solution!