Request forms - start date

I create some tasks through request forms. It would be good if you could ask the request form to automatically set the task it creates start date to align with the request form submission date. Without having to add a start date question into the form when its always going to be today.

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Permanently deleted user

It's a good idea, Darren! The Request form has this date option as a question because some people's workflows need the requester to specify when they want to it to start - perhaps for collaboration reasons, while allowing a requester to request some work in the future.

Some people also use Project Templates and in this template, they specify the duration for each Request. This Start Date option then automatically aligns with the duration of the template task that's created. Here's a post where I explain this in full - if it's something that interests you.

Right now, it's not something on our Product Team's short-term roadmap, but we're always interested to hear how people are using automated features so thanks for sharing and welcome to the Community 🙌

Any questions, let me know!

Angie Leider

I second the request to allow start date to be the date someone submits a request form. I understand sometimes you want a specific date based on duration, but there are multiple cases where I've had trouble with this.

We use project templates regularly. The projects are set up for a certain duration (e.g. 2 weeks), and when tasks are created they are based on the end date. But this breaks when a request isn't submitted far enough in advance (e.g. 1 week lead time on a 2-week duration project). Also, if a request is submitted 3 weeks in advance, tasks won't start now, they will start only base on the completion date minus the duration.

Having the requester enter today's date is a work around that we use sometimes, but this is inefficient and doesn't scale well.

Anastasia Baranowska

This would be especially helpful for external clients that fill out requests. We are currently using Project templates that specify the duration of each request and to ensure that the request is scheduled properly, the external client has to select today's date as the "start date" as a work around.

Here is my use case: A client submits a Request for graphic design, if they put in a date different than "today" then it changes when the Project, created by the Request, is due. If they accidentally put a date different than the current date, their Project may be delayed as it will schedule too far into the future, or it may cheat the system by scheduling the Project with the start date in the past. To prevent these issues, it would be beneficial for an option to select that the Request automatically aligns a Project template "Start Date" to the date the client submitted the request, rather than the client selecting the start date or end date of the project.

The other issue is that they can put in a "Start Date" that is in the past, rather than the system forcing the current date or a date in the future.

Mike Strassburger

We also need exactly this feature. When a form is submitted it sets the start date at that moment.

Robert Wingerter

Agree - When using for IT trouble tickets, start date is almost always date entered, it's an extra step for the users. The easy fix would be when the Admin is building the request form and the date control "question" is selected, have a checkbox for "Default to Current Date" for the times we do need it.

Daniel Elizalde

This would be very useful!

Shawn Raloff

Need this too!

Stuart Allaway

A default date option will remove a manual step needed to process completed request forms. These manual steps are needed to bring certain tasks into some dashboards and reports.

Robert Wingerter

Stuart - I'm confused by your statement. How does pre-populating or defaulting a date value inside of the existing date control remove "manual steps..needed to bring in certain tasks..."? From what I can see -- the form doesn't process any data until "submit" is clicked - at which point "required fields" are checked for values and if satisfied, then goes on for processing.

I'm new to Wrike, so I'd love to learn what I'm missing.

Stuart Allaway

Robert - it is little more than being able to select a default value of "today" in the form settings per your post of November 19. This would then make the ticket raised actionable "today", otherwise someone needs to enter the date in the task/table after the request has been submitted (or the user enters a date that might not be today so the task does not appear on the appropriate to-do list). In the requests we also collect data that populates a number of custom fields that are more for analysis and tracking so we do not want users to enter data (we pre-populate with default values from dropdown lists); it would be helpful to be able to hide these questions (rather than tell users to ignore them). In the above example we could then exclude the start/due date question from the published request form and auto-populate the field with today's date - making the requests cleaner.

Robert Wingerter

AH - I see our disconnect. Our use case, we are not mapping the date control to a Wrike start or end date, because in our situation it doesn't apply. I'm simply using the date control for formatting purposes and mapping it to a different field.

Tom Pipes

Having %TODAY% as an option would be very handy, for both minimizing data entry (having to click through 2-3 months on the calendar) in some cases, and preserving the date from the time a form was filled out by an end user in others.

Admin Bot

We have to make our users set "submission date" and align with start date after. Most of our processes require templates and consequently date alignments.

This leads to possible user error or malpractice possibility and creates need for users to make several unneeded (and pointless from their point of view) actions.

Adding "Align with creation date" here would solve lots of clicks.

Mike Cherun

I wish upon a star🌟 that the forms could:

Automatically have the option use the Start date as the date a form is submitted

AND

Also have the option to align the end date to a requested date field.

The current challenge is it seems we can only do one or the other. Either the requested task created from a form (based off a template with subtasks) aligns correctly to the end date but we would also like the start date of the parent task start on date requested and not a day or two from the requested end date.

Dan Barbey

I echo the requests here, particularly the suggestion from Serhiy Krypak above. Adding a submission date option to the drop down would be a very quick feature add to greatly improve request forms. We use request forms primarily in conjunction with Project Blueprints, and our clients currently have to add "Today's Date" manually to allow our tasks to be rescheduled to the submission date (assuming they enter it correctly!). We do our best to keep the forms as short as possible for customers, and it's one more step that they have to complete unnecessarily.

Mike Cherun

Also if there could be any subtask date start alignment that would also be useful here.

SSEM Administrator

We absolutely need this as well. Every client has to specify the "Start Date" which we explicitly tell them on the form to just pick today's date. For almost every project we do, we want to start on it as soon as it's submitted. So why can't we use today's date? It seems like an essential piece for these to be more effective forms.

Joey Talbott

I would too like the default "Today's Date" to map to start date. I would also like to some how have the end date generate based on selected criteria. If my requestor selects "Normal (1-5 day)" request, then based on today's date, weekdays only, have the form enter in the end date.

Joey Talbott

Also, to be able to turn off past dates. A requestor in some cases, should not be able to back date.

Damis Melton

I highly recommend a feature for the start and completion dates to be automatically entered when a ticket is submitted and closed. Users can also have the option to modify dates to suit individual workflows.

Laura Boylan

Here's a workaround we use, via Wrike Integrate.

See the example recipe at https://www.workato.com/recipes/1054869

This example solution assumes that the request form generates a single new task, and it requires a couple of Wrike custom fields (available on Wrike Business and Wrike Enterprise). This solution could be modified to work for request forms that copy tasks or projects, as needed.

With this solution, the request form asks for a single date from the submitter, along the lines of "When do you need this request completed?". The resulting task created by the request form submission will reflect the following:

The task start date will be set to the date of the request form submission
The task due date will be set to the date selected by the form submitter
The task description will be updated to reflect the due date that the form submitter requested, for audit purposes in case the task due date gets changed

Full post in Best Practices at /hc/en-us/community/posts/360037822313

Owen Greenwell

Add my request to the list for the submission date to equal start date of resulting task. Asking users to fill in todays date is redundant.

I suggest as an option in the Actions on Submission list.

Permanently deleted user

Hey everyone, apologies for the delay in response here.

Thank you for sharing all of your feedback here, it's been passed on to the Product team. I don't have an update for you at the moment in relation to this. If anything changes, I'll be sure to keep you posted.

If you have any other questions or feedback, be sure to let me know!

Jennifer Stelmach

We too desperately need this feature!

The ability to set the project and/or task dates using the 'current' date instead of letting the submitter select a date. This is not always accurate or what the manager of the process needs.

When you need to accurately represent the start date, that should be systematic without room for user manipulation.

I hope this can be done soon. This is a major source of frustration for us.

Thank you!

Permanently deleted user

Hey @Jennifer Stelmach, thank you for sharing this use case!

小森芳司

It's been over three years since the discussion of this feature started, but I'm sad it hasn't been completed yet.
I created a request form for a work request from a user and optionally added a desired response date.
If I set this desired answer date as the due date, it will be a milestone because there is no start date. I was amazed at this things.
It would be nice if the input date could be the start date.
I can use a template task, but I'm not very happy with that because the period is fixed.
I would be really happy if today function could be used in the request form.

Yoshi

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @小森芳司, thank you for supporting this request! Unfortunately, I don't have an update from the Product team at the moment, but I'll keep you posted once there's an update 👍

Mike Samson

I've run into the start date issue this week while trying to set up calendars. Not being able to automatically set the start date when the project is created breaks the calendar feature for our team. It seems like this kind of automation should be the basis when creating a project, then if someone needs to manually change the start date they can. It's incredibly disheartening to see this issue drag on for this long without any progress.

Cansu Yetisgin

Hello @Mike Samson, thank you for your input!

We have made our Product team aware of it. If there are any updates we'll be sure to post here.

Please upvote the original post by clicking on the heart icon if you haven't yet.

Emily Ritchie

Are there any updates on this feature?