How do I make my milestone move with predecessor?

I have two activities, then a milestone that is dependent on those activities, then a third task that is dependent on the milestone. I want the milestone to float (and the dependent third task) with the finish dates of the two prior tasks. Right now, Wrike seems to lock the milestone on the original date. How do you unlock the milestone?

I also need to generate reporting (and/or dash) that shows the milestone(s).

Thanks

Bill

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Bill Eger

Here is a screen capture of the example provided. When I extend the dates for Task 1 and Task 2, I expect the Milestone to move right.

Michael Michalak

Bill,

Thanks for your question! I think you may be using milestones differently then intended in Wrike. Please see this article for Milestone definition in Wrike.

Milestones purposefully gateways that don't move in Wrike. Most users have them set as a customer deliverable of some sort. They don't move because customers hold strong to those dates, otherwise they are just another task. They turn red in your screenshot to identify conflicts with those deadlines. It becomes very powerful in complex workflows where moving task 1 of 10 will ultimately mean we are not delivering on time. Make sense? As such, there is no way to "unlock" a milestone.

As far as reports and dashboards, you can isolate Milestones by using the Task Type Filter:

We also use the conflicts monitor on the analytics tab, increasing the milestone visibility.

Let us know if you have further questions!

Jamie Adler

So... can someone (@Michael Michalak?) confirm this logic then?:

I can't use a Milestone in a Blueprint. 😱

Unlike Microsoft Project, which defines a Milestone as a task with zero Duration, Wrike defines them as a fixed date - and thus they cannot be part of a chain of dependent tasks with a 'floating' date that is dependency-driven.

And because Blueprints, by definition, ought to have no fixed dates in order that dates can be dynamically generated upon creation of a project from a Blueprint, the 2 concepts are enemies.

My workaround right now is to make my "milestones" a duration of an hour, so they can be dependency driven in my Blueprint.

(plus I like using an emoji of some sort 📍 in the title to imply 'milestone')

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @Jamie Adler, sorry for the late reply!

I had to do some testing here, and this is a very interesting topic! What I've come up with is that you can use Milestones in blueprint tasks, although you need to mind the rescheduling. I created a blueprint project with tasks in it, added start and due dates to all but one task that is a milestone with a set due date. After that I created a Request form that would create a project from that Blueprint. I created it so that it would reschedule the tasks according to the project's dates. For the new project dates, there need to be two "dates" questions in the request, for start and due project dates. The new project created from the blueprint will have new dates according to the answers to those questions, and the tasks, along with the milestone, will be rescheduled too. But, if you can't have those questions in your request form, then I believe you won't be able to use milestones in your Blueprints.

Please let me know if that helped or if you have any further questions!

Adam Glover

This is great to know, Cheers for clearing that up Lisa. Just happened to be working on this today.

Steven Huggins

So if milestones work the way that Wrike seems to want them to work this is just not compatible with MS Project. the initial example is two task followed by a milestone followed by another task, that is a super simply example I just imported a project that spans 4 years and has 1400 Tasks including including 185 milestones. So we are at task 12 and the client has just caused a week delay to the project now with the Wrike methodology I now need to go and manually move every one of those milestones out a week because they are fixed points. That does not work for me at all, remembering that this is also how Wrike imported from MS Project where those milestones are set to float. You need to add a flag to indicate whether a milestone is fixed or floating, or simply always float but hold a value of what the due date should have been to show project slippage.

Very disappointing form a project management standpoint.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Welcome to the Community @Steven Huggins! You're correct, Float isn't currently available in Wrike, but the team is aware of this suggestion 👍

Abhijit Sardesai

Well explained - I am beginning to like the help provided by Wrike - especially to a new user like me

Elaine McDonagh

Happy to hear that @Abhijit Sardesai! 🙂

If there's anything else we can do for you here, please don't hesitate to ask 👍

Murad Omar

Is there a way now (in 2024) to make milestones floating?

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hey @Murad Omar, thanks for reaching out!

That's not currently possible, but it would be great if you could share your use case here.

Murad Omar

@Elizaveta Bogdanova, my use case is very simple, I want certain things to be marked as a milestone and while building the schedule and trying different permutations of things I want them to shift with the tasks rather than be hardened to a particular calendar day. Other SW packages enable that or give such an option. I know I can add a task and make it a duration of 1 hr, but this is a hack. I want to clearly see how one tasks delay affects a certain milestone in my project.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Thanks for providing this detail @Murad Omar, I'll share your feedback with our team 👍

Max Golby

As everyone else has said what Murad is requesting is, from my PoV, a basic feature in literally every other Gantt function/app I have ever used. Wrike seems great overall; the resource management in particular is the sort of feature that would get me over the line for our agency, but based on my testing so far little annoyances like this undermine my confidence. Everyone on my team would expect 'Milestones' to function in the way that we're all describing. Maybe this makes sense to someone at Wrike, but it won't correlate to a majority of folks' experience based on prior use of the more 'mainstream' PM apps - i.e. MS Project.

Use case: 'Send Copy to Client' - this is a milestone, and I'd assign it as a milestone because it's an 'event' that needs to happen at the end of a prior 'task'. I don't want it to have a duration or an effort (because it won't take a day or even an hour for someone to attach it to an email and send it), but I do want it there as a clear 'milestone' at the end of the task. Again, this is how I've always used milestones in the past.

I'd imagine something like this wouldn't be a huge dev effort to either change or give flexibility to, so I hope you guys implement this ASAP

Rohan V

Hey @Max Golby welcome to the Community Forums! 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to post your detailed feedback, we really appreciate it! I will keep you informed if there are any updates regarding this suggestion in the future 👍

Liz Martinez

It seems that it's easiest to just not mark it as a milestone. What a shame.

Tibor Erdelyi

Hi,

Is there a plan to make a milestone 'floatable'? It is extremely cumbersome to work with milestones, especially during initial planning when the plan goes through so many changes until it gets baselined. Let alone it messes up the critical path, too.

Them not moving with the predecessor is just going against project management (ok, at least PMP) principles.

Liz Martinez

If Wrike wants to lead in this space, it is important that simple features like this work as expected -- That is per MS Project standard, since that is your competition.

Tibor Erdelyi

Well, it's been 7 years and no movement on this, so they think MS Project is not a competitor anymore

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi everyone!

As we're seeing that there's new feedback and interest here, I now moved this thread to the Product Feedback forum. Please upvote the main post at the top of the page if you haven't yet and we'll let you know if there are any updates here in the future. Thanks! 🙂

Florian Kislich

Hi @Elizaveta Bogdanova,

of course everyone can vote for any product request, but this one doesn't seem to make any sense. The Only definition of a milestone in Wrike is that is has no duration an it doesn't move automatically with it's pedecessor. If I like items to do so, I could just give them a duration (e.g. 1d) and that's it. And if I like to use them as flags similar to milestones for reporting ect, I could use either a custom field od a CIT, not a big deal I guess. 🤷‍♂️

Florian

Tibor Erdelyi

Florian,

Yes, not a big deal. Just another hack. But why to deviate from a world-wide standard just for the sake of - I really don't know for what... Milestone is a 0 day activity, represented by a diamond and moves with predecessors since the ancient Greeks.

I yet to see a project where anyone gets the schedule right for the first try and it never, ever, ever needs adjustment, moving the milestones.

Why to try to reinvent the wheel and make it square?

Joan Prangnell

To me, there is a difference between a task with a fixed date and a milestone. The Wrike definition seems to have merged the two. My old school project management approach has always been to set up milestones as significant events that you want to watch the timing on and be alerted when they move. The benefit of marking something as a milestone in Wrike seems to be that it makes it easy to filter for those and isolate them in a view. But, if the dates don't move with the predecessors, then it's just a lot of admin work to keep these - most important dates - in synch. I am intrigued by the idea of creating a CIT to represent a milestone and will give that a try. But, the ability to indicate if you want a milestone to be a fixed date or adjust with the predecessor would be great!