Is there a way to set up an automation that notifies me if someone marks a main level task as complete but still has open subtasks?

I was setting up some automations for projects this morning and sometimes I find what I call "orphaned tasks"—subtasks that are still active inside of a main task. Human error... people forget to doublecheck all subtasks sometimes before they close out a task! Is there a way to catch these with an automation without using a custom item as the main task type? I couldn't figure out a way to set it up. This would help us keep a cleaner account overall!

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Pietro Poli

Hi Daisy,
I think is not possibile at the moment.
I follow because it'll very useful also for my company

Daisy Hibbard

Thanks, Pietro! Glad to hear my idea would help others as well!

Elizaveta Bogdanova

I'll move this thread to the product feedback forum 👍

Florian Kislich

@Pietro Poli please upvote also!

João Batista

I think the best approach is to avoid manually changing the status of the main project. Instead, let automation handle it for you: 'When all subtasks are completed, change the main project to complete.'

Daisy Hibbard

Thanks, @Elizaveta Bogdanova!!

Michael Kelley

We need a solution from Wrike for this request. I am stumbling across this all the time in our projects where parent tasks are closed out while buried child tasks are still open. We need a "Sub-Task Blocking Condition" on the parent task workflow to prevent this from happening. Anyone who has taken any type of Project Management training knows that you never close out a parent before all child tasks are set to a finished/cancelled/deferred state. We constantly see work being missed because Wrike doesn't prevent the closure of the parent. The pop up that asks the closure question only stays up a few seconds and users often move on without reading it.

There is a similar request from Sept 2022:

/hc/en-us/community/posts/8748481888791-Prevent-a-task-from-being-updated-as-completed-if-all-subtasks-have-not-been-completed

And another from Aug 2018:

/hc/en-us/community/posts/360014732854-Automation-of-changing-the-status-of-a-master-task-when-either-A-subtask-is-started-change-the-master-task-to-In-Process-and-or-All-subtasks-are-complete-change-the-master-task-to-Complete-

And as I suggested as an enhancement to Automation through the following back in July of this year: "we could use some enhancements to the AE on this one. The "When status changes to" trigger needs an associated If Condition added to search "If any subtask is Active". At that point we could then notify @assignees of the parent task of the issue.

/hc/en-us/community/posts/16036249195287--Automation-Prevent-Parent-Task-from-changing-status-until-a-trigger-happens

Elaine McDonagh

Hey @Michael Kelley, I can totally understand how this could be an issue for you.

Thanks for taking the time to share this detailed feedback with us here, it's really useful and we've passed it on to the team. We'll keep you posted here on any updates we have to share in relation to this 👍

Raimund Dienst

Hi there,

giving this topic a thumb up, since I'm facing the same issue: People do not see or ignore the small pop-up message and close a parent task with non-closed sub-tasks. Would be great to revert the status to "review" or any if there is an open sub-item.

Basudha Sakshyarika

Thank you for the feedback, @Raimund Dienst. 👍🏽

As João Batista suggested, you might consider using an Automation rule to manage the status changes of the main project instead of handling them manually. For example, you can set it so that when all direct subitem statuses change, the main item status updates automatically. Let me know your thoughts! 😊

I also have forwarded your feedback to our product team and will keep you updated on any changes. 🤝