A lot of Wrike accounts have no documentation. When the person who built the account and knows how it works leaves, or is on leave and something is needed, that knowledge is simply not available.
Nobody can explain why things in the account are the way they are, and making changes becomes risky since nobody knows what is connected to what.
The right test for good documentation
Set a clear standard for yourself when documenting your account. Ask yourself: could someone rebuild this account from scratch using only this documentation? The question is whether someone could reconstruct exactly how your specific account is configured.
Make sure your documentation goes beyond a training on what Wrike is or how the features work in general. Capture every decision made in building your account so that those decisions can survive you.
What to document at the account level
The account document should cover everything that applies across the whole organisation. Users and their licence types. Every space in the account and what each one is for. Account-level workflows, every custom status, what it means, and what process it belongs to. Account-level custom fields and Custom Item Types, including when each was created and which teams use them. Request forms and where they are routed to Blueprints.
For each of these, document not just what is there but why. Why is this workflow at the account level rather than the space level? Why does this custom field exist separately from a similar one? Why does this request form go to this folder? The decisions are often not obvious to the next person.
What to document at the space level
Each space should have its own document. It should cover who uses the space and for what purpose. The folder structure and how it is organised, including any naming conventions used. Space-level workflows and what each status means. Space-level custom fields. Every active automation in the space, its trigger, its action, and what process it is supporting. Any dashboards or reports that have been configured. Published report links and their expiry dates.
The automation documentation is especially important. Automations are often the first thing to be affected when something in the account changes, and they are the hardest to troubleshoot when you do not know they exist. A list of every automation with its trigger condition and its action is what lets you diagnose unexpected behaviour quickly.
Where to keep the documentation
One approach is a dedicated workspace inside Wrike itself, used purely for account documentation. This keeps everything in one place and makes it accessible to anyone without needing an external document.
Inside that workspace, keep separate documents for “how to do certain things” (guides for the team) and “how the account is built” (the admin-side documentation). The admin documents are more detailed and less frequently accessed, but they are the critical ones for continuity.
Another approach is a shared folder in a document tool like Confluence. Either works. What matters is that it exists, that it is accurate, and that it gets updated whenever a significant change is made to the account.
Another detail I should add
Some teams accompany each blueprint with a flow diagram that shows how work gets through it, which stages exist, what automations happen at each stage, and what conditions trigger movement from one stage to the next.
You can do this in Figma, Lucidchart, draw.io, or Whimsical for any blueprint that is complex or widely used. A blueprint being duplicated across many projects might eventually be modified by someone who does not fully understand what it is doing. The flow diagram lets that person see the logic before they change anything.
Review it when things change
Documentation that is written once and never updated gets misleading faster than having no documentation at all. Assign someone to review and update it whenever a workflow is changed, an automation is added or removed, or a significant structural change is made to the account. It does not take long when done one at a time.