Workfront with Outside Agencies

I have thought a lot about this and done a few different things. Here’s where we settled:

• TL;DR: Where possible and within reason, we limit our external users to the lowest license possible. Even though most/all of these users should be signing NDAs or something similar, reducing access as much as possible protects your data (intellectual property, personal identifiable information, etc.). This means I have to be a nosey parker with colleagues who request to add an external user: “No, really, what exactly do they need to do in the system?”
• When I have more than one external user from the same company (for example, a creative agency), I set up a Company and lump them in there. This can be helpful for sharing portfolios and programs more easily.
• When I have an individual contributor (that is, a freelancer), they belong to our company.
• All external users are filed into a group for external users. We have a primary group called External Users, then subgroups for external users that are aligned to different departments/teams. This gives us the opportunity for group admins to help manage these external users.
• For agency and freelancer users we issue job roles indicating they’re external because it’s helpful for resource management. Usually these are parallel to an internal role (for example, design versus agency design).
• Layout templates can be useful for hiding data that external users just don’t need to see. Our External Users layout template is bare bones. Some external users get a regular layout because they’re serving almost as internal users.
• I attach a user custom form to each external user that includes the name of the internal user they’re partnering with, their contract/agreement end date, and a field for additional notes (like when I last audited the user’s activity).
• I set an expiration date for every single external user, even if the internal partner assures me they’re on an open-ended contract with us. Best practice is to align this expiration date with the user’s current service agreement.
• Quarterly I audit all external users, usually based on the expiration date. I send a report to each internal partner. Folks are REQUIRED to respond if their external buddy’s expiration date needs to be extended, which applies only if that expiration is coming due. Folks can optionally reply if they have updates to give me (early contract end, adjusted Work Time, etc.).