Adobe Workfront Experts on Project Template & Timeline Best Practices

TEMPLATE TIP: Project Templates allow for ease of permissions on projects making sure all the right people have access from project conception and kick - off. If users only create projects using templates with proper sharing permissions established I very rarely have complaints for "I can't see this project".

(adding this now as I won't be available on the date of this but wanted to share why I think they are important)

Template Tip- We give our users permission to view templates and only sys and group admins are able to edit and create new templates. This way, we can control the number of templates and make sure all of them follow our processes and guidelines. 

Question(s): How are your approvals set up in your project templates? Pros/Cons?

• We currently have ours set up as task approval loops, and they work fine for "automation" - keeping the project moving forward. However, the due dates on tasks become overdue if the task is rejected and there is no real accountability on how long it sits in the approval loop.
• We are considering pulling the approvals out of the task and making them tasks themselves. This does make the approvals more manual in the event there are multiple rounds, but it will show more transparency as to who the project is sitting with.
  • If you set up your projects this way, do you have a dedicated team who adds the additional tasks, or does this fall onto your Project Owner? If the Project Owner, how do you know they are setting these up correctly?

Many of our project owners have created what we call "choose your own adventure" templates. These consist of parent tasks that contain specific tasks to complete depending on specific criteria of the request. When converting from a request, the owner uses the one template, but deletes all the parent tasks in the project timeline except for the group of tasks that apply to that specific requests. The tasks are usually similar with subtle difference. The project settings are almost always the same. 

This can be confusing when promoting these templates for others to use, but it's ultimately the most efficient way to handle these kinds of requests. Are there any other thoughts on how we could accomplish this or is this practice as efficient as it can be? We'd like to avoid managing multiple templates with subtle differences.

We have a lot of templates that have similar tasks across them all, for example, a creative team is a shared service across multiple groups and have tasks in several group templates, our admin team uses a "master" template task report that has a prompt in it that looks for key words in the task names. Then when changes are needed, admins are catching all the tasks needing to be updated. This helps make sure we don't have tasks like "Design Round 1," "Round 1 Design," "Create Design Round 1" with different names, duration, planned hours, etc. It keeps template tasks aligned and optimized. We have a version of this for requesters submitting the changes to allow them to look at all template tasks as often times, they don't realize the scope of their proposed changes. 

This template tip only applies if you have a need for reporting on time spent on different project types among shared teams, but we have a few shared teams that we don't want to bog down with actually having to do timesheets. Instead, we have them use specific templates per project type or 'Tier' of effort needed. This way, i'm able to run a report based on template usage for these teams on a monthly basis without having to actually track time.

(name that tune...)

🎵 Subtasks and milestones and default role settings,

Preds all then lined up with stakeholder's blessings,

Reasn'able planned hours, and time trackers "IN"

These are a few of my Best Template things...🎵

In addition, on the advanced concepts side, I invite you to consider our Sync Template solution, which allows you to periodically adapt your Templates as things change, then automatically synchronize those adjustments out to those Projects that based upon the Template (vs having to chase them all down and manually adjust them individually).

Regards,

Doug

We have a large client roster, all with very specific ways of working and project needs.  To help the PMs have a good starting point we've set up individual templates for client / need, while also having some generic "any client" templates.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, but our list of templates is long, and growing, as additional individual/client-specific needs are identified.

Has anyone else dealt with something similar, and have suggestions on a best course of action?  Do we leave it as-is, and it is just a logistical nightmare for the Admins?  Do we simplify the list and put the burden on the PM?  I'm open to any and all suggestions!

Here's a post from @randyroberts with a bunch of userful filters. https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/for-those-trying-to-clean-up-their-templates-i-have-some-goodies/m-p/547158#M84 

Question: How to manage the same template to suit multiple timelines (i.e) same set of tasks/milestones, just different SLA's based on the complexity of the project?

Usecase:

We currently are creating around 4-5 Project templates for different stages (Lot of tasks) of a teams end to end process. Each template will have different timelines based on the scope of the project. We do not want to leave it up to teams to adjust durations as it would mean, no SLA guideline to begin with. At the same time duplicating the templates (P.S -we also have another variable apart from timeline, which may need duplication of the templates at each team level)) would lead to significant number of them and so lot of maintenance work.

Is there any best practice or an easier solve other than duplicating the templates?