Product Communities

A few weeks ago at dinner, after my daughter’s second day of in-person school, she said to me, “My art teacher asked us what our parents’ bets were for how long we would attend in-person before moving back to eLearning.” Shortly after that, her math teacher gave all the students their workbooks for the whole semester, just in case. That’s a lot of uncertainty for the first week of school!    It might feel difficult to see the bright spots and the success right now. It helps to anchor ourselves to a North Star: something to keep us pointed in the right direction. At Workfront, we’re passionate about a concept called the Commander’s Intent.   A Commander’s Intent is a statement that includes the most important thing you can do, your desired outcomes, and your constraints. It is meant to be that North star to provide orientation when things get uncertain - which we’re all familiar with in 2020!   Commander’s Intent In my personal life, my Commander’s Intent might be,

Did you know? You can send custom announcements to the users in your Workfront instance using the Announcement Center! The Announcement Center is accessed through the notification icon, which is right beside your avatar picture in the global navigation bar. If you are a system administrator, you’ve likely noticed you receive messages directly from Workfront. The icon turns blue to let you know you have unread messages. These announcements tell you about release features, upcoming webinars, and planned maintenance within the system, to name a few. Designated system administrators are the only users who receive these announcements from Workfront. However, you can share these messages with your users - whether it be all users, a select group or an individual. You can also send custom messages, with announcements important to your organization's work. Let's walk through this.   Click the notifications icon, then click View All Announcements. This opens the announcem

Do you ever feel like you spend so much time responding to ad hoc requests, it’s impossible to come up for air to think strategically about longer initiatives? You aren't alone. I’ve heard this referred to as the “tactic treadmill.” It feels impossible to catch up, let alone get ahead, because there's always something urgent that needs your attention. The good news? When teams are empowered to evolve from simply responding to requests, the work they manage can also evolve to be more proactive and strategic in nature. Gartner defines work management as "a set of software products and services that apply workflow structure to the movement of information as well as the interaction of business processes and human worker processes that generate the information.” In other words, work management gives meaningful structure to the work. It’s an ecosystem where the people, process, technology and data are brought together into a framework specific to your business objectives.&nbsp

This week we're bringing attention to two new features within the Product: Extended 'what-if' planning functionality, released with 19.2 at the end of May; and a brand new tooltip indicating planned PTO. PTO Tooltip: Did you know? When making a task or issue assignment, our new 'tooltip' indicates if someone has marked time off in Workfront during the planned dates of the work.  For those unfamiliar with the term 'tooltip,' this a message that appears when a cursor is positioned over an icon, image, hyperlink, etc. in a graphical user interface. Note, this new feature was built in response to an Idea Exchange request!  Resource availability is a major part of delivering work on time. Knowing when team members have time off scheduled is key to meeting project deadlines. Making that time-off information available where you do your planning — on the project itself — means you’ll be choosing the right person to do the work. Let’s take a look at how this

Workfront is growing and so is the Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know blog series! Originally introduced as a weekly technical tip sent to you via email on Wednesdays, the series has evolved into in-depth success toolkits around topics like mastering work management, adoption, strategy and growth. Based on your feedback, we are excited to introduce Quick Tips on the Workfront Community and retire the weekly email series. Unlike standalone blogs, these tips allow you to easily engage and collaborate with other Workfront power users through a Community discussion so that technical how-to’s can be accompanied with real-world examples.  Quick Tips are short, helpful hints about new or popular topics. They are published to the Workfront Community several times a week, so you don’t have to wait until Wednesday to see them. Access Quick Tips here on the Workfront Community to see what’s already been published. And soon you’ll even be able to submit your own Quick Tips! Stay tuned.&nb

Announcing our NEW Reports and Dashboards Resource Page! Designed to save you time by curating content across our resource sites, we're excited to announce our NEW Workfront Reports and Dashboards Resource page. The page features an intro to the basics of Workfront reporting and takes you beyond for more advanced customers. You'll find quick video tutorials, links to on-demand and live training, and popular help articles we use every day with customers. This will be a dedicated and continuously updated resource site, so please bookmark this page! The Reports and Dashboards Resource Page will also house past “Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know?” blog posts focused on reporting or text mode, along with registration details for future “Workfront Wednesday: Ask the Expert Workshops” and recordings of past workshops, including today's! This morning at 8:00 am PST, Oct. 2, we’ll hold our second monthly Ask the Expert Workshop, hosted by Sr. Workfront Learning

We are pleased to announce that a long-awaited feature is now available on Workfront One. The new API developer documentation site has been over a year in the making and is now ready for open beta testing! While not a full replacement for our legacy tools yet, the new site allows you to access information about our Core API in a familiar, industry-standard, OpenAPI spec format. The new documentation site provides a greatly enhanced user experience, and also gives us a strong platform to continuously deploy improvements to the documentation as the need arises. What's new? We are so excited to bring some new amazing features to front with the new documentation site! Here are some of the major differences that you’ll notice between our legacy tools and the new documentation site:  The new site is based on the industry-standard OpenAPI spec. The inherent layout of the OpenAPI spec documentation allows you to quickly obtain relevant information about objects and endpoints that i

Welcome to 2021!   Did you know the tradition of celebrating the new year and making resolutions has been around for about 4,000 years? It’s true! It first caught on with the ancient Babylonians who made promises to earn favor of the gods.  Babylon aside, did you make any resolutions this year? Most of us typically set personal resolutions, maybe to exercise more or eat healthier foods. Coming out of 2020, I imagine many of our resolutions have changed. I’ve heard people resolve to ‘relearn social cues after a year at home’ or ‘do so much yoga that it actually justifies wearing yoga pants 24/7’ or ‘actually put on a full outfit for Zoom calls’. Sadly, I think all of these apply to me! So you’ve made personal resolutions, but have you made any New Year’s resolutions for work? If you haven’t yet put pen to paper for 2021 work aspirations, we have one for you! Make a plan for getting the very most out of Workfront by migrating your team and organization to the ne

Happy July everyone!   First off this month, thank you to all of you who voted on a name of our new monthly newsletter. I’m excited to share that the winning name is Workfront @ Work! There is so much I want to share with you this month! Just a couple of weeks ago, we had our annual Leap conference virtually. Read on to learn all about it. We also have a big product release coming your way in August. Let me start with a quick teaser for our 20.3 release. Because almost everything about how you work has and continues to change, we’re excited to announce Workfront Align and Workfront Scenario Planner to support strategic goal setting and execution, and dynamic planning and prioritizing of people, budgets, and work. Moving on to Leap. Our Leap conference always represents the best time of the year for me. It’s a time to get to see so many of you, listen to your experiences, and capture feedback to use in our continual efforts to enhance your experience with Workfront.&

As we near the finish line of a year filled with unimaginable change, we’ve been knee-deep in trends, research, and lessons learned—compiling and analyzing as we prepare for 2021. Between our Customer Advisory Board’s astute observations and the findings of Workfront’s Generations at Work Study, one prediction in particular stands out.  Delivering exceptional digital work experiences will be as important for our employees as it is for our customers in 2021—and beyond. Enabling and empowering a modern workforce will become a, if not the, top priority for organizations of all types and sizes. Why? Because, more and more, the global workforce is composed of digital natives who demand the same quality of digital experiences at work as they do in their personal lives. It has to be easy, and it has to be delightful. Staying competitive will require companies to create collaborative, virtual, rich media digital experiences that reflect the way work and the people doing the work are

This 3-part series is designed to provide essential advice and actionable steps to make the challenging role of System Administrator a bit easier. As a follow up to last week’s blog on setup, this week will focus on how to best streamline your instance for maximum efficiency and productivity. ACTIVATE KEY EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS AND REMINDERS How many times do you check your email every day? Whether it’s once or every time a red bubble appears, you are trying to stay ahead and keep connected.  Workfront offers in-app notifications to keep you in the loop and to help avoid flooding your inbox, however, not all actions trigger a notification and not all users are working in Workfront every second of every day. To ensure that assigned work is not missed, updates are addressed and approvals are made, activate key global email notifications within Setup for all users.  The most popular email notifications that are inactive by default are: I’m assigned to an issueA project I’m on

First use case: Customer Case Studies and Video ProductionI use a template to manage all of the tasks to create a case study and/or a customer video. It looks something like this. This template is used every time we start creating a new customer story. We adjust the dates and assignments based on who is working on the project and the timeline we’ve talked about with the customer. This helps us keep track of all the tasks, and work among teams (Creative Services, Campaigns, my managers) to get the correct reviews and approvals internally as well as with the customer. For video production we have even created vendor logins that allow us to communicate with them via proofs to get very specific feedback implemented simply and efficiently. Once we have the customer story approved and reviewed by all internal and external stakeholders we add a custom form that uses a Fusion connection to Salesforce and WebDam to send the content to the Content Asset Table (automatically u

To finalize the 3-part System Administrator series on people, process and technology, this week’s blog will focus on utilizing your technology, from the perspective of administering Workfront. Summarized below are four key areas in which you will want to become technically skilled, based on feedback from others just like you, who’ve not only taken on this role but have created a successful career out of it. Workfront — your technology — is the execution system that allows you to automate and accelerate the people and the process to an optimal pace of delivery and value.  As the system administrator, you have the ability to become the master of this segment and will likely be one of the core team members to define the way that it will be best utilized for your organization. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION As you implement or review your current Workfront setup, it is important to identify the principles of your success criteria — mapping your goals, identifying the business processes you w

Last month I shared the importance of setting New Year’s resolutions and goals, and gave some thoughts on a few “work resolutions.” Just like that, in a flash, we’re already a month into the new year. How did that happen?! By now you and your organization will have likely determined your annual and quarterly goals, and cascaded them down to teams and individuals. The question is, how will you know if you are on the right path to achieving your goals throughout this next year?    One of my favorite quotes is from Peter Drucker, a management consultant, educator and author, who said “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This rings true in both personal and professional goals. For example, you might have a personal goal to learn a new skill, or get a certification you've always wanted. Using the certification example, there may be some courses you want to take, or incremental learnings you need to acquire before you take the certification exam. You wouldn'

Leap — Workfront’s premier enterprise work management conference — took place last week with thousands in attendance to discuss ways of elevating and reimagining the way work gets done. Focused on the power of enterprise work management to help organizations switch from reactive to proactive mode, this year’s Leap conference shared best practices and customer stories about how to adapt and thrive in the new world of work.  Whether you were able to join live, watch an on-demand session or missed it altogether and wish to watch it at a later date (it will be available for the next 90 days), below are highlights from the virtual conference, broken down by the order of events.  For a downloadable post-conference presentation that you can customize and share with executives detailing your takeaways, tips and recommendations for further maximizing value with Workfront, click here.   KEYNOTE The 2000s brought forth new C-Level executives based on external even

In this age of digital transformation, an increasing number of employees are finding themselves taking on the role of Project Manager without actually having a background in project management. What used to be a role designed to simply manage projects with clear start and endpoints, now has evolved into a cross-functional role of organizing people and processes while managing resources to produce results for both stakeholders and the company. Because of this, project managers have become more valuable to organizations, and the demand for their skills and strategic roles has grown worldwide. The following best practices provide insight into how to be a successful project manager within Workfront.  Organization is keyPrior to launch, a project is simply a mix of data, requests, and unspecified objectives. The role of a project manager is to sift through all the information and establish a clear timeline that is both easily manageable and realistically attainable.Start by creat

We know that for people to do their best work, an intuitive and connected experience is a necessity. That's why we've invested in usability and productivity as key themes for Workfront's 20.1 product release. Join us for a live webinar on March 26 to hear from Scott Lee, Workfront's VP of Product, to learn how this release can help you: Be more productive and faster with the new user interface - designed and built with our customersConnect with other customers, increase your product aptitude, and access more about Workfront in our new Workfront One platformExplore new productivity features, including timeline planning, template layouts, and mobile enhancements You'll also get a sneak preview of what new products and features are coming next from Workfront. Click here to register.

By now you’re probably familiar with the new Workfront experience and how it came to be. Workfront’s new user interface will help you focus on the right work, drive results, and contribute to your company’s most important initiatives. The Workfront 21.2 release (planned for May 2021) will be the final release with new features and enhancements in the Workfront classic experience. If you’ve not yet made your plan to transition, there’s no time like today to get started! In this article we’ll debunk 5 commonly heard myths associated with the transition to alleviate any concerns you may have about making the switch—and hopefully even get you excited to make the move! MYTH #1: Everything in Workfront classic will have to be reconfigured in the new Workfront experience. It will be like having to create a new instance from scratch. REALITY: The configurations required to make the shift are minimal. This is probably the #1 myth surrounding the new Workfront experience, but rest

In every organization, the key to delivering projects on time is hitting deadlines. However, you know that mistakes happen, balls get dropped, and speed bumps in workflows are often unavoidable. Ensuring your team can handle those speed bumps requires having a flexible, yet streamlined, workflow and a collaborative communication process. Utilizing proofing in Workfront to create automated review cycles allows your teams to be more efficient and thereby have more time to focus on strategic and creative tasks and milestones—helping to both solve for and alleviate those speed bumps so you can get the work delivered on time. Proofing in Workfront streamlines your workflows for digital content—with real-time collaboration and automated tracking. Your team can collaborate more and deliver error-free work, faster. This week’s blog focuses on the benefits of automating review cycles and provides recommended use cases or best practices to get work out the door quicker.  GETTING START

Match report colors with your company’s style guide using text mode.Do you have list reports or custom views that use conditional formatting, or column rules, so that a color can be applied to a specific row or cell? Did you know that you can use basic text mode to get those colors to match your company’s style guide?There are a few places in Workfront where you can select a custom color:MilestonesCustom statuses, priorities, and severitiesCustom chart colorsBranding colorsWhen specifying a color in Workfront, you have two choices:Select from the color palette, which will also give you the RGB code of the color you select from the color spectrum (green = 39aa00, as seen in the image below).Use an existing RGB code (from your company's style guide, for example), which will give you the specific color corresponding to that code.Whether you select the color from a color palette in Workfront or find the RGB code in another application, you can use the RGB code in Workfront wherever an

The Connect2Lead blog series quotes researchers and authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s definition of leadership as, “the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.” They later quote Bernard Montgomery, a British military hero, saying leadership is “The capacity and will to rally people to a common purpose together with the character that inspires confidence and builds trust.”  Have you ever wondered which community members are leading enterprise work transformation in their organizations and contributing to the overall growth of Workfront One? If so, then look no further. Now you can see a list of the top 100 contributors on the Workfront One community.This community leaderboard updates in near real-time and awards points for all of the things you’re doing here in the discussion forums. This pulls from all of our groups, not just the All Discussions groups. So if you don’t see a conversation in the All Discussion groups you want to chime in on, ch

Anthony Imgrund is a Project Manager at Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. He’s been with the company for 13 years and is also the System Admin for Workfront, where he spends about 75% of this time managing the agency’s global instance of Workfront. He also works on FCB’s SharePoint 2013 environment and a custom tool for the New Business team. Anthony lives in NYC, and loves theater and music. He recently presented on resource management in a Workfront Virtual User Group for creative agencies. Read on to see how this customer has found some unique ways to work around and with existing functionality in Workfront. How FCB is using Workfront FCB has one global instance of Workfront, which Anthony says makes his job easier. But they do have 16 different agencies and business units currently in the tool, so they rely heavily on Workfront’s group functionality to separate those business units out.  With groups, you can have

Did you know? Workfront has 70 reports built into the system to get you started tracking and measuring work! These reports are intended to provide quick and easy visibility into the relevant information about the work being done, for you and your users. Some of the 70 reports help you focus on getting work done and monitoring work in progress. Reports such as: My ProjectsProjects By ConditionMy TimesheetMy IssuesMy Submitted IssuesMy TasksTrouble Tasks Let's dig deeper into Workfront system reports: -- Video coming soon! -- To access reports in Workfront, go to the Reporting area, click the Reports tab, and then click All Reports. The list of available reports can be quite long. The All Reports list shows you every report available to you in Workfront, whether they’re the built-in reports or ones written by your users. So let’s create a filter to see just these “out of the box” reports and filter out the reports that users in your organization created.

The holidays are right around the corner and 2021 is closer than you think. If you haven’t had a chance to do some cleanup or system maintenance, block time on your calendar and take action based on the recommendations in the blog, Tips to Tidy up Workfront. There is no better feeling than kicking off a new year with a clean slate, so send out those calendar reminders for your monthly governance meetings and wrap up the year on a high note.  As you start, or continue, planning for months ahead, make sure you have a proper communication plan in place, along with easy-to-use project templates and dynamic reports to maintain consistency and share key information. This week’s blog focuses on key elements around communication, planning, and measurement to help you draft an accurate timeline and execute on deliverables, while keeping everyone in the know.    COMMUNICATION Nothing is more important to the success of a project than effective and constant communicat

I use Workfront to manage my work and plan my week. Take this morning, for example. After pouring a second cup of coffee and preparing a breakfast sandwich, I roll up to my desk and laptop and turn to Workfront Home and notice the late tasks still remaining after reconciling earlier in the week. I wonder - how did I let that get by me? I’m reminded that any platform is only as good as you commit yourself to it. I send a quick update to the project owner and tackle the next task.Barring my own human failings, Workfront allows me to recover quickly and communicate effectively around the work that I do - and reminds me to stay on top of things.Workfront is essentially my work information resource and planner. I am a Senior Consultant within Workfront’s Professional Services group and much of my time is spent working with customers helping them with Workfront and I take to heart the way I work and use Workfront effectively. I’ve worked with many customers over the years and Workfront helps