Product Communities

To continue the 3-part System Administrator series on people, process and technology, this week’s blog will focus on understanding your processes, from the perspective of administering Workfront. Summarized below are four key areas outlining the work management understanding that you need to have 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. Often the role of System Administrator will include helping to define, manage, monitor and maintain your organization’s way of working. This means that you are part of creating the overall workflow process — maintaining both knowledge and facilitation of how work gets done. To get you started on defining the baseline for your work processes, ask yourself the following questions: How is the work being requested?How is work being fulfilled?How is work being reviewed and approved?How is work completed and handed-off?How is work being assessed for value, priority, a

Oftentimes, similar information is requested by multiple users, teams or departments. Rather than creating individualized reports for each user who reaches out, alleviate duplicate efforts by applying date and user-based wildcard filters. Wildcards can be applied to report filters so the results are dynamic and change based on the context in which they are used. Date-based wildcards, $$TODAY and $$NOW, allow for results to auto-update based on the dynamic date range entered in. Common examples include this week, last month or next year.User-based wildcards generalize reports so the results change based on who is logged in and viewing the report. While there are several variations, the most commonly used is $$USER.ID.Below are 3 simple, yet must-have reports for team members using wildcards. Click on the name of each report to download a 1-page guide with step-by-step report creation instructions. Then, share the reports with users who are typically assigned work, or add them all t

Have you ever wanted to try a new process, custom form, access level, template—or anything else—without making changes to your production environment?  Did you know that Workfront provides all customers with a test environment so you can safely experiment with new ideas? This test environment is known as the Preview Sandbox. The Preview Sandbox contains your actual production data. It refreshes every weekend, so data can be up to one week behind what’s in your production environment.  To access this test environment, system administrators can click into Setup > System > Preferences > Preview Sandbox. For all other users, simply navigate to https://domain.preview.workfront.com and you should be prompted with a login screen. If you are unsure of what your domain is, look at your Workfront URL—the text prior to .my.workfront.com is your domain. In the screenshot below, the domain is nicholevargas. Below are a few common questions regardi

Have you tried using calendars within Workfront? If you haven’t yet but are curious about how it works, or are a current calendars user looking to level up your project visibility, this one’s for you.  First, though, let’s start from the beginning. What are calendars, anyway? Calendars are a type of dynamic reporting within Workfront. It’s a tool designed to help you visualize important dates and milestones by reporting on three key objects: 1) Issues 2) Tasks 3) Projects Calendar reports allow you to get closer to firm project dates by displaying planned/actual completion dates, any custom date field and custom form data as calendar entries in relation to other competing dates. You can use this to show milestones, assigned work (think capacity), and see deadline clusters. Plus, multiple users can view a single calendar report. It’s truly all about project visualization. Pretty handy, right? Here’s an overview tutorial page on basic calendar functionality that’ll

Why share your expertise? You are not alone   Customers often share that they feel siloed. There is value in connecting with other administrators to help, learn from, and elevate each other to accomplish goals faster. Everyone wants to be part of a family - or a community - of individuals who they can trust, depend on, and lean on for guidance.Others need your story - share it to teach and impact those who are just starting their enterprise work management journey within their organization. We are stronger and better together!You are doing big things  You are doing amazing work every day in your organization. This is an opportunity to highlight your story to show others the impact that you’re making, to paint a picture of what is possible, and to help guide others on their journey. As you transform work management within your organization, you’ll achieve positive, measurable results, move toward fulfilling your success story, and creating true competitive

As an Enterprise Account Executive, I manage my accounts in Salesforce and manage the work related to those accounts in Workfront.I use Workfront to manage 2 things – my existing accounts and my prospect accounts. With existing accounts, there are always things we need to stay on top of from account plans to value pyramids to plans on how we can expand these accounts with Workfront. With a prospect account, there are always tasks and actions to be done to move the prospect forward. Ideally, they will follow a sequence of events from the first conversation to the close of the contract.In order to stay on top of all of these moving parts, Workfront is essential in helping me keep track of these activities. It is also imperative that the professional services (CX) team has what they need in order to successfully implement a new customer. Inside of each customer’s project, the CX team will find recordings of demos, value maps where we have put together processes, as well as the customer’s

Where is the first place you, or your users look for new, in progress or completed work? For some of you that means navigating to the Home area and for others, checking a dashboard that has been applied to your layout template, and still for some it means receiving an email notification to proceed.  No matter how you manage your work, Workfront offers a variety of ways to help. It is important that you find the option that works best for you and your team, but be advised that what works best for you may not be the case for your users, so keep that in mind as you look to drive adoption across the organization. Below are three recommended ways to help users find their work with detailed benefits of each.  HOME A one-stop shop to find tasks, issues, and approvals assigned to you, the Home area offers two different ways to view your work — a Work List or Calendar. The built-in filter and sort options support you in working the way that you want, including giving you an option

As a remote employee, each day starts the same way (after the long trek down the stairs to my office). I first open Workfront Home to see what tasks and issues need to be completed “today”, what new updates did I receive and what is in the line-up for the remainder of the week. Then I open Gmail and Slack to evaluate new messages received. Am I being asked to do something?; 1) If yes, and it can be done in less than 2 minutes - I do it, 2) If yes, and it will take longer than 2 minutes to do, it is deferred or delegated. With either it is put into Workfront as a task or issue on an existing project, entered as an ad hoc task, or turned into a new project. Assignments are either self assigned (deferred) or assigned to somebody else (delegated), 3) If no, it is either “filed for later”, or “deleted”. All communications received during the normal work day are evaluated the same way.This is my way to ensure I get all my work in Workfront. I fully believe that work that is not in Workfront

Hi! My name is David Burggraaf and I’m the Chief Technology Officer at Workfront. I’m excited to be sharing some thoughts with you this month on the topic of work automation. Throughout my career, one of the things I have observed is that those that do well, automate. Whether it is engineers or people in finance, marketing, sales, HR, IT, or elsewhere, one of the common traits of the successful is that they automate. So, when a brother of mine asked me how they could be more successful in their career, I said “automate!” Before we dive in, it’s important to set the stage. Nearly every organization struggles with efficiencies on some level. Everyone is trying to get products to market faster while still being innovative. It’s not a surprise when we see that over 40% of employees are spending at least a quarter of their week doing repetitive tasks. A recent CMO Council study noted that $1 trillion is lost by companies every year due to mismanaged tasks, resulting in wasted productivity

Greetings! My name is Heather Foeh and I lead the Customer Marketing team at Adobe Workfront. If you have ever read a success story about a fellow customer, attended a User Group, received our customer newsletter, and more, that is all the work of our team. Our goal is to shine a light on our customers’ success while also making sure you’re communicated with in a timely manner. A few weeks ago, Adobe Workfront proudly celebrated YOU, our customers, in our 11th annual Lion Awards. The Lion Awards honor customers who are achieving positive, measurable results as they transform work management within their organization. This year was a bit different, not just because we were virtual–we've done that before!–but because we held the awards in tandem with the Adobe Experience Maker Awards.  The Experience Maker Awards aim to celebrate the exceptional experiences Adobe customers are creating through Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, and we were honored to be part of the joint ce

Once you have decided to transition to the new Workfront experience, it’s time to begin preparing your organization and Workfront users. The good news is that there are not a lot of technical challenges to solve for - the majority of the transition is rooted in change management.  This week’s blog will provide you with the tools and techniques to help you with this change process to ensure your rollout of the new Workfront experience is a success. There are three keys to a any great change management initiative: Understanding your StakeholdersGood Project PlanningCommunicate Early and Often UNDERSTAND YOUR STAKEHOLDERS There are several stakeholders to consider when planning the transition to the new Workfront experience, including those planning and executing the change and those that will be affected by the change. Here are some roles to consider for the change management team: Transition Champion - This person is responsible for the overall socialization and coordi

Next to St. Patrick’s Day and the Spring Equinox, the highlight of March for many is Selection Sunday, when millions across our country eagerly complete their hopeful brackets for March Madness, carefully analyzing the data and teams at play. Whether you are a college basketball fan or not, there are a handful of lessons to be learned from March Madness that you and your team can benefit from.  Think about your business—what’s important to you? No matter your company or industry, your customers, employees, and product or service most likely come to mind. For these elements to mesh cohesively, you need a team that works together just as well.  Below are three lessons we can each learn from and apply to our role within Workfront:  Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.It’s amazing how many times we go into something not fully prepared, thinking that if we just wing it, everything will turn out okay. College basketball is the same way—just because you are a 1-see

The end of the year is quickly approaching, which means it’s about time to write down the same New Year's resolutions we use every year—eat healthier, exercise more, and save money.  Although personal goals may remain the same, the way work gets done is constantly changing. According to the Workfront State of Work 2020, people and teams are under constant pressure to work faster and more efficiently. Workfront is designed to help you and your team master modern work, so consider the following ideas to elevate your team’s work productivity within the tool. 1) Designate a Workfront champion.  This person is your go-to for all things Workfront. For most system administrators, the role of Workfront champion is automatically assumed, simply based on access level. However, every organization has someone who’s an early adopter, someone who knows every keyboard shortcut, or someone who can navigate the system without even looking. This is the ideal user to ch

Work management in Workfront is summarized in 4 simple stages — initiate, evaluate, execute and measure. To continue the Workfront is Simple series, this week will focus on additional setup functions, actionable best next steps and recommendations for enterprise work management — including gathering and intake of work requests, tips and tricks for better project management and sample reports to allow for better visibility into all of the above. INITIATE AND EVALUATE WORK REQUESTS  Workfront request queues are designed to help you create a single space to gather and manage all work requests, allowing for better planning and fulfillment as well as collaboration across teams and departments. Leveraging request queues to manage demand is a core Workfront Best Practice. To get started, you must first understand how work is coming in. List out the various intake channels — email, Slack, meeting takeaways and desk drive-bys — and then outline, diagram and document your workflo

Crank it up to ELEVEN! 11 steps to make managing your Workfront users easierStruggling to get your users to log in to Adobe Workfront? Spending all your time managing user access? Searching for answers to users' Workfront questions?The primary goal is to get users into the system, provide them with appropriate access to their work, and grant the right permissions to perform that work.Let’s get this party started! It’s not a party until the people show up, so how do we get them in to Workfront? There are a few ways to add users, so we’ve got lots of options!1) If you are getting started with just a few users, adding them individually might be the easiest. Our step-by-step Adding Users learning path will walk you through the entire process.2) For bigger groups, departments or bulk new hires, avoid adding them one-by-one and instead check out the steps to Import Users via an import file. 3) Staying on top of new additions and deactivating emplo

Working from home isn’t new, but shifting to an entirely distributed, virtual workforce IS new and, for many organizations, unprecedented.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing our best tips and best practices for navigating the shift to a virtual workforce. Our goal isn’t to overwhelm, but rather to share what we’ve learned from thousands of customers - and our own Workfront employees - about communication, collaboration, prioritization and visibility.  Below is a list of our very best resources, across the Workfront Blog, recorded webinars and our own resource library. It’s your very own Workfront Survival Toolkit!  Collaboration and Communication Need ideas? Here are 6 Ways to Collaborate with WorkfrontGet connected. Integrate Workfront into tools your team is already using, such as Slack or MS Teams, to collaborate within the project or task. Workfront customers shared ideas for how to keep communication flowing using IM, you can see those here. And i

“You cannot manage what you cannot measure.” Peter Drucker, Management thinker How does your organization define and measure success? Regardless of industry, chances are that both historical and real-time data is utilized, analyzed and turned into actionable strategies for decision making.  In order to manage and measure the success of your team, you must be able to quickly check the status of all work items each team member is working on. Visuals are key, and by having a team dashboard, you get an organized, high-level overview of existing work and work coming down the pipeline without having to spend time digging around the system.  This week’s blog focuses on four different ways that you can drive efficiencies through reporting and visibility within your organization: Team Dashboard TipsKey Performance Indicators (KPI) DashboardCalculating Slippage via BaselinesBest Practices for Managing an Intake or Request Queue  TEAM DASHBOARD TIPS A te

I hope April showers have brought you May flowers! It’s been beautiful here in Utah this spring. We recently released the 2021 State of Work Report, our seventh annual study focused on how digital workers view and value work. We originally embarked on a journey in Q1 of 2020 to study how the two largest age cohorts in the workforce—millennials (ages 23-43) and Generation Xers (ages 44-52)—approached work. The data came back just as companies were sending their employees home to work, and provided a pre-pandemic snapshot of work trends. We ran the same study in Q4 of last year and then compared the two data sets, which gave us a view of how Covid-19 changed digital work.  The results of the survey are fascinating, and I encourage you to download the report. The study clearly surfaces generational differences in how individuals work, but also shows how the pivot to remote work has changed the way individuals view and complete work.  Here are some takeaways I foun

A challenge that many users face is efficiently navigating many tasks, tools and applications on a daily basis. As someone who likely wears multiple hats, you probably know that not all hats can be worn at once. Productivity and output decline when adding more to the mix causing distractions; and your best work cannot be done with laundry lists of to-do’s in different places. Rather than switching context every few minutes to keep track of all of the moving pieces, look to Workfront integrations to do the work for you. ENTERPRISE CHAT TOOLSMicrosoft Teams and Slack dominate the chat tool market and many customers prioritize integrating these with Workfront. By using a chat tool and Workfront together, users can drive efficiency by staying easily connected, avoid duplicate work by having one source of truth, and focus on the task at hand by centralizing communications. Not to mention that improved work management and fewer loose ends as chat conversations are reportable in Workfron

As the owner of leadership meetings, I find Workfront to be invaluable in creating agendas that other team members can contribute to, recording decisions that are made, and easily assigning and tracking action items.Each meeting is a project under the leadership team program. It’s easy to locate past meetings when we need to reference them:An agenda looks like this:With the option of putting the agenda items in whatever statuses work for your team. We use these customized statuses: standing, requested, action item, parking lot.Action items are easily recorded and tracked.The request queue for our organization has helped me execute on items and track them easily. Here is an example of part of my request queue dashboard. I can view all of my daily requests as a "to do list" on one screen (okay, maybe two screens because It’s so large!). It is empty right now and that’s a reason for celebration!Prior to using this request queue, team members would email me, walk by and ask me, mention in

Did You Know? Here to Help—Don’t be Scared to Contact Support!  “I am new to Workfront and find myself needing to support multiple teams across our organization. My experience with Workfront support has been fantastic, with the support team being friendly and helpful. Even if they don’t have an answer right away, I know they will get it for me.”   Taylor Jackson, Tennessee Do you have basic, how-to questions about Workfront; need help in setting up internal processes; or have advanced technical troubleshooting issues that need to be addressed? Does your organization not have a designated Customer Success Manager or Assigned Support Engineer? Our Support team is available 24x7x365 and is always willing to help! For U.S. customers, contact Support by phone at 844-306-HELP or by submitting a case or chat through the Workfront Experience site.     For those in EMEA or Australia, please use the following:     EME

Exciting benefits only available on the new Workfront experience.Mark your calendars! Starting May 2021, all new functionality and updates will only be released in the new Workfront experience. If your organization is still working in our classic interface, you’re likely missing out on key features designed to make your teams’ job of finding, managing, and executing work much easier. Thousands of users have made the switch to the new experience, with the number climbing higher every day. Not only do we want you to be a part of this improved user experience, we want to ensure you don’t miss out on any of our exciting product enhancements and offerings coming in future releases. Start planning your transition today with our new Workfront experience resources.   Read on to learn about three exciting benefits—influenced directly by your feedback—that you and your users can take advantage of after the switch.1) Fewer distractions. One of the most exciting benefits of the

Does your organization have a “single entry” for new work requests? Or rather, does your organization have a front door, a side door, a back door, and many other entry points to receive these requests?If you answered yes to the latter, don't worry, you are not alone—this is a common problem for many companies. Without a consistent work intake process, it can be nearly impossible to know what needs to be done, and when, because there is often a limited, if not a complete lack, of visibility for your people. Even more challenging, is the unknown amount of ad-hoc work consuming valuable resources and time from higher priority initiatives. I am sure we can all relate to those asks that “will only take a few minutes” and end up taking a few weeks – let’s work together to eliminate those!The first step is to get familiar with utilizing request queues (your clearly visible front door) to help you create a single space

To wrap up the Workfront is Simple series, this week focuses on the final setup segments — people, finance and system protocols. Detailed below are setup and best practice recommendations for resource management, finance management and overall system capabilities — confirming our sentiment in Part 1 that building a quality foundational design sets the framework for successful work management. PREPARING FOR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Once you have defined the roles, responsibilities and access levels of each user (details can be found in Workfront is Simple, Part 1), look to get started with setting up schedules, timesheets, and email notifications to prepare for resource management. Detailed below are recommendations for these areas of the Setup menu.  Schedules By creating custom schedules, you can define workweeks, input company holidays and use user availability to determine or calculate project timelines.  Since schedules are applied to both users and projects, th

Workfront’s out-of-the-box integrations sync with today’s top enterprise tools and systems, so your team can continue to work with focus, efficiency, and productivity. As most, if not all of you, use email every day, this week’s blog details the benefits of integrating Microsoft Outlook with Workfront to help you master modern work.  Setting up the Outlook integration with Workfront can be quick and easy if you have everything you need. To get you started, watch the short video below. Focus With so many different ways to communicate with colleagues, you may find yourself switching between platforms or applications to share updates and ask questions. To streamline communication and remain concentrated on the work at hand, the Microsoft Outlook integration allows you to reply to comments in Workfront without leaving your inbox. You can even post an email as an update to an ongoing task or project. To learn more, refer to the knowledge base article,&nbsp