Workfront Blogs
01-03-2022
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Subscribe
- Email to a Friend
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report
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 STARTED WITH PROOFING
Learn more about proofing in Workfront here, the online proofing tool used to review and approve digital content. Available to all customers with a Pro, Business, or Enterprise plan, it can be used with over 150 file types and features side-by-side comparison, enhanced collaboration with real-time updates, asset versioning, comment tracking, and automated workflow templates to streamline the review process.
For users with administrative access, proof setups are accessed through the Main Menu. Once the Proofing icon is selected, you can adjust global system settings, establish proof user settings, and create or customize workflow templates. Review the learning path, Setups for proofing, on Workfront One to learn more.
MAINTAINING CONSISTENCY
Automated workflow templates are one of the most valuable features used with proofing. These templates drastically reduce the number of manual configurations, allow content owners to apply the same approval workflow with the same people to multiple pieces of digital content, and ensure consistency across teams or departments.
Multiple stages can be set up, but keep in mind that currently, the same user cannot be added to multiple stages. Stages are a set of people who need to review and approve the proof by a specific deadline. Each group has its own deadline and stages can run concurrently or consecutively.
To help streamline the approval setup process for proof owners, ensure the following key elements are configured on each automatic workflow template.
- Template Name—Title each workflow clearly so that the person selecting the workflow knows which template is required for their use case. Consider including the names of approvers or their groups in the title.
- Stage Name—Name each approval stage within the workflow with an appropriate title, so it is clear who is responsible for the decisions within. Examples of stage names could include Internal Review, Stakeholder Review, or Legal Review and Approval.
- Stage Settings—Make sure that you have users added, stage settings adjusted (see screenshot below), and user role and email alerts selected. Proof owners can select the relevant template and quickly update select settings that may be unique to the current proof, like deadlines, instead of configuring each stage manually.
- Workflow Access—Do other project users need to manage the workflow during the process? This may include updating deadlines, adding/removing reviewers, or actioning on comments for the content owner. Be sure to add them to the proof as an Author so that they have edit rights. But, keep in mind that anyone with the Author role will be required to make a decision, unless additional settings are put in place like only one decision is required or someone else is designated as a primary decision maker in that stage.
PRO TIP: If you aren’t familiar or need a refresher, review the table in the article Configure Default Proofing Roles to understand the rights associated with each.
FASTER TURNAROUND TIME
Stop chasing down stakeholders—leverage templatized proofing workflows to speed up the approval process in your organization. Include approval stage deadlines on the workflows to highlight urgency and, using dynamic proof reports, surface the approval stage and approver(s) for the proof owner and stakeholders to see and hold accountable.
Finally, take human delays out of the picture by configuring stage activation criteria into each workflow to automate the movement of the proof from one reviewer’s hands to the next. Below are a few things to consider as you update the Stage Settings of your automated workflow templates:
- Specify whether the stage is activated manually or automatically. Choose from the Activate Stage drop-down menu to select an appropriate action to trigger it, if applicable. If you have multiple stages, you can select stages to become active based on another.
- Do all approvers need to make a decision before the proof moves to the next stage? Or does capturing one approval suffice in order to move the proof to the next stage? Speed up the approval process by selecting “Only one decision required” to allow for one approver to make a decision on behalf of the entire stage.
- Should comments and decisions in a specific stage only be visible to people that are added to that stage? Select the “Private stage” checkbox to hide this information from others. Remember that the proofing permissions Supervisors and Administrators can access all stages, including private stages.
- Specify whether you want to allow the stage to be locked for comments. Choose to lock a stage manually or automatically, either when the next stage starts or when all decisions are made on the parent stage.
To learn more about creating templates within the proof system setups to ensure that proofs move quickly through the approval workflow, review the on-demand learning path, Proof system setups, Part 2 - Workflow management.
PRO TIP: Have a new workflow to create that has a similar setup as an existing approval workflow template? Navigate to Proofing via the Main Menu and select Workflows in the left navigation panel. Find the workflow that is most similar and using the three dots to the right of the template name, select Copy Template.
Update this new template with any differences and once finished, scroll to the bottom of the page and select the green, copy template button.
PROJECT TEMPLATE AND AUTOMATED WORKFLOW TEMPLATE ALIGNMENT
Automated workflow templates can be combined with project templates to deliver a balance of task-based work and streamlined proofing reviews. Both functionalities allow workers and reviewers to participate in the workflow and, as a result, drive a project to a timely completion.
One approach to prevent managing multiple tasks on a project for each additional round of review required for a proof, is to add a single task for proof review to a project template. Every project spun up off of that template will have the person(s) responsible for the completion of the review assigned to that task. Instead of creating multiple tasks for each proof review cycle on each project, the approvers would move through multiple review cycles directly on the proof workflow, while logging their time to and managing a single task. Review section 3 of this learning path, Proof workflows and projects, for Workfront recommendations for blending a review and approval process with a project timeline.
Other options to manage review cycles could include adding tasks or issues for each review cycle, extending the duration of existing tasks, or levering tasks or issue approval workflows.
PRO TIP: Just like unexpected work comes up in a project, additional rounds of reviews and edits may come up on a proof. Have a process in place to capture additional review rounds and set boundaries with your stakeholders on the number of acceptable cycles of review for a proof. This will ensure that there is alignment around completion criteria of an approval workflow and that the proof review comes to an end within a reasonable timeframe.
CONCLUSION
After a project has been completed, it’s important to do a retrospective review to see what went right—and what you and your team can improve on in the future. Look to measure and document:
- How long it took for approvals and edits.
- How many versions of an asset there was per project or task.
- The overall length of the project cycle (to compare to similar projects).
If the review process is getting faster, continue building on that success. If it is moving slower, identify bottlenecks and follow up with a team meeting to discuss how to avoid them in the future.
Proofing in Workfront allows you to automate approval workflows, simplify processes and accelerate the review efforts of digital content. Dive into the self-guided program, Setups for proofing in Workfront on Workfront One to learn more about how you can take advantage of the benefits today!