Weekly Updates Thread

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

This thread will serve for weekly updates on the status of design and development activities. Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

UPDATE: WEEK OF FEB 25 Please see below the updated design combining Screenshots 2 and 3 (the top selected options based on the survey). Some of the functionality highlighted here: Time Off and Schedule Exception representations (including partial time off) Total hour information on the left panel, next to work objects Summary of roles showing on the bars (showcased in more detail "https://workfront.invisionapp.com/share/K2QM8CFVTMC#/screens/348936978" here ) Object names both on the bars and on the left panel, easing visual mapping Summary of role demand in Unassigned (will be possible to review hours per role and quickly filter for a role) Planned improvements A setting to control whether to show remaining hours versus planned hours More iteration on the time offs More work on vertical spacing options Please feel free to comment with any feedback, concerns you might have regarding this. Thanks for your feedback! Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[SusanKa]

Hi Vazgen, quick question about planned hours- why do some "cells" show the green check box and others show 8 hours? Is this part of the design that's still in question? Susan Karns Momentum Worldwide Inc

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

The screenshot above shows Remaining Hours option. Checkmarks mean "at capacity" 8 hours planned out of 8 available. The main use case here is for users with multiple schedules with 6, 4 etc. working hours - checkbox makes it easy to see that you're at capacity without needing to know which schedule the user is working in. If switched to Planned Hours view it would show 8 instead. Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

UPDATE: WEEK OF MAR 4 Please see below the updated design of the Scheduler interface, using Planned workload, instead of remaining hours. This is the design we have chosen to proceed with, feel free to reach out with any feedback regarding it. Also attaching a concept of drag & drop for the case when the unassigned task has two roles on it and the user also have the same two roles: The changes made here: We will move forward with Planned Hours option as default and add the possibility to switch between Planned and Remaining Hours later on. Time offs and schedule exceptions have the same color. We will add tooltip to indicate which is which and also highlight the times for partial time offs Moving forward: Our next area of research will be the drag & drop experience and optimizing it for speedy assignments Please feel free to comment with any feedback, concerns you might have regarding the selected approach and direction. Thanks for the feedback! Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Vazgen - how easy is it for you guys to update the screenshot? We've had a few meetings today and people are getting confused. For example: For Melissa Brown on Jan 8, 9, 10, should those say 12, 10, and 9.5? Also, what does the grayed out 8 for John Smith on Jan 9 supposed to mean? There are also a lot of negative numbers still but you guys are going to the planned hours approach versus the remaining right? We also think, it might be helpful to have one of the people be part time so we can see the different. Like if the first Nicholas Urfe could be 0.5 FTE, you could see 4 (but all shaded blue) the three 8's but in red, and then maybe change Friday the 5th to 2 and have 50% blue shade. Just so people can see how the shading and color changes look in the Planned Hours view when someone is full time or part time. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Great feedback, Anthony! We do need to work on the numbers, so I get why it looks confusing in the screenshot. I'll discuss the part-time visuals with our UX and post an updated version tomorrow. -- "https://www.workfront.com/" style="color:rgb(0,161,208)"

[DavidCo3]

Hi Vazgen, I was also a bit confused by some of the numbers. Given that you're going to update them I won't focus on that too much, but I did wonder why some of them show negative numbers in blue and some show positive numbers in blue. I get that red numbers mean they're overallocated but how can blue numbers be both positive and negative? At this point, I still can't see any daily hour totals per task (once you expand out a resource to look at their projects and tasks). If for example Melissa Brown is 4 hours overallocated on Monday 8th and I want to fix that, how do I know which task/s I should move in order to correct that? Regarding PTO and Schedule Exceptions sharing the same colour, that's one of our long-time bug-bears with the current calendar. Users want to be able to see at a glance which is PTO and which is a public holiday. I don't think having to mouse-over every task to find this out is ideal. Is there a reason why you couldn't even have just 2 shades of grey? Or perhaps a different icon? I see the calendar icon...could PTO perhaps be changed to a vacation themed icon, and schedule exceptions to some kind of govt building icon? I know it sounds a little humourous but people might like that....something like this: Regards, David Cornwell

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Thanks David! Don't focus on numbers part the screenshot shared was from the middle point of us moving away from remaining hours towards planned so it's only partially updated in that regard. One of the cases we experienced with multiple colors for Schedule/PTO was that there can be partial time off and schedule exception logged on the same day and don't intersect with each other. This results in a quite an unpleasant display of the information. But I'm going to conduct more research on this with our UX. For the daily totals on Task and Project level - that is planned but we are currently focused on getting the initial view structure right and only then move to the contouring information. I will update the group accordingly once we get to that part. Thanks for the feedback! -- "https://www.workfront.com/" style="color:rgb(0,161,208)"

[TanjaHa]

Hi Vaz Thanks a lot for these screen mock-ups. My comments are as follows: - What does the grey "8" mean? What's the difference to the green tick marks? - The red hours (over allocation) are good for us to reflect the concrete over allocated hours. - We also would like to see a part-time user in this mock-up to see how this reflects. - Last but not least, it would be important for us to have a weekly view, i.e. do weekly scheduling. Best regards Tanja Tanja Haller Panalpina

[SusanKa]

Hi Vazgen, Only a few comments from my team and apologies these are late. 1. Still hoping to see daily hours per task in this view, similar to others feedback. 2. How do we see what roles are assigned to each unassigned task, expand it? Click/hover on it? What does that look like? Thanks! Susan Karns Momentum Worldwide Inc

[AnthonyIm]

So we have had a few meetings now and people are starting to get the idea, but like I mentioned before, the numbers in the boxes are confusing people. Some things still outstanding that the group is worried about: How the hours per tasks/project by day are shown and how can they be edited? (The current process of opening each task and then seeing all the assignees instead of just the one you are on, no one likes) Will inaccessible items still have their hours show? We see that in Resource Grid and Resource Planner, but in scheduler, those hours do not show. This might be more for the team working on Home, but how does someone see the contouring the RM does? If they want me to work 8 hours on this one task today because I'm going to be slammed tomorrow with a bunch of work, how do I know that? An enhancement idea that was brought up which I thought was great but am curious what the rest of the group thinks: For inaccessible items, instead of just graying out, can they put the Project Owner's name inside the gray bar? That way, they know who to reach out if they have something super urgent and want to negotiate a resource. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[DavidCo3]

As Anthony said, a big issue with Home is the inability of resources to see their pre-planned work. This makes the screen unusuable for us and we've raised that and managed to get a committment that My Work won't be removed until the Home Calendar is suitably enhanced. Given the redesign of the Scheduler that we are all now reviewing, it is worth asking the question of Vazgen regarding how end users will see this information? Hopefully the two screens are being designed hand-in-hand, otherwise what's the point of using the Scheduler if users are going to work on tasks whenever they feel like it? I still don't understand how Home was even launched with that major product management planning disconnect. David Cornwell

[DavidCo3]

Oh, and re Anthony's idea about viewing inaccessible items, yes - it would be handy to at least know who the project owner is. David Cornwell

[AnneMa1]

Hi Tanja, Hi Vaz, I have received feedback from the teams also. First, I agree with Tanja's comment referencing weekly planning. On our teams, we plan by week, not by day. This was a comment made by everyone that supplied feedback so far. We do not look that granularly at our scheduling. One specific request was that we could see the current week, plus 8 weeks moving forward. Additionally, have the weeks roll into months, without using the month tab at the top of the planning tool. Another point of feedback I received: Is there a way to set tolerances for over-allocation? In reference to part-time, or less than 40 hours per week associated with project work. So basically, could a team lead set the tolerances for resources on their teams? The Unassigned section looks very busy, so to the point of summarizing the Unassigned by role for easy filtering. I think would be a great option. Also, on the point of a setting to control whether to show planned vs. remaining hours, it would be nice to have an overall setting so individual resource planners could have their own view. Anne MacDevette Panalpina

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Hi everyone, Thanks for all the updates here. Displaying project owner name on the Inaccessible Items creates a number of problems with the security model - if the person doesn't have access to a project, they can't see who's the owner on it, they can't even access the project page. So circumventing that will be a violation of the security framework. In addition to that, there can be several projects included in the Inaccessible Items groupings which can further complicate the presentation of the owner names - a problem, but not as critical as the previous point. Regarding exposure of contouring information to the end users, I'm currently working with @Mandy Anger on how it will be reflected in Home. In addition to that, one concept we're thinking about is to send notifications to the end users which contain summarized information about the tasks they need to work on next based on the contouring dates and hours. If we consider that as a given, what information would you like to be included in those notifications? Also posting an update for this week in the next post. Thanks, Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

UPDATE: WEEK OF MAR 11 We don't have an updated screenshot this week but I want to let everyone know that the next steps for us are: - defining drag & drop experience - including the ability to contour daily hours in the designs - including the ability to view information by week in the designs There will be updated visuals in the next week's update with progress in the aforementioned directions. We will also ensure that hours are updated and the math makes sense in the screenshots. Based on our progress so far, I believe it will be valuable to have another round of calls with further ideation on the mentioned directions. Sending my Calendly link that can be used to book time on my calendar directly:

[DavidCo3]

Hi Vazgen, Regarding the notifications, are these email notifications or web notifications? I assume you mean email notifications. In terms of the info to be inlcuded (most likely in a table form), the minimum standard details should be: Project Name Task or Issue name Hours assigned per day (coming week) Overall Due Date (not Commit date) Optional fields (congfigurable via settings / layout template?): Status Description Custom fields Something cool might be to give them a small line chart of their assigned hours over the coming week, as a reminder of how much their time is booked up in Workfront. Regards, David Cornwell