Community Announcement – Updates to the Adobe Workfront Ideas Space

[#1]

Hello Adobe Workfront Community,

Jon here. As many of you may have noticed, the Ideas space on the Community site saw a dramatic change last year following our switch over to the current Community platform. Many of these updates reflect platform enhancements that change how users vote for and view top ideas. Though some of these updates may not have been ideal, they were a necessary part of switching Community platforms to better align with the Experience League Communities. We understand that the Ideas board is an invaluable space for Workfront customers to interface directly with their peers and the Workfront Product Management team.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working closely with internal stakeholders to rethink how we can continue to make Workfront Community Ideas a meaningful public space for product suggestions and improvements.

The new updates aim to optimize how our Product team sifts through Community ideas moving forward, sets a simplified procedure for reviewing and implementing those ideas, and perhaps, most importantly, implements a process to review all “legacy” ideas, which we consider to be ideas that were submitted more than 2 years ago. Please see below for details:

Existing Ideas Cleanup

• To reduce Community bulk and improve ideas searchability for both employees and customers, ALL ideas more than two years old will be archived. moved to the “Archived” stage. This means that, while these ideas will be available to view as a historical record, internal stakeholders will no longer investigate or consider these product suggestions for Workfront implementation.
  • This includes the ~90 or so ideas in the “Investigating” or “Accepted” stages. Due to shifting priorities, many of the ideas in these stages are no longer aligned with the short- or long-term product roadmap. Please note that ideas in these two stages that are less than 2 years old (i.e. posted after August 2021) will be “reset” back to a “New” idea for further review.
• We understand that many older ideas have gained significant popularity in the past few years. Similarly, we recognize that many newly submitted ideas have older counterparts from years prior to 2021. Therefore, we’d like to offer a grace period of 3 months to give Community users the opportunity to submit “merge” requests for older ideas. If you see an idea more than two years old (~August 2021 at the time of this article) that is a subject for archival, please use the request form below to merge the older idea with a newer one. My recommendation is to find similar ideas posted in the last month or so. The more recent the idea you request to merge with, the greater the likelihood that our Product team will review it. Please note that merging ideas will merge the likes (votes) and comments, but not the page views. The form will remain open after the grace period for any future merge requests you may have.
• After the grace period is up, our Product team will undergo a Legacy Ideas Review process to review the top 6 ideas from every archiving year (submitted 2017-2020). No ideas in the “Archived”,” Accepted,” or “Delivered” stages will be considered in this review process. While our Product team does not have the bandwidth to review every legacy idea, we hope that this will at least address some of the burning ideas that have accumulated extreme popularity over the years. All ideas in this bucket must be moved to an actionable stage (anything but “New” or “Unspecified”).

**Significant adjustments have been made to how our team addresses ideas prior to August 2021. Please see the September 15th update below for detailed changes to the Legacy Ideas Review process.**

Future Ideas Review Process

Our objective was to set up a new system that adds accountability for ideas marked for implementation or follow-up. This process has been vetted thoroughly by our Product leadership team and ensures that the Community is regularly up to date with “in-development” product suggestions. Please see the below outline for details:

• Every 6 months, Product Managers will be provided with a list of ~20 ideas that received the highest amount of engagement for review. These ideas will be curated by the Community Manager and are based on standard engagement metrics such as the number of page views, likes, and comments. Product Managers are required to respond to all ideas selected by the Community Manager.
• To ensure that a fair spread of older and recently submitted ideas are addressed, those compiled by the Community Manager will be a mix of ideas submitted in the past year, and older ideas spanning up to 2 years from the bi-annual review date. This process allows for older ideas that still gain a lot of traction to be reviewed by Product teams.
• During this bi-annual review cycle, Product Managers will be required to follow up on ideas that have been moved out of the “New” status during a previous review cycle. This way, submitted ideas that are in "work-in-progress" stages (i.e. Needs Info, Investigating, Accepted) can be expected to receive an update at least twice per year. Please note that ideas in “Declined”, “Archived”, or “Delivered” will not be updated as they are considered complete.

We hope these improvements will help establish a stronger relationship between our Product teams and Workfront Community members such as yourself. As always, we value your suggestions to improve Workfront and are grateful for all the feedback you provide. With any big change, we expect that this process may change based on your feedback and Product Management outlook. Let us know in the comments section what you think, and we will respond as soon as possible!

**September 15 Edit - Elevating the Ideas Process with Your Feedback**

Thanks everyone for your feedback! After speaking with several of you, we have decided to make some adjustments to the above process. Please see the following details on what's been changed:

1. Streamlined Idea Merging: We have heard your feedback about our initial plan that customers would submit requests to merge legacy ideas, and we understand that this would likely be an inconvenience. Therefore, we are taking the initiative and handling idea merging internally, and you will no longer need to request merges for legacy ideas. Rest assured that any existing merge requests will still be implemented as part of our commitment to delivering on your suggestions. If you do happen to come across similar ideas that you wish to merge, you can still reach out to me at any time with your request.
2. Enhanced Idea Updates and Transparency: We are committed to keeping you informed about the status of your ideas. Moving forward, our new process will ensure that ideas are updated more frequently, not solely when they are accepted or rejected. In addition, our Product Managers will provide their reasoning as to why an idea did or did not make the cut. This increased transparency aims to provide you with a clearer understanding of our decision-making process.
3. Improved Categorization: To better organize and prioritize ideas, we are modifying our legacy review cycle. Instead of focusing solely on the top six ideas per archiving year (2017-2021), we will now prioritize the top ten ideas in each category across all of those same archiving years. This approach will allow us to address a broader range of your valuable suggestions. Ideas outside of these categories will be moved to the Archived section, where they will remain available for viewing and discussion. However, they will only be acted upon if they receive extraordinary engagement within a short time frame.
   
   The ten categories that will be considered for this initiative are:
   
   
   1. Reporting
   2. Forms/Fields
   3. Email/Notifications/Updates/Notes
   4. Project/Portfolio/Program Management
   5. Document & Proof Approvals/Proof Commenting
   6. Tasks/Issues/Requests/Task & Issue Approvals/Queues
   7. Time/Resource Management/Balancer/Planner/Calendars
   8. General User Interface
   9. User Management/Access & Permissions
   10. API/Fusion/Automation
       
       
4. Obsolete Ideas Cleanup: As part of our ongoing improvements, we will also be archiving any ideas that reference out-of-date features and functionality, such as Workfront Classic and Quicksilver (New Workfront Experience), to maintain a more streamlined and up-to-date environment.
5. Expanded Community Advisor Permissions: We are also offering Community Advisors and select Community members the ability to update idea statuses without Community Manager intervention. The objective here is to crowdsource some aspects of the ideas cleanup to highly experienced Workfront admins. Given that many Workfront experts already peruse the Ideas space on a semi-regular basis, granting them the ability to update and flag ideas will improve idea legitimacy and organization. Please note that this capability is optional and there are no obligations associated with it. The Community Manager will reach out to those who qualify within the next few days. Alternatively, if you feel like you are qualified to review and update idea statuses at your own discretion, please reach out to be privately and I'll review your qualifications.

We appreciate your continued collaboration and feedback, which drive our commitment to delivering the best possible solutions for you. If you have any questions or require further clarification regarding these changes, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below or send me a private message.

The updated Legacy Ideas Review process will kickstart a month from today, on Monday, October 16th. 

Thank you for being a valued part of our community.

[#2]

Thanks for the update @jon_chen.  This sounds like a prudent and fair approach to me.

One minor suggestion to improve Idea entries (having been thwarted by it again within the past hour), would be to allow readers to click "Like" on subsequent Idea comments, rather then just the initial Idea. Doing so on the former could help refine the latter...noting, of course, that -- as it is today -- only the Likes on the initial Idea should count towards the overall popularity of the idea.

Regards

Doug

[#3]

I like the Merge Request Form, will the link for that also be placed in an easy to find spot on the Ideas page?

[#4]

@Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the ability to like subsequent idea comments is a convenient way to show member interest; agreed that only the initial idea's votes should count towards the overall popularity. I'll investigate this with our platform PM and will report back.

@Heather_Kulbacki Absolutely! I will place the link as a featured discussion moving forward for easier access. 

[#5]

I look forward to the new experience. It sounds great!

[#6]

@jon_chen  -  Looking at the current Ideas space, only 2 of the top 50 most "Liked" ideas are less than two years old.  Are you saying the Workfront is going to ignore all of the most popular ideas unless someone recreates the Idea?  You are expecting community members to recreate data for you?  Surely, Adobe Workfront can see what Ideas have gained traction in recent years (even if the original post was greater than 2 years old) and action them without extra work from users.  This doesn't seem like a very customer centric approach.  

[#7]

That the most liked ideas are older makes it look as though Adobe isn't responding to customer needs, more than anything else. They should never have had the chance to get old before they were implemented.

I've always maintained that "votes don't count" in that we've all seen popular ideas passed over for less popular ones. Just because you get votes doesn't mean your idea will come to fruition, nor will less votes move your idea to the bottom of the list.

IMO, it all has to do with ROI, not what you as a customer wants. Correction: "perceived ROI". (If you do what admins want, you would get "Actual ROI" in fewer support tickets, customer retention, better adoption & engagement, customer-led product evangelism, all leading to more sales for lower spend, etc.).

[#8]

This is a great way for Adobe to make it look like customer feedback is actually driving the product. 

If you sort by the "most liked" Ideas, see how old they are, then see what has been implemented. You'll quickly see that while Support constantly directs users to submit Ideas, the Product team has no accountability to actually implement any of it. Taking these old ideas (the most highly requested Ideas) and forcing people to "merge" them and resubmit, gain all the traction again, and hope they get looked at isn't value added for any of us.

@jon_chen You stated, "I have been working closely with internal stakeholders to rethink how we can continue to make Workfront Community Ideas a meaningful public space for product suggestions and improvements". This is something that should be done WITH your customers, not just your internal stakeholders. That is a great way for Adobe to get what they want, not what your paying customers want. This has to be customer focused.

Maybe I missed an in-app announcement, but posting this in a Blog post that not a lot of customers will see is a great way to have this happen without every customer being aware and missing a deadline to migrate Ideas. This should be communicated in-app as well as by your sales teams. This is a major change in customer involvement and shouldn't be taken lightly.

[#9]

Hi @jon_chen, slightly confused. What if an Idea older than 2yrs old doesn’t have a newer like Idea to merge with? It’ll be archived regardless of votes?

[#10]

Hey @toddschwanger, Thank you for your response, and I truly value your feedback. I want to assure you that our intention is not to burden our members with recreating data. We're being cautious about conducting batch reviews for the nearly 7,000 popular ideas we've accumulated over the past 6 years 

Unfortunately, our Product team is currently stretched thin and cannot commit to reviewing each and every popular idea individually. It's worth mentioning that our previously active Innovation Lab process has already addressed a significant portion of these older ideas. You'll find many of them categorized as "Accepted" or "Delivered." 

The new Legacy Ideas Review process is designed to address the remaining "Most Liked" ideas. Our Product Managers will focus on the top 6 ideas from every year between 2017 to 2020. This will account for many of the “Most Liked” ideas you mentioned, since they were posted in 2017. The merge requests form, while completely optional, provides an opportunity to highlight ideas beyond the "Top 6" for each year, boosting their visibility during subsequent review cycles due to the updated publication date and merged votes. Please see updates to the original post for the latest changes on how we're planning to address older ideas. 

While I understand that a few ideas might slip through the cracks, I'm confident that genuinely popular and impactful ideas will be resubmitted and will regain their momentum and popularity within our Community. 

I would love to schedule a 30-minute session with you to see how I can further update this process based on your feedback and concerns; I’ve sent you a private message to schedule a quick chat next week. If you’re interested, please let me know when you’re available to chat! 

@RandyRoberts Thank you for your input. I share your perspective on the need for more product transparency around why certain ideas get implemented earlier than others. The challenge lies in the bandwidth of our Product and Engineering teams, as they manage multiple feedback channels in addition to the Community Ideas space (though we both agree that this space is the most important).  

I completely understand your concern about the popularity of ideas and their implementation. Our product team genuinely values the feedback from customers and makes every effort to take all viewpoints into account. While highly voted ideas hold significant value, it's essential to note that the process doesn't assure immediate implementation, due to the complexity of aligning each well-received idea with our short- and long-term product roadmap.  

The new process we've formulated strives to maximize voting impact. Every six months, we will thoroughly review and respond to the most popular ideas based on the number of votes and comments. To ensure we don’t lose sight of previously high-voted ideas, we've implemented a requirement for Product Managers to provide updates on ideas they've engaged with in prior review cycles.  

We understand the frustration of popular ideas being left untouched. This new process aims to ensure that valued suggestions receive the attention they deserve. I would love to schedule some 1:1 time to learn more about your feedback and concerns; I’ve sent you a private message to schedule a quick chat next week. Looking forward to speaking with you! 

Hey @JeffWu1, Thanks for your response. I agree that more accountability needs to be ingrained into the Community customer feedback process. The main reason for this review overhaul is due to the lack of Product engagement in the past few months. I'm hopeful that this updated process will ensure a higher level of transparency from our product team moving forward.  

I appreciate your input regarding awareness and do agree that the merge request form needs to be shared with as many channels as possible. This announcement is currently pinned at the top of the Workfront Community. I will send out this announcement and the subsequent merge request form in the next newsletter in early October, and will also work with the respective teams to publish recurring Announcement Center messages that will go out to all your Workfront instances.  

As mentioned in the original post, this process is flexible and can change based on customer feedback. I would love to sit down for a 1:1 session to learn more about your thoughts, feedback, and concerns regarding this ideas review process. I’ve sent you a private message to schedule some time next week. Let me know if you have any questions!  

@Madalyn_Destafney Thanks for your clarifying question. Your assumption is correct – ideas older than two years that do not have a similar idea to merge with will be archived. I understand this is not the most ideal situation. Nevertheless, it plays a pivotal role in tackling the challenge of a high volume of older ideas, many of which have not received comments or likes. This step is crucial to enhance the accuracy and discoverability of the Community search function. Further, if a popular idea is removed due to it being older than 2 years, I am sure that it will be resubmitted and gain significant traction again if it is genuinely a critical ask from the Workfront Community.  

I also want to note that the Product team will be addressing a total of 24 top ideas from every year between 2017 and 2020 (6 from each year). I believe this will address a majority of the most popular ideas – as I have seen that many of the ideas that gained significant traction were posted prior to 2020. Please see updates to the original post for the latest changes on how we're planning to address older ideas. 

As mentioned in my other responses – I am more than happy to schedule a 1:1 session to learn about any additional thoughts, questions, or concerns you might have about this process. I’ve sent you a private message to schedule some time next week – let me know if you can make it!

[#11]

Appreciate the info @jon_chen however I'm disappointed that it's up to community members to clean up the ideas, to do the work to "find and merge" old with the new. There should be an Adobe Workfront team doing this work. It would be the clean-up idea lab suggested by @RandyRoberts that so many of us wanted (and I'm positive more would vote for Randy's idea if they knew it existed). We did the work of submitting ideas, and now we have to clean it up? Respectfully, that's a tough ask. New community members submitting ideas might not understand how an existing idea is actually what they want or even know the right terms to search for an existing idea what they want to suggest. After 5 years, I still have a hard time finding the results I want - choosing just the right terminology to find what I know exists within the community. I feel ideas should be monitored, classified, and merged with duplicate ideas by Adobe Workfront. And have one spot where we could promote these, like the old Idea Exchange Promotion thread.

@Madalyn_Destafney I suppose you could create a new idea based on the old one, then have it merged. I'm not convinced that, "if a popular idea is removed due to it being older than 2 years, I am sure that it will be resubmitted and gain significant traction again if it is genuinely a critical ask from the Workfront Community."

[#12]

Hey @Sheri_Whitten Thanks for your response and I apologize for the delay. Conducting a more prescriptive approach to cleaning up specific categories of ideas i.e. those referring to Classic) will be one of my top priorities. I agree that ideas' discoverability and searchability have been severely impacted by a high saturation of either obsolete or irrelevant ideas. The Merge Request Form was one of the methods I envisioned to help clean up the bulk, but I understand that it is a lot to ask for from our customers and Community members. That said, I'll be reconsidering the usage of this form moving forward. 

I do like your idea of reviving the Ideas Exchange Promotion thread. I'll take this into consideration as it's a great way for users to share popular ideas and/or request to merge ideas that are similar. 

I am speaking to several customers this week and would love to hear your input as well. If you're interested in a 1:1, let me know what time works for you via this Calendly link. 

[#13]

I agree with @RandyRoberts 

The Ideas was set up under the pretense that the most popular ideas would be implemented and we all know that this is not realistic or possible.  It left me, and perhaps others left to wonder what the real criteria is in order to get ideas implemented. 

Now it seems like Workfront is ditching that idea and starting over.

One of my ideas from many years ago was the default new user access level should NOT be system administrator.  How much money and time would it have cost the Workfront team to implement this?  My guess is that it would take very little.  This idea did not receive the required vote threshold in order to make it viable.

I still feel like this fix would be well received by all and very cheap for Workfront to do - but in all reality this issue will never be popular.

How can we be assured that Adobe will adequately funnel and address the Ideas this time?

[#14]

Thank you @jon_chen I'm on vacation next week, so I can't make any of those times, but I appreciate your response and look forward to hearing what comes from your other feedback appointments.

[#15]

Gosh all this talk of ideas and I wish I could just.....find them!

I don't see it anywhere in any of the menus, drop downs, right nav...someone leave me a cookie crumb trail to follow please!

[#16]

@ChristinaJay 

Community > WorkFront > Ideas (same place where Questions is just a different tab).

[#17]

Good morning,

One overall feedback to the Ideas process in general, before it was migrated into Experience League, you were able to filter to see which ideas you had voted, now liked, in the past. I really do wish that functionality/filter still existed because I was able to follow the approval process of those ideas to know realistically, if they were going to be approved/rejected. It also allowed me to keep my customer informed of what was possibly going to be built into the tool. Thanks,

Mary

[#18]

Hi @MaryMc1 Thank you for your feedback. While there is a filter to see which ideas you've contributed to in your user profile (Hover over the top right avatar icon > My Community Profile > Ideas > Filter by User Contributions), it does not include ideas that you've liked/voted on in the past. I will include this as a request to our Product Management team as I agree this would be a highly beneficial feature. 

[#19]

@jon_chen Please correct me if I'm wrong but users will need to input new product ideas when the new iteration of the Idea Submission process comes out?  Everyone currently submitting ideas will need to create a new Idea in the new system at a later date in order for it to be seen?

[#20]

Hi, @Richard__Carlson They will only need to create a new idea if the previously published idea is older than two years. The bi-annual process described above will be looking at ideas spanning across the entire two-year period to ensure that we are not biased towards newer or older ideas.