Drive Focus and Efficiency with Integrations

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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 TOOLS

Microsoft 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 Workfront. This is when true collaboration happens. 

Often, users take a Slack or Microsoft Teams message and copy and paste it into a Workfront update or manually create a task adding extra clicks and precious time to their day-to-day. It is for that reason that Workfront invested in and developed native integrations for these two market leading applications a couple of years ago and will continue to add additional enhancements over the next several releases. Below is a list of customer stories, related Community discussions and how-to videos around each of these chat integrations:

Microsoft Teams

• To learn how to combine the collaboration capabilities of MS Teams with Workfront to help manage work, check out the short, 3-minute video here. 
• Join the Community thread for MS Teams to discuss use cases with other like-minded system administrators. 

Slack

• Watch several how-to videos for Slack through Workfront One.
• Read more about one 2020 Lion Award winner, The Home Depot, on how Slack helped users stay on top of notifications and work in real-time and improved adoption across multiple teams.

In case you missed it, watch the recording, download the presentation or join the discussion from the recent User Group on Cross-Functional Collaboration. 

For additional information on best practices around streamlining work, check out the blog, A Series of Administrator Essentials, Part 2 on Workfront One. 

ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD

Workfront is growing its partnership with Adobe and has continued to develop both the Adobe Creative Cloud integration and the recently improved Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) cloud connector. The combination of Adobe Creative Cloud, Workfront and AEM delivers full end to end content management in a trackable manner. For users who constantly switch from artistic work to another application to log progress, this integration reduces duplicate work, keeps users focused on the creative or design work at hand and drives efficiency in productivity. Users can simply post Workfront updates directly from Photoshop and keep working. 

Below is a list of customer stories, related Leap presentations and how-to guides around the Adobe integration:

• Check out this year’s Leap presentations, Get the Most Out of Your Teams with Workfront and Adobe or Workfront & Adobe: A Better-Together Strategy.
• For a how-to guide on using Workfront for Adobe, download Workfront for Adobe Creative Cloud on Workfront One.
• Upload a proof and kick off a proofing workflow without leaving your Adobe application. Learn more in the targeted learning guide, Proofing with Workfront and Adobe.
• Hear from Ben Synder at Under Armour in the blog, Adobe + Workfront: Under Armour’s Winning Formula or in the Leap presentation, Create a Seamless User Experience with AEM and Workfront 

For additional tips from like-minded system administrators, check out the Community thread on Workfront One. 

TIPS TO GET STARTED

The work involved in adding an integration is minimal, and is far outweighed by the value that it provides. Depending on your configuration and use case you may want help with a specific integration. Detailed below are six steps to get started: 

• Track the integration implementation in Workfront and include tasks for the following:
  • Define and Plan - How will various personas use it? 
  • Change management plan/governance review - Tips can be found in step 6.
  • Internal security review
  • Create a training plan and enablement plan for both new and existing users.
  • Pilot group rollout - Includes system administrators, champions and power users.
  • Extended rollout
  • Closure/celebration

• In partnership with your internal security team, determine which integration best fits your organization’s needs and meets all security requirements. Ideally, the application would be something that people are already using regularly. Integrating Workfront with a frequently used application will increase adoption among users.  

PRO TIP: Be certain to allow enough time for your Security team to complete their review! When relying on a team outside of yours for a task deliverable I typically recommend padding your expectations by up to a week.

• Identify the internal technology administrator or team responsible for helping with installations. Most likely, this will be your IT team. Understand anything that needs to be done by your IT teams before you get going. This may be enabling an add-in or installing a configuration file depending on the integration. Provide them with documentation up front and work with them. In some environments and for some integrations you may not have to do anything outside of the users installing the add-in themselves (Office365 calendar add-in, for example).

PRO TIP: The person or team helping you may not know anything about Workfront, so walk through your use case with them and be prepared to answer any questions.

• Engage with Workfront Support. Alongside your technology administrator or team, engage with Workfront Support to set up the integration. While Workfront will not set up the integration for you, the team is committed to answering questions, helping with troubleshooting efforts and providing you with all the necessary tools and resources to do it yourself. Along with speaking directly to Customer Support, extensive product documentation can be found on Workfront One (found via Resources > Topics) to help you easily set up the integration.

• Prepare a training plan. User education is critical for any successful application, add-in, or configuration change. It should begin by including any installation or configuration information and then step-by-step key uses. Try and keep the educational materials to a short slide deck or a 1-pager that acts as a reference and overview guide. If possible, use training guides already created by Workfront. Keeping it simple is the key here.  

• Execute a change management plan. Change can be a scary thing. Communicate the benefits of the integration and the transition plan to the new, streamlined processes that the integration will enable to ensure that your end-users are comfortable, confident and excited for the changes to come. 

PRO TIP: Check out the Leap presentation, Workfront Governance: Step by Step for a plan to establish Workfront governance within your organization and understand the importance of doing so.

If Workfront’s native integrations do not meet your company needs, reach out to your Account Executive to discuss a custom integration.