21.1 Product Release: Have you seen the New request submission flow in the New Workfront Experience?

Hi Anna, Thanks for taking the time to meet with me the other day to talk in depth about how we're using Workfront with request queues embedded in our project templates, and to also get my feedback on the request queue redesign.

Re: New requests, I don't really like change for the sake of change, and to me the "New request" changes don't feel like they are significant enhancements, particularly putting the Documents section at the bottom of the form vs. the top and putting the Submit button in a different location and different color. If these had been top priorities voiced by the Workfront One community then by all means, make the change - I'm just one voice. I am just thinking about all of the internal process documentation I have to update with new screenshots, videos and likely an influx of confusion from users who need reassurance that it's just a page redesign, not a big deal, it won't change the functionality for submitting requests. So, I don't have strong feelings one way or another on the redesign in terms of it being a better or worse UX, I'm just worried about the UX of "more change??" :)

I will reiterate something another customer noted is a major requirement: The request selection (for both Topic Group and Queue Topics if used) NEEDS to be dropdown menus listing all request types a user has access to. It cannot be a search bar. I did look at this display in preview, and maybe I need to put in a WF Support ticket if the change has been made to a dropdown menu because I only see four request options where I need to see 14.

Re: Submitted requests, this seems like a good change overall, and I'd support having the ability to customize views and filters including the default. As we have request queues also embedded in project templates, it would be awesome to have this include ALL requests, whether they were submitted through the main Requests area OR as an issue within a project.

Thanks again!

Color me annoyed with this one:

1. Our entire workflow is based around the document uploads being FIRST, please revert. Or allow US to choose where it goes.
2. We have a question at the end of our requests that is mandatory and verifies they have uploaded a required doc…having the doc upload AFTER the question royally screws things up.
3. Why are longer questions (field names) being truncated!?! Please fix ASAP, we have ALOT of long questions…
4. Bring back the differentiation between a custom form name and a section name. Without the visual hierarchy our intake forms are now confusing and tough to skim through. This will create training diffculties.
5. Please put the submit button back at the bottom…it makes it much clearer that it's the last step.
6. Also, we work on widescreen displays, and just like the Main Menu (which annoys us and we "pinned around it"), going all the way out to the top right is cumbersome.
7. Same with New Request button; leave it on the left.
8. What is this Share Path button?
9. Please let us hide the Submitted section. It's nice and all but …we already have a custom dashboard. Or let us customize Submitted so we can do away with our dashboard. Telling users "please ignore this" or "please don't use this" is never a corner I liked beng backed into.

This feels like change for change's sake. Also feels like y'all are UX designing on 4:3 displays and not taking mouse travel into consideration. PLEASE no more "half done solutions in the name of deploying a new widget; we can tweak it later."

Can we get a date range when this will go live? We are in the middle of converting from Classic to NWE and updating our training docs and I need to know ASAP if I should target for what's in Preview vs. Live. And I REALLY hope what I've seen does not go live…

Hi Anna,

I'm going to have to agree with a lot of the above answers on this one.

• We similarly have required fields that ask if you have uploaded your document, so the movement of this is not ideal
• Requests is an area that we have lots of documentation around. The change of the submitted request options isn't really a big deal, but the movement of the button will require us to update all of our documentation
• I also agree that the submit button should stay at the bottom as we want users to scroll all the way through the custom forms to make sure they are not missing anything
• I am also noticing that longer field names are being cut off - these are fields that we want to provide detailed information on how to fill - we need these to be the full name

I do like the submitted requests format and I do see why will will need the share path button - so we can link directly to a specific request queue since the URL no longer change.

I am happy to provide more feedback if you want!

Thanks,

Sarah

I observed a couple other things with the new Requests format.

It seems we have lost the ability to Sort and the Assigned To and Planned Completion columns are no longer visible. I don't see an option to create a view for requests in order to customize the columns that are desired.

We should at least be able to create views based on our needs.

Thanks, Christina

Hi All,

Thank you very much for taking the time to review the functionality and provide feedback, really appreciate it.

@Kevin Quosig‚ , it is currently planned for the 21.1 release but I am assessing the feedback and our ability to address the concerns time wise.

Let me summarise my learnings and post a proper reply.

Hi All,

Thank you again for providing your feedback around the New Request experience and apologies for the delayed reply.

After careful consideration we decided to postpone the release of the New Request submission experience to Production. It will stay in Preview for a little while longer (moving the current target for the release to Production to 21.2) to both give you time to adjust to the upcoming changes and allow us to address some of the concerns that you have raised.

The Submitted requests list is still planned to release to Production with the 21.1 release.

I would like to address some of the points you have raised and the action points around those.

The UI change

• The purpose of the UI/UX change is to sync the New Request submission experience with the rest of the new Workfront experience. Request submission is the first step in building out work in many workflows, so we want to make sure it has a modern UI, provides additional usability and performance enhancements and is consistent with the rest of the new Workfront experience.
• The button on the header instead of a separate section allows access to the request submission from anywhere within the Requests page without the need to find a particular section on the left. The position of the New Request button is unusual, but we believe that it’s a matter of getting used to it.
• The purpose of the Submit button being at the top is to give you more vertical space to work within the form and for it not to get in your way when filling out the data.

Not all the request types are available

• We have already addressed this concern and you should be able to see up to 200 request types. Please double check and let us know if you still see the problem.

Custom data display issues

• Long field names being truncated

This is something that’s currently being addressed.

• Custom form name and the section name are hard to differentiate

We will make the appropriate changes to improve the visual appearance of these sections.

Document location change

• The goal here is to make sure the data comes first (native + custom) and the document upload option last. I agree that it would be great to have the ability to choose the location for it or even make it required. We will assess the changes that we will need to do to make that possible and hopefully introduce it with future releases. That will take us a bit more time. For now we believe it will be best to make some adjustments on your custom form names that request the user to confirm document upload, so that they don't sound out of context.

View and filter customization for the Submitted requests list

• We will be improving the functionality around the list moving forward and we will consider having the ability to customize the views and filters.
• Assignments and Planned Completion Dates were removed from the view to keep it more simple and with the idea in mind that the future introduction of the Side Summary on the list will help with seeing those fields from the list. We are planning to introduce the Side Summary with the 21.2 release.

@Kevin Quosig‚ as @Sarah Nau‚ correctly noticed the Share path functionality will allow the link to the selected form to be easily copied and sent to other users if needed instead of copying it from the URL.

I hope this extra time will give you a chance to adjust to the changes, prepare your internal teams while we address your concerns.

Thank you for postponing! :)

I checked Preview and the issue I had where not all the request types were showing is confirmed as resolved. However, two small requests that I hope are easy fixes. 1) Can a dropdown arrow be placed at the end of the search bar? So that users know it's still a dropdown and not just a search bar. 2) We have many request queues and the full list gets cut off; there isn't a way to scroll to the end - see screenshot.

My screenshot didn't save for some reason... sorry.

Hi @Anna Asatryan‚ ,

I was checking out the new requests area in preview and I love that you can now select where the documents area will be. I did notice, however, that the default in preview is above instead of below where it used to be. Is this going to be the same when released to production? It would be great if it defaulted to under.

Thanks!

Hi All,

I would like to summarise the improvements we have added to the new request submission experience based on your feedback. The changes are currently available in Preview environment with couple of others still to be delivered in the upcoming couple of weeks.

• You can now control the Document location on the request form. The default option is going to be "After custom forms" but if your workflow requires the document upload to be at the beginning of the request form, as it used to be, you can configure that from the Queue Details. The setting is available only when working in the Queue Details in NWE and is going affect the New request submission form and the new issue creation form in the NWE.
• We moved the Submit/Discard buttons back to the bottom of the page to not force the user to go back to the beginning of the form after filling out the data.
• We added back the ability to see the description of the request queues as well as topics
• The problem of the long custom field names being truncated is also addressed not only on the new request form but elsewhere in the application
• For the Submitted requests list, we have introduced the Summary side panel which will allow to see more information about the request, such as assignments, status, some custom data (configured via layout templates). Users can also see and add comments without navigating away from the list.

Some other data display issues that have been reported are being worked on.

Feel free to test the functionality and provide your feedback.