Community support and updating our Workfront instance...

[MegSVT]

Hi Workfront Friends! 

I am a system admin of 6 years and our instance has been very simple until recently. For many years, our creative design team used Workfront as a project management system just for incoming requests from a small select group. As the years have gone by, I have worked to incorporate compliance team members and digital workers and many additional design team & project managers (requestors). As our teams continue to grow, I am finding that where our instance started is becoming more complex and needs a few significant improvements to better help with overall visibility and project management. We also have never had an additional group admin, which I need to incorporate along with a better understanding of job roles and access levels. What I currently have is too much for some users and not enough for others. 

I am also interested in learning more about advanced reporting and text mode (in time, not a rush), Gantt charts, the calendar, and better use of the workload balancer. 

Yes, I have reviewed many of the Workfront learning paths, I attend the monthly system admin chats and collaborations, and have a great understanding of the back end, however, I would really love to hear more about personal experience, different approaches of how others may have achieved something like this, and  any other tips and tricks folks might have! Thanks so much for reading! ~Meg

[Sven-iX]

Hi @MegSVT - wow that sounds exciting! Congrats, that's awesome. 

My 2 cents are that you first enable yourself/team by understanding the key functionality: I look at Workfront as an interconnected toolbox, so knowing what the tools do and how they connect to each other (and an understanding of the business objects) is key as you tailor the instance to the various audiences.

Second (and this is 20/20 learning) I would spend time on discussing governance: Who should get see which things (groups, project sharing) and show should be able to do something on those things (access levels).

Look for blogs, or videos about "best practices" and consider them (some may not work for you, others will).

To enable yourself: 

• definitely understand text mode
• Calendars have improved, definitely learn those
• Understand the interplay between group, access level and sharing
• learn about "layout templates" to tailor the UI to certain personas

on Governance

• map things out in Mural 🙂 easier to change there
• plan out groups - and subgroups (this is about being able to see things)
• define personas
• plan out access levels based on personas (this is about what actions the person can take on the items they can see)
• use the groups to limit visibility to portfolios

Again congrats and much success! 

[Erika_Antkowiak]

Hi @MegSVT, 

First off, congrats on extending your Workfront instance to other teams outside of your original user group that is hard work. These types of posts are my favorite because I can tell there is so much potential. It can be challenging to decide where to start, but I have some ideas for you I've outlined below. Feel free to let me know if you have any additional questions. I'm happy to share how we were able to overcome this challenge in more detail.

1. Develop User Personas 
   • What type of users have access to the system? (System Admin, Designer, Compliance Peep, Project Manager, Business Manager, etc.)
   • What does their daily work look like? (Submitting Requests, Building Projects, Reviewing & Approvals, Assigning Tasks, etc.)
   • What is most important to them? (Easy to find projects, assignments/tasks, etc.)
2. Create/Assign Layout Templates
   • Now that you have your user personas you can create/assign layout templates to align your personas with what they can/will see in Workfront
   • Use the basic information you gathered when developing user personas to get you started with the layout templates (if they are project managers and are in projects daily make sure that their layout template includes projects)
   • During this step you may notice that 1 layout may work for more than one persona and that is expected - consolidate where you can
   • Provide detailed descriptions for layout templates to make use and governance as easy as possible in the future
3. Assign Proper Access Levels
   • To ensure your users can actually leverage each object (project, task, portfolios, etc.) you included in their layout template you need to confirm that their access levels reflect that
   • Access levels allow you to dictate what a user can DO in regards to each type of object (project, task, issue, documents, etc.)
   • Access Options: No Access, View, Edit 
     • Some access options have additional selections (share, delete, etc.) that will allow you to provide more or less guardrails on an object
   • For example, if you want project manager to be able to adjust tasks you would find "Tasks" on the access level screen and select "Edit"
4. Create/Assign User Groups
   • This is the piece of the puzzle that will allow you to continue to govern your Workfront instance and users as things continue to grow in the future
   • Groups could be structured to align with high level org structure (Marketing, Finance, HR, etc.) or team level org structure (Marketing > Design, Communication, etc.)
   • Once groups are created access levels, layout templates, statuses, programs, etc. can be aligned to the group one time and aligns those standards to the users that belong to the group (1 change to many users)

Best,

E

[Erika_Antkowiak]

@MegSVT I also wanted to provide some thoughts on these items as well. 

Gantt Charts

• We haven't found much value in this view of projects in Workfront since it is on a smaller scale and has limited filters

Text Mode

• We love text mode. We are not total masters of it yet, but we know enough to be dangerous. I would suggest playing around in reporting and selecting some groupings or columns and then switching over to text mode to see how it displays. 

Calendars

• We have used calendars to create our enterprise wide comms calendar. The calendars can pull in projects, tasks, issues, etc. and really help visualize projects timelines in a that is easily understood. This is my recommendation over the gantt chart view on projects.

Workload Balancer

• This is a great way to quickly and easily see resources that are overcapacity or at risk of being over capacity. We make sure our allocations are toggled on so we can clearly see which projects and tasks are taking up resources and when. Anyone assigning tasks would definitely find value in this tool.