Thanks so much to everyone who attended the Workfront 23.10 release webinar on October 5! Please see the video below if you'd like to watch the recording. We had a large audience and a very busy Q&A chat from the moment it started. Though our amazing product managers did their best to respond to every question and comment, we didn't get to all of them during our 45 minutes together, so we we are posting responses to all unanswered questions here in Community.
Below are most of those questions and their answers. Look for the rest early next week.
New commenting experience in Workfront
Q: In the new commenting experience, will we no longer have access to comments made under the old experience?
Comments are bi-directionally synced, so you can see all comments regardless of whether you are using the old experience or new.
Q: With the new commenting experience, I noticed that the ability for the users to provide a new commit date is no longer there. Is there another way for a user to provide that, or will the functionality be added back at some point to the experience?
We currently don't plan on bringing back the ability to update the commit date from the commenting stream as the action is available from the object’s Details page or can be added to the object header. We do understand that we are asking you to change the pattern of using the commenting stream, but we are doing this to keep communication and collaboration as the main purpose of the commenting experience. For more information around specific features please see the FAQ page.
Q: How or where can we provide feedback on the new update experience? And what was the date that the old experience is being turned off?
You can do this via the in-app Feedback button in the new commenting experience. We review the feedback on regular basis. The new commenting experience will become the default one with 23.10 release and the toggle to switch to the old experience is planned to be deprecated with 24.1 release.
Q: With the new commenting capability, when will you enable the ability to change status at the same time of the comment if you are assigned to the object?
We currently don't plan on bringing back the ability to perform that action from the commenting stream because the action is available from the object’s header or Details page. We do understand that we're asking you to change the pattern of using the commenting stream, but we are doing this to keep communication and collaboration as the main purpose of the commenting experience. For more information around specific features please see the FAQ page.
Q: Is there any integration to Slack with Comments? Generally, we use Slack as our communication tool. It would be nice if comments synced with Slack and vice versa.
Yes. First you need to set up the native integration, as described in the article Configure Adobe Workfront for Slack. Then you will be able to post comments from slack, as explained in Post a Slack comment as an update.
Q: Is it possible to report on liked comments?
The new commenting is not yet supported in reporting, but the information about the liked comments is synced with the old experience, so you should be able to still see it in reports. Let us know if that's not the case.
Comment: We would prefer to have system activity on the same screen as comments, with the toggle to turn system activity off/on. This change is not helpful if you are monitoring the entire project.
We appreciate your feedback. In some cases, we must sacrifice one of one experience to improve the overall experience. We've received both negative and positive comments around the change. Predominantly, the feedback has been that users are interested in their co-workers' comments and want to get to them quickly. And the previous experience of turning the system updates on/off wasn't working very well because most of the users didn't realize that the toggle was there. For administrators, we do understand that tracking changes along the comments is very helpful, and we will continue monitoring feedback to evaluate the need of introducing a joint experience.
Q: If you remove someone from the thread, will they still receive the comment if they are subscribed to the object or parent object?
Yes, if the user is specifically subscribed to the object and the "New Update to Subscriber" notification type is enabled, they will receive the update.
Q: When a user leaves a comment on an older thread, does it move to the top of the list within the comments tab, allowing for the new comment to be viewed quickly?
We haven't made any changes in the chronological order of the comments on the commenting stream. The comment on the older thread would still be visible in its original chronological order.
Q: Any plans to have comments appear in real time in Microsoft Teams?
Thank you for the question. We don't currently have this on the roadmap, but we do appreciate the feedback. We have noted this and will investigate it in the future.
Q: We have had issues with email replies with the comment beta enabled. When will this be resolved?
Thank you for the feedback. Have you submitted a customer support ticket? If yes, then the team is already working on the problem. Otherwise, I would ask you to submit a feature request.
Q: Is the new comment editing ability available on a comment indefinitely or is there a time limit?
There is a time limit of 15 minutes. We decided that allowing limitless editing would cause serious audit problems.
Q: Are we only able to delete/edit our own comments, or can we remove other users' comments?
Users can edit and delete only their own comments.
Q: Can we turn off the ability to edit comments?
There is no ability to turn of the editing capability. But if that creates any type of problems, please submit an idea exchange request so that we can evaluate how requested the feature is.
Q: When someone edits a comment, will the system activity log the change?
Not for now, since that would create another commenting thread in the system activity. If we see a big need to track edits, we will consider adding that capability.
Q: Can users still delete comments?
Yes, the ability to delete comments is staying the same way as it was with the old commenting experience.
Q: Are we able to copy and paste screenshots into the update feed comment (instead of browsing to an image), or is that still available only in the documents area?
The ability to copy/paste images is currently on the roadmap, but we don't yet have a time estimate for when we will work on it.
Q: Will marking an update private become available within a company?
The ability to mark comments private for a company is available now. Please let us know if you are referring to some other functionality.
Q: Will comments in the new commenting experience generate email notifications? If so, which comments will generate them?
Comment notifications are controlled with the same notification types as with the old commenting stream for the most part. The change we made is related to the notification type "Someone comments on a thread I'm in." In order to support the ability to remove people from a thread, this notification type won't send an email. A user must be specifically tagged in the thread in order to receive a notification. If a user comments in the thread, they are added to the list of tagged users for the comments to follow. This in intended to make sure people are following the thread they commented on.
Q: Is there a way to add an attachment to a comment in the updates section?
Yes. As with the old experience, you can enable the setting here: Setup > Interface > Update Feeds > Preferences > Allow users to add images in updates.
Q: In new commenting experience, will it be possible to filter updates?
We do have this on the roadmap, but we don't have an ETA yet.
Q: If you use Fusion to do Note updates with the HTML field, it does not show in the new commenting experience. Will that be updated before production?
Yes, we are working to fix this behavior, but I would recommend submitting a support ticket to receive updates and follow up with questions if needed.
Boards
Q: Is it possible to pull in work items at the campaign level vs. project level?
As of now, you can pull Workfront tasks or issues from a project onto a board.
Q: One of the things I find frustrating with boards currently is that custom forms aren't pulled through from a request. Is this being dealt with?
The vision of Boards is that a user does not have to click away from a board into a task list to perform common actions found on a task, such as updates, documents, and so on. Currently, this also includes custom forms. We aren't in the process of adding this to Boards, but it might be added at some point.
Q: Will there be an ability to add tag-libraries that you can use for several boards vs. recreating each time?
Yes, you will have the ability to create a tag template list so you can easily add that to a new Board without manually recreating.
Q: What will be happening to the agile/kanban boards within the Teams section? Many of the new features for Boards would be helpful in those legacy Teams boards.
The plan is to overtake the existing agile/kanban Boards in the Teams area so that Workfront users get the additional feature enhancements without having to migrate.
Q: My teams love Boards, but they've been having speed issues with it. Are there any upcoming plans to improve this?
Yes, currently, the top priority for the Boards engineering team is to improve performance and make it far faster to load a board and to take action on a Board. Over the past few quarters, the team has been able to add several requested features, but those have impacted performance.
Q: Does the legacy kanban board have a decommission date? I know the new boards are now available but am having trouble with custom statuses and labels. Just wondering if I have limited time to get those enhancements taken care of.
There is no decommission date for the legacy kanban board. The plan is to enhance the current legacy kanban boards with the new functionality found in Boards. The objective is that you won't have to migrate, and that the new functionality will be introduced into your existing process.
Q: Some of our teams currently use Agile Teams, following a Scrum workflow. Is there a timeline on when the Boards Workstreams will be replacing Agile Teams?
The Agile Teams section does not have a decommission date. The plan is to bring in new functionality into the Agile team’s area and improve that section so that a user doesn't have to migrate.
