[Event Follow-Up] Customer Panel: Lessons Learned from Veteran Workfront Admins

[NicholeVargas]

First and foremost, I want to thank Amber Russo @AmberRusso , Katherine Lanning @KatherineLa , Kiersten Kollins @KierstenKollins , and Meredith Landsmann @McLandsmann1  for taking the time to share their story, challenges, recommendations, and lessons learned from their experience as a Workfront System Admin. This was one of my favorite events to-date, and I hope the same for you – that you found valuable insights from attending (or listening on-demand) and have new ideas for how to advocate for yourself, your team, and for Workfront in general moving forward.

In case you missed the live event, below is a link to the recording and a PDF of the slide deck, along with a summary of the discussion and resources shared in the event chat:

• Panel Recording 
• Slide Deck PDF

Additional resources/summary of panelist recommendations:  

• Implementation – Designate strong leadership, have a clear vision and consistent data collection methods from the start. Think with the end goal in mind and map your processes to match! 
• Adoption and Education – This is not a one and done activity; consider one-on-one or personalized trainings, creating "game" challenges, and providing ongoing support through office hours, surveys, and more. Additional customer-submitted communication examples can be found in the End User Communications Cookbook.
• Advocacy – You are your biggest advocate, so track your work, manage your time effectively (consider blackout/production days) based on what works for you, and don’t be afraid to say no. Work can be prioritized using scorecards, leadership reviews based on what they deem important, or adding it to your roadmap for future consideration. 
• Stay on top of releases so you are aware of what’s coming, what’s going away, and what’s changing. Bookmark the Release Notes page and keep an eye out for Quarterly Release webinars. First Quarter Release for 2025 is coming your way January 16, 2025!  
• Leverage automations whenever possible to free up your time – whether that be housekeeping/red flag/exception reports and dashboards (download the System Administrator Maintenance Dashboard as your starting point), or Workfront Fusion. Check out the on-demand event, Making the Case for Workfront Fusion to learn how to build a business case. If Fusion isn’t an option, here are some maintenance reports shared in the chat that you can re-create: 
  • Projects recently closed not reviewed for audit
  • Tasks missing actual hours
  • Final documents missing on completed projects 
  • Blank custom form fields on tasks, issues, and projects
  • Projects not in a portfolio or program
  • Untitled projects 

If you are interested in joining a future panel, let us know – we are always looking for customers to share their story and expertise! Send us an email at csatscale@adobe.com or reply to this thread.

We hope to see you at the upcoming Customer Success workshops, so be sure to check out the Events page on Experience League for a full list and to register.  

Thanks again to Amber, Katherine, Kiersten, and Meredith!  

[kbistro]

One of my favorite sessions to date!! One strong theme across all 4 panelists that resonated with me: we are often the sole WF System Admin in our organizations. It can get lonely on this island! Be sure to plug into the Community and connect with fellow System Admins... share your ideas, your frustrations, and your tips/tricks. Building those bonds makes it feel like you're less alone - and you might learn a few cool things along the way.

[KatherineLa]

Thanks for the invite! Here's some notes on the way I think about my exception/early warning dashboards -

• Admin Warning System - This one focuses on things users either can't see/fix or system maintenance helpers. .
  • Any Fusion action - I want to know if it went haywire or stopped working. Example: Show Accounts synced from Salesforce in the last 5 days. Mostly so if the SF admins change something, I see it stopped quickly.
  • Work assigned to inactive users - Tasks/Issues/Projects I missed migrating to their new owner when I deactivated an account
  • Issues/Requests missing assignees - In my instance, most assignments are automated so if someone isn't assigned, usually something odd is wrong that I need to sort out
  • Tasks in a Project NOT created from the Project's Template - This one is subjective, but I like to see if project plans are being stitched together to find what the unmet need was for that person.
  • Custom Forms not used in # months, and Abandoned Fields (not on any custom form)
• Group-Level Warning System - Someone needs to review and verify this, but that doesn't need to be me
  • We have a Company that's called "Company Not Found", and people are trained to use that to indicate they need help. Group leads work with the person to understand and set that up if needed. My reports just show any record where that's been used.
  • Missing Key Data - Whatever key fields that group depends on for their reporting, create a simple report that shows any record those fields are blank. No news is good news.
  • Absentee Users - Anyone in that group that hasn't logged in for X days
  • Projects in progress (more than 10% complete) but still in Planning
  • Projects X days overdue to close or held open only by issues

Hopefully this gives each of you some food for thought on what you might need in your own instances. In general, think about what kind of things are tiny to fix if you catch them early, and painful if they go unnoticed too long. Find today's quick coaching opportunity rather than quarter close's midnight scramble.

[Kiersten_K]

I’d like to expand on some of the ideas I mentioned during the session to boost user adoption when implementing Workfront.

Training Room:

If you are in office and can set up a dedicated space, have some fun and brand the training room with all things Workfront. Our production designer created the graphics for the training room and designed floor decals to guide people to the training room. Also, if you have how to or quick resource guides that you think people may want to pin at their desk, print a few copies and have them in the room for them to take with them. 

Bonus Tip: If you are a remote team looking to brand your online training room, create a fun background image that you can put up while you are on the call.

Adding some photos below for inspiration.

  

Workfront Games:

To get your team engaged with Workfront, create simple challenges that they can complete and have prize giveaways for those that participate. When setting up challenges, spend an afternoon creating what the challenges will be, who will get the challenge, when you want to send out the challenge, how you will announce the challenge and what your rules will be. We started with simple challenges and worked our way up to more advanced challenges. We used email as our communication platform to announce challenges in 2019, but you could create a Teams or Slack challenge for quicker engagement.

Example below of our rules that we sent out to all users and an example challenge.

          

 

Workfront Core Team:

Providing below what our goals were with our core team of super users. These can be different for your organization but hope these can help as a starting point.

• Provide a forum for stakeholders to give feedback once a month 
• Give visibility into issues and roadblocks before they become problems
• Allow for collaboration on quick solves 
• Cross-functional discussions on roadmap and upcoming changes
• Utilize core team for beta testing new enhancements made by Workfront

I hope these ideas inspire you as you start your Workfront journey. Enjoy the process and have some fun!

[Sri_Nijs]

Thanks for sharing this.