[Event Follow-Up] Power Templates: How IDEXX Reconfigured Project Templates for Global Success - 8.14.25

[LeslieSpier]

Thank you so much to @Lyndsy-Denk for sharing her templated approach for global campaigns with localization scenarios! It’s always so exciting to get a peek “under the hood” of a real process and see all the ins and outs. It just goes to show how powerful custom forms can be, especially to help you adapt Workfront to your own processes. Seeing it live definitely broadened our horizons!

We’re including some links to the slides, recording, and some helpful resources below.

• Slides (Primarily announcements – Lyndsy demo’d her instance live!)
• Workshop recording

Additional tips/resources shared in the chat:

• Considering adding a Report of Reports to the top of your dashboard as a makeshift table of contents, so users or stakeholders know what is included. Download the slide deck from the November Skill Exchange event for more information (page 16)
• For stakeholders who want visibility into related projects, consider adding them as the Project Sponsor or adding a custom form/field to your project for Co-Owner (set it as a typeahead field) so that reports can easily be built
• Calendar reports are a great way to pull in delivery dates for campaigns if users prefer something more visually appealing than a timeline
  • You can leverage both native and custom fields!
  • Learn more: Create a custom calendar report in Workfront and Using Custom Date Fields in Calendars
  • Short video, Top 3 Favorite Calendar Hacks
• Use Cross-Project Predecessors to tie the timelines of projects together

If you have any follow-up questions for Lyndsy, feel free to comment below and tag her - @Lyndsy-Denk. Thank you again, Lyndsy!

[Lyndsy-Denk]

I had a blast! Thanks to everyone for entertaining my wild idea.

At one point I glossed over how I proactively added calculations to my custom form in case I needed them. As a look behind the curtain, I created three calculations (shown in the screenshot below):

1. Language
2. Region
3. Country (see screenshot)

Indeed, these will prove useful as I have plans to build another calculation that helps formulate file names. We use ISO language and country codes in our file names, so, in the custom field settings, I toggled on Show Values. The label is what the user sees, but the value is what calculations use. Therefore I entered the ISO codes as the values.

 

[Lyndsy-Denk]

@MoniqueEvans Leslie said you were interested in hearing more about the T-shirt sizing and scope creep. I suspect you know how I built it, but if anyone needs to see, it's on pages 13-14 in my attachment on [Event follow-up] November 2024 Skill Exchange: Wo... - Adobe Experience League Community - 720828. How is it working for me? I love it, if only for the chart. The visual speaks volumes to my leadership about the work I'm doing. To keep up on the metrics:

• I attach the custom form to all of my project templates with the Planned T-shirt size preset.
• In the Projects widget in my Home view, I added the Planned T-shirt size as a column. This prompts me to add (if it's blank) or adjust the field early in the work.
• Every so often I check my chart, which plots based on the Actual T-shirt size. If the chart shows "no value," I know that I need to logged the Actual T-shirt size.

I confess I haven't done a lot of analysis on the Scope Creep calculation.

While this is a rather manual and subjective approach to analyzing scope of work, it's relatively easy to implement. I'd love to see what others have for more automated and objective measurements.

[MoniqueEvans]

I did. And I'd love to hear an update in a few months on how using t-shirt sizing goes. I've heard good and bad stories and always interested in learning all anedoctal tales, especially since I have a good knowledge of your setup and org from what you've shared in the past.