Friday Fun: EXISTS statement for user preferences, and New Home stats

[skyehansen]

Additional note for 2024: please note that the post below was applicable for a beta version of Home which did not include the option to opt your entire instance into Home. At the time, admins were concerned over the usage and control of the beta Home product, so I developed the filter below as a way to help these discussions or to help alleviate the concerns. Since this post, Workfront has provided the option to opt in your entire instance, and over time, will probably change more. I'm leaving the post below because it still is a really good teaching tool for exists statements and user preferences -- but it should not be considered as a reliable way to indicate who is or isn't Home.

Based on a prior post here:

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-questions/report-on-quot-send-work-i-assi... 

I took things to their logical conclusion, which was to use an EXISTS statement to discern who had particular preferences toggled.

For example, with all the discussion of the New Home interface, and who is using it, a sample piece of text mode for a USER report is:

EXISTS:a:$$OBJCODE=USERPF
EXISTS:a:name=home-workspaces-opt-in
EXISTS:a:userID=FIELD:ID
EXISTS:a:value=true

(you could use "value=false" for those who opted back out, or "value_Mod=notnull" if you want both)

This means, you can easily see who is currently using New Home, who didn't want to continue to use it -- and everyone else who doesn't have a value, ignored the blue bar.

Thanks as always to @Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore who started me on my journey with his response here:

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-questions/user-report-showing-quot-when-i... 

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If you liked my post, please like my ideas at

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/17528599/contributions...

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[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Great stuff @skyehansen!

I'd encourage all SysAdmins who are reading this to create a new User report called "New Home Activity" using the techniques Skye's provided above, and to then monitor them over time so you can keep your finger on a pulse of your user's level of interest and participation in New Home.

On that note...if you divide the sum of the people on that report (i.e. who've actually clicked the Blue Bar asking them to Please Try New Home) by the total number of users in your instance, I'd be interested to compare what that "New Home Users" percentage is, across domains.

To kick that off, my instance's "New Home Users" calc is <0.001% ...so don't feel too bad about your number 

Regards,

Doug 

[skyehansen]

I had already warned our CSM that our New Home number would be low. We're at 0.6% (and half the people who clicked in have toggled back out again). Not sure whether this implies that we don't use Home to begin with or whether we use it but we're adept at ignoring banners.

[RandyRoberts]

We sent an announcement stating it was not ready for prime time and not to use it.

After that, 19% of our users tried it anyway. Of those, 8% opted back out. Of the 11% still on it. 50% said it didn't work and are using their dashboards instead and the other 50% said nothing. Of the 11% left using it, none have tried to add or configure anything.

[AmyReilly]

Thank you - this worked perfectly for me.  Is there a way to take this one step further and use a similar report to turn ON the new home experience for one/a few users?  Right now, I can't turn it back on for a few users who would like to use it without turning it back on for everyone.

[skyehansen]

hi Amy, I'm on the quarterly release cycle, so for me it would be as simple as logging in as that person and opting them in. Did you move to the monthly release cycle? If so, I don't know what it would be for that. (you might end up having to finagle an API call to try and workaround it? Not sure)

[AmyReilly]

Yes, we're on the monthly release.  Maybe I need to move back to the quarterly release for now.  Thank you for the info!

[AileenTa]

I've tried this report and its not showing all my users who are using Home.  When I changed it to "false" it did show users who I know are not using the new home.  But I can't trust that its capturing everyone.

[-JC]

Can confirm that I'm experiencing the same thing! I can log in as a user who's on the New Home, but her name isn't appearing in the report when filtering for those on the New Home. 

[SueG3]

Hello: this report would be great.  I copied for my User report - but didn't receive any data back. It also changed the text from what I copied. Is there a step I am missing or did I add to the wrong area?

[RhondaGTriggs]

@SueG3 , try using the code as a filter on a list of users or user report instead of a column... I think that is what you are looking for. Let us know if you have any trouble with that. Happy Monday!

Edit to my reply: I believe this filter may not work if you have the new home set as the default for your instance. 

[SueG3]

that was it, thank you so much

[Madalyn_Destafney]

Hi there, this is cool, thanks! I did it and added a filter for 'user is active.' But how can I get results for JUST users that still have it? I know I could change the value to false to included people who opted back into 'old' home, but when I run the report with the filters below, I get some users that had it at one point but not anymore. Anyway to isolate who has it active now?

EXISTS:a:$$OBJCODE=USERPF
EXISTS:a:name=home-workspaces-opt-in
EXISTS:a:userID=FIELD:ID
EXISTS:a:value=true
isActive=true
isActive_Mod=eq

[skyehansen]

thanks for the heads up. I've included the following disclaimer to this post: "Additional note for 2024: please note that the post below was applicable for a beta version of Home which did not include the option to opt your entire instance into Home. At the time, admins were concerned over the usage and control of the beta Home product, so I developed the filter below as a way to help these discussions or to help alleviate the concerns. Since this post, Workfront has provided the option to opt in your entire instance, and over time, will probably change functionality more. I'm leaving the post below because it still is a really good teaching tool for exists statements and user preferences -- but it should not be considered as a reliable way to indicate who is or isn't Home."

As well, please note that this exists filter searches through each individual's "user preferences" collection. After another quick look at user preferences I can give you the following hints (I will also date these hints with MAY 2024 so might not work after this date):

* new users who have never gone to Home will have no preferences for it. (A search for true would not pull these people up.)

* the name of the preference may have changed. I see some new users have a "home-workspaces-opt-in-acknowledge-beta" set to true after they do go into it. (no comment over whether this would be the right filter to change to instead of what you're using, just a reminder that workfront can and probably will change their user preference names from time to time, and I can't guess about why they would do this)

For everyone in the future who comes across this note, please contact Support or post a question to the community if you're struggling with something not working!