Have you enabled Boards for your End Users?

[KristinFarwell]

Calling all Workfront Admins!

Have you enabled Boards in a Layout Template for your End Users?

Whether the answer is YES or NO, would you be open to a quick, 30-minute chat?

I'm part of a team that creates programs that help customers better adopt and use Workfront, and my next big project is understanding how Admins are rolling out Boards to their End Users. If you HAVE enabled Boards, I’d love to know how it’s going. And if you haven’t enabled it yet, I’d love to better understand your timeline and/or concerns. This is a judgement free zone! I’m just here for the insights.

(For anyone who has seen the Inherited Instance Checklist or our Communications Cookbook, those were both 100% built from feedback gleaned in interviews just like this!)

You can see my availability and book time with me directly here. I'm hoping to talk to at least 10 Admins in the next month to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

Thanks so much to anyone willing to share their time and experience, I genuinely appreciate it (as do our future System Admins!). Drop a comment below if you have questions. Thank you!

[Femke_Crijns]

We have not enabled Boards yet. Our biggest concern is that colleagues will only add items to boards and not add their new projects anymore. In that case, we will lose our project overview (per program/portfolio) and the ability to set priorities for them.

It is also difficult to define exactly what should be included in a Board and what should be included in a project. The distinction between them is still difficult for us.

[KristinFarwell]

@Femke_Crijns That makes sense! Would you be open to a quick chat so I could ask you a few more questions? I'm not part of the Product team, so I won't be able to get into the weeds of the roadmap, but would love to learn more about how you're using Workfront today. If so, here is a link to book time with me directly. Thanks for the feedback! 

[MarlaDr]

We recently turned it off. There are two major roadblocks that prevent it from being of any use to us and I was very surprised that these two things weren't already addressed. One is the total lack of reporting functionality. Until this is addressed, we will not be using boards.

The other roadblock is, as Admins, you cannot see all the boards and therefore can't monitor how these are being used or if they are being used correctly. I find this strange since Admins can see everything else. I'm not sure why it was decided not to allow Admins to see the boards.

We also have the same concerns as Femke_Crijns  said in their reply.

[skyeh]

I'd like to ask a question that comes purely out of ignorance (I really don't know how Adobe is set up for this, as I can only see from my side of things), so I hope you take the question in that light.

I know a few of the admins (and I) have given feedback in the past, directly to the product managers. I think there are very few features that launch without one of us having expressed deep concerns, which are then echoed by the community at large. (a few examples that come to mind are the recent launches of Boards and Home)

With that said, a few of us admins are wondering if there's a more efficient way to do this (rather than "express concern, wait for the launch, and then reshare the same concerns with you, along with other impacted admins")? Maybe this is dumb or conceited but I'm wondering, if you'd had a heads up back in April, would we be at a different place on the timeline by now (for Boards adoption materials)? Or is this just the way it has to happen at Adobe?

[KristinFarwell]

Hi Skye - It's a good question. I think there are different levels of documentation, and the work my team does tends to come a little later in the process, by design. As much as possible, we leverage a peer learning approach, to help customers learn by seeing how others have adopted something and seen success (i.e. the webinars, the cookbooks, etc.). Boards is at an interesting point in development and I may actually even be a little early in my outreach, but I see a big opportunity ahead. I want to get some early learnings under my belt.

Can we be more efficient with our approach, ALWAYS. There are definitely things I can glean from feedback you all have provided to the Product team already.

The biggest goal for me in these conversations is to make sure that what I build to help Admins is what you need. (In this case I know the product itself is still heavily being worked on, that's unfortunately out of my hands.) Cheat sheets for your users? Tutorial videos? Cookbooks? When the time comes for you to roll this out to your users, what will help? I can assume, but I always like to validate my approach. (The Comms Cookbook is a great example, I was headed in a totally different direction and these interviews set me on the right path.)

Does that help? Please reach out directly if you want to chat more, I always appreciate your insight.

[skyeh]

hi Kristin, thanks so much for your response. I think I kind of get it but I'll read your response a few more times and let you know if I'm still confused.

One of the lines in your response stood out to me: 

There are definitely things I can glean from feedback you all have provided to the Product team already.

Am I reading into this correctly -- you already have access to our feedback to Product? If so, I want you to know you are ALWAYS welcome to reach out if you need any additional info, and I probably won't sign up for a session.

[Leslie_T_Scott]

We are heavy Board users at Nordstrom. We started using it during BETA and now I have a large group that uses it on a consistent basis. 

[MarlaDr]

Leslie, what type of boards are you using? Dynamic? If not using dynamic or connected cards, how do you report, log time and see all of these as admins on these?