Leap User Group Follow-up (July 1, 2020) - Marketing Workflows & Approvals

[KristinFarwell]

The purpose of this thread is to continue the conversation from the “Special Edition” Leap Virtual User Group on Marketing Workflows & Approvals on July 1, 2020.

Many thanks to everyone who came to our virtual meetup! Special thanks to @Catherine Hayes‚ from The Channel Company for sharing how they transitioned to using Workfront in a new way: work management as a service.

As promised, attached is a PDF of the presentation, and you can watch the recording here.

Do you have any outstanding questions? Anything you didn’t get a chance to ask or that wasn’t discussed? Or have a resource you want to share as a follow-up? Leave a comment below. (Pro Tip: “Like” this thread to be notified as people reply.)

You can find the schedule for all upcoming User Groups on the Events page on Workfront One (one.workfront.com/events). Be sure to also join the @Marketing‚ group to follow conversations on this topic in the future.

Thanks again. If you have any feedback (good or bad), please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can leave a comment below, direct message me here on Workfront One, or send an email to usergroups@workfront.com.

[ayae9457428]

I would love some best practices on reporting and resource management when your creative team is not required to track their time ...

I can only do so much with planned hours/duration but my creatives just about threatened to resign (lol) if we made them track their time because that was "the beauty of going in-house".

How are admins/project managers gaining visibility and working around not time tracking for insight into their team's bandwidth?

[YvetteJa]

Hi Aya!

None of our users log hours/time in WF. For designers, I met with them to ask how long it takes to design certain types of assets. Their feedback was valuable as I built templates with design tasks that had the proper amount of days assigned to them.

For design projects, I look at the designers' schedules in the calendar function so I can see their current/upcoming bandwidth. I reference this when assigning them to projects and adjust the template as necessary in case additional (or less) days are necessary.

I hope this helps!

[ayae9457428]

Thanks! That's basically what I've been doing also.

I think the issue is my creatives aren't always forthcoming when they are completing tasks ahead of the planned hours so we can revise our templates accordingly but they will always tell me when they don't have enough time 😉

Appreciate the feedback

[TamBo64]

We did this too last year then implemented time tracking last fall so we can compare and adjust our templates this summer/early fall (hopefully early summer). But during the - thus midpoint - of this pandemic the exec wanted to understand the impact on Marcom and Creative, they balked (in a big way) at the planned hours per project/project type.

However it is likely that once we are showing the actual hours (currently not doing well enough to do that), we'd get the same balk as management, exec and requesters often underestimate the time / effort spent on deliverable / assets. Has this been the case for anyone team here who have transitioned to tracking and reporting up on actual hours?

[catherineh70969]

Hi @Aya Elsoukkary‚ the department where the creative team does not log hours takes a similar approach to what @Yvette Jaskiewicz‚ mentioned. We assign planned hours and duration in the template. These values are based on feedback from writers, editors, designers, QA. This is used to provide ballpark visibility in reporting and can help guide resourcing decisions. (We also bump planned duration against actual duration for a reality check when evaluating our templates for revision)

[TamBo64]

@Catherine Hayes‚ Thanks for this reply. We have one team that is not marking tasks or logging time at all and their manager is resistant to changing that. If I can at least convince her to have them mark off tasks we could attempt your duration bump report for better level-setting.

[MoniqueEvans]

I'm not sure how long you've been using Workfront @Aya Elsoukkary‚ , but you could also use that legacy data to calculate the average actual duration of the tasks and use that to keep your templates up to date for scheduling.

[Heather_Kulbacki]

I think it was Gary that asked about ranking on tasks.

As I mentioned in our breakout group, we've created a "scorecard" using a custom form and values on each field, then a calculated field to combine those values as a score or ranking, so we can prioritize incoming requests before they become a project.

When we convert the issue to a project, we also have those same fields on a project form, so we can bring that score over to the project.

Then for the tasks within each project... if you're using the New Experience, you can set up the layout template for your creative team to show various custom fields on each task on Home. So we've pulled that project score onto the Home task view. They do have to click on each task to see that score, but it allows them to see the project's ranking from each task.

[KristinFarwell]

Hi all - as promised, here is a link to the recording of today’s session:

PLAYBACK: Leap User Group: Marketing Workflows & Approvals - July 1, 2020 (25 minutes)

[DanielCl]

@Kristin Farwell‚ Do you have the recording handy for this session? Thank you!

[KristinFarwell]

@Daniel Clarke‚ - I sure do! Here you go --> PLAYBACK: Leap User Group: Marketing Workflows & Approvals - July 2, 2020. Let me know if you have any trouble with it or need anything else.

[DanielCl]

Thank you! 😊