Community Manager

I am Cynthia Boon, Customer Success Manager at Adobe. AMA on Workfront New System Administrator.

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
February 16, 2023
11 replies
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February 27th, 2023

We’re happy to welcome Cynthia Boon, Customer Success Manager at Adobe for an AMA session about Workfront New System Administrator.

Our guest expert, Cynthia is a Business Process Professional dedicated to process improvement, building efficiencies and implementing innovations to help organization achieve strategic goals. With 20 years of project support and implementation, she has had the opportunity to serve as technical writer, training facilitator, instructional designer, performance consultant, project manager, product owner and systems administrator.

How this AMA works:

This thread will open on Monday, February 27, for you to start submitting your questions.
Reply to this post with any questions you have for our expert, Cynthia. She will reply to as many of your questions as possible.
After the AMA is over, the thread will be locked for new replies, but it will remain visible as a resource.

Workfront

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Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

Thanks @jon_chen,

I'd like to learn more about the interaction between FTE and the new Work Time and what global preferences need to be set to put them to use.

I'd also like to confirm what drives how Out Of Office entries on users across different time zones then appear in Calendars (i.e. "leaking" across days, in certain cases).

Regards,

Doug

CynthiaBoon

Adobe Employee

Hey Doug!

I've always looked for your guidance on my questions, so thank you so much for participating today! And if you have any favorite advice for New Sys Admins, please don't hesitate to share. You are a tremendous resource!

For the 1st question, this is a new feature and is exciting, as it might solve an age-old challenge of realistic work hours for projects. It would be interesting to set users Work Time to 70% or 80% (.7 or .8) and see if their capacity is more realistic.

It looks like it is scheduled to go into Production on March 2nd. It might be helpful to test in Preview first?

There are some helpful details on the Release Page, but I think the video helps the most! (It's less than 2 minutes so a quick watch.)

Introducing the Work Time field to accurately calculate user capacity

For the 2nd question, this is definitely something we see in our own team. I checked this one is still on the Known Issues list.

Calendars: Issues with Time Off Calendar

We’re not seeing a target fix date. We’ll put this one on the list to ask our Product partners about.

For anyone that needs it, here’s the link to the Known Issues Page.

And for any New Sys Admins that have not tested new features in their Sandbox Preview.

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

Thanks Cynthia,

Yes, I watched that video and appreciate how the % (e.g. 0.8) of Work Time then "lowers" capacity, but was wondering if anyone who's beat me to the testing yet can confirm:

does it (I presume) also then affect the work assigned (e.g. a 20 hour task assigned to a 1 FTE user on an 8 hr/day schedule with 0.5 Work Time would then take M/T/W/T/F @ 4 hours of work each day (1 * 8 * 0.5)?
same idea, but with a 0.5 FT user on an 8 hr/day schedule...then M/T/W/T/F+M/T/W/T/F @ 2 hours of work each day (0.5 * 8 * 0.5)?
under what circumstances would a project use the standard 8 hours per day vs the user's schedule?
if the latter, and the user was 0.5 FT on a 5 hr/day schedule...would that then be M/T/W/T/F+M/T/W/T/F+M/T/W/T/F+M/T/W/T/F @ 1 hours of wok each day (0.5 * 4 * 0.5)?
given the variety of combinations, what is (now) best practice for all of the above?

Regards,

Doug

RhondaGayleTX

Level 5

A common question from new Sys Admins is how to get upper management to support the transition to the tool (ie accountability) It is sometimes hard to get the message across that what you get OUT of Workfront is only as good as what everyone puts IN to Workfront. It is imperative that the users work to get acclimated to the interface and endure the learning curve of doing something different. Sometimes, an extra push from upper management is necessary to get everyone on board and building new work habits. Most old timers already know, the hard to convert users can end up being the biggest promoters once they see their own personal results. Sometimes they may need that extra bit of encouragement from leadership to get over the hump!

D

danielle_john

Adobe Employee

Hi Rhonda,

Great question, and suggestion! There's a few parts to this answer.

Forming a work management committee will be critical in ensuring successful user adoption. If you don't have an executive sponsor, you may need to find them. Your executive sponsor will not only be an advocate for users but will sometimes serve as a tie breaker in pushing users to use Workfront. Your executive sponsors will be able to help you align the overarching company goals to a Workfront strategy. Involving leadership and getting them in Workfront will help you gain executive sponsorship and motivate users.

Another important piece is your group admins. Your group admins will be able to help you mitigate any risk in user groups and train users who feel like they are being left behind when using Workfront. If you're having a hard time getting users to adopt the tool even after leadership has been giving a push, an important part is to listen to their concerns, tell them that you understand where they're coming from, and work with your group admins to fix the problems that users are feeling. From there, make sure you're communicating back to the end users that you heard them, and you have made adjustments in Workfront to fix the problems they were having.

Group Admin Information

Adoption Blog with a section on advocacy and leadership

We also have an event tomorrow titled Making the Case for a Full Time System Admin. That would be a great follow up to this question!

Let us know if you have any questions from here. 🙂

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

In my experience -- regardless of a person's level in an organization -- there is no substitute for demonstrating how Workfront genuinely solves a challenge and/or makes their work life easier for them. Waaaaay back, one of my mentors encouraged me to "find the way to make your biggest detractors your strongest advocates", which was great advice I try to continually keep in mind.

Regards,

Doug

AndrewGr1

Level 3

@CynthiaBoon

What are some tips and tricks within Workfront to automate PTO requests so we don't have to use multiple systems and away messages? I know it currently says in the documentation "Adobe Workfront is not designed to replicate or replace your existing systems for managing, accruing, and tracking personal time off," but I am wondering if any companies have found a valid workaround.

I have seen some other forum users briefly mention creating projects and approvals, but no one seems to offer a thorough explanation/solution in the community.(https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-questions/time-off-functionality-and-reporting/m-p/543215#M49395)

Ideally we would like to have a project where users can easily add a task representing their PTO with their respective time off noted, which either notifies their manager in the system, or if preferred, goes through an approval process to the manager instead. Our internal departments currently use a mix of processes with either calendar PTO requests to their manager (but that can clutter up personal Outlook calendar), another work management system with projects with rules established to automate the request/approval/reminders, or just email requests.

Is there anything being developed in the Time Off module that might enhance that feature so approvals or notifications could be automated when time off is set up?

And a company-wide report for all planned time off that can be easily sorted for leaders who want a quick glance at upcoming PTO?

And an individual report that users can quickly access to find their total PTO hours for the year, which they can easily compare and enter into the company's official time-management/PTO system or possibly automated with Fusion?

CynthiaBoon

Adobe Employee

Hey Andrew!

So the short answer on integrations, either with Fusion or the API is totally possible. I've chatted with our team to share some of our best practices when it comes to PTO and visibility.

I personally love a PTO Calendar on a Dashboard. It can be pinned, shared, added to a custom page.

Also, a PTO Report that can sorted and grouped, and then scheduled to send every week, holds a special place in my heart.

A project can work with an automated approval process, however, you don't want to miss out on the features of users entering their PTO in the calendar so that Projects will reflect their time off.

I'm wondering if the "Approval Process" could live in Workfront in the Project you mentioned in order to remove the necessity of the Outlook emails.

This might be an amazing topic for one of our Connect events?

V

VikramPo

Level 2

@CynthiaBoonAre there any tools to migrate data from JIRA to Workfront including custom fields?

Vikram Potdar

Cell:860-655-9075

B

BereniceBl

Adobe Employee

Hi Vikram,

Very good question!

I have ran into a similar question/situation with a customer.

Their marketing team used JIRA for their marketing workflows, they had many of them and only a few users really knew how they were set up. When they purchased Workfront, they decided to migrate all their JIRA workflows to WF, and so the option they chose was to leverage their Fusion scenarios. One limitation I see with this solution is that to map out all the JIRA workflows they had to use so many Fusion scenarios and ended up having to purchase more of them.

So, it depends on your situation: for what team/org is it? How much data do you need to migrate?

Best,

Berenice

CynthiaBoon

Adobe Employee

Hello! Thanks for joining our Workfront Community Q&A Coffee Break! We’ve got a team of Workfront Customer Success folks here to help answer your New System Admin questions. Let’s get started!

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

Hi Cynthia,

Ehm...did I miss an email with a Teams/Zoom link, or is this session "text only" on this thread?

Regards,

Doug

J

JennaJurgella1

Level 2

Same ^^

T

TamaraJo2

Level 2

@cynthiaboon what are the most important pieces to include in our instance's Standard Operating Procedures --- so it is effective but not so detailed that folks get confused.

LeslieSpier

Adobe Employee

Hey @tamarajo2 ! Some key things to include (aside from the processes, themselves) would be:

The purpose – why Workfront
Roles
Hierarchy of all Workfront objects
Where to go for Workfront help – a link ideally to a request queue with instructions
Terminology
Links to training on Experience League

One example I’ve seen has a table of contents to help make it easier to navigate.

Another idea may be to keep some of the configuration details (maybe things like access, terminology) in a separate document and link out to it from the SOP to keep it a little more streamlined.

Does anyone else have recommendations on how to keep their Standard Operating Procedures effective but not overwhelming?

JanelleCurry

Level 2

@cynthiaboon What are some common mistakes/missed opportunities people make when setting up their system?

D

danielle_john

Adobe Employee

Hi Janelle,

Great question! The main mistake that we see is overcomplicating your instance when you start. Understand that almost everyone is new to Workfront; try to keep it simple. Meet users where they're at when creating their processes and the instance. Another mistake we see is wanting to break down your users into too many groups and making your teams, processes, and tasks too granular and complicated.

I'd recommend this blog post. You'll find a check list on how to take charge of your instance, and ensure that your users feel comfortable in Workfront.

E

EileenW

Level 3

Hi, @CynthiaBoon! My question is regarding the Outlook Plugin functionality. I see that it can be used to submit requests to a queue as well as add tasks, issues, and updates to existing projects. Is there a way currently (or on the roadmap) to use the plugin to Open a Project in an existing Program? This would help my team add new projects sent via email (i.e. Headshots).

We have a specific headshot template that should be used. Having it go through a Request Queue just to switch it over to a Project is an unnecessary step. We allow anyone in our company to get a headshot taken by our video team. Only a select number of people need full access to Workfront.

Looking to simplify and make this process more efficient for the video team and my team.

D

danielle_john

Adobe Employee

Hi EIleen,

Great question! There isn't a way to automatically create a project using the Outlook Plugin. You would need Fusion here. Workfront to Workfront Fusion can take any request and create a project from a project template.

kerideming

Is there any training for Fusion, whether it be on demand or scheduled?

AndersonDeLima

Level 2

@cynthiaboon Any ideas or suggestions on how to create a Welcome/Onboarding process to welcome new users with different access roles? Is there a way to create a Welcome area inside Workfront and only share guides based on that user access?

RhondaGayleTX

Level 5

Hi, I am another customer and wanted to share something I love for new Workfront users. I have a project template that is set up with tasks and reference files for the new user to get them acclimated to the interface with hands on clicking and poking around. I have one version for "workers" and one version for "planners" that is more in depth.

This populates their work list and within the project, the custom task view shows simple instructions or tips to help them complete each task.

The planner version has task to add a template to the project which has additional tasks to build reports and dashboards.

I have also used an "Online training" task list with Workfront's training tracks for those that would like or need additional learning:

Obviously, the draw back on this is needing to update tasks and links as the interface changes or the online training changes, but overall, it has been a great tool.

RhondaGayleTX

Level 5

I also have my own project to track onboarding tasks for each new hire within my team where I use a parent task with the persons name and title and subtasks for the steps I need to go through with each new hire.

Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore

Community Advisor

Thanks for setting this up @jon_chen and @cynthiaboon,

I'm going to sign off now, but for feedback, should you decide to run one again, and for those who missed this one...

since it wasn't obvious and called some confusion, I'd suggest you call out the "real time chat (only)" nature of such events
having now experienced it, what I found refreshing was NOT having to split my time listening to the main conversation while trying to also read and answer the threads (as we often do in webinars), and could instead, at my own speed, compose my thoughts, answer, then refresh the page to catch up on new questions and answers as they came in; in a way, it's as if we just "carved off the interesting chat side panel" for today, which was kinda neat
that said, it is a bit weird to not be able to "see who is on the call" let alone establish conversation the way we do in a Teams/Zoom chat in real time, a bit like the (deflating) "wandering" I've experienced in virtual conferences in the past; also once we hit enough feedback, it took me a while to notice there was a [load more responses] button, which I read, but then when I clicked [load previous responses]...there were then no such [responses] buttons, yet a question I'd intended on watching / answering was no longer visible (perhaps removed by the questionner), which was kinda clunky (and not neat)

Regards,

Doug

P.S. ehm....I keep real-time alerts turned on for experience league, so (looking at the deluge in my inbox) if one of your goals by running this session today was to make it obvious that there was lots of chatter happening, "mission accomplished" 🤔 🤔

jon_chen

Author

Community Manager

Hey @doug_den_hoed__atappstore ,

Thanks so much for your feedback! Please see my comments below:

This is a great tip. I added "text-only" to the main post but will be sure to emphasize this in all our Coffee Break messaging moving forward.
Yes, we definitely took some inspiration from the conversations that occur in webinar side panels, so I'm happy to hear that you see similarities there.
We are trying to adopt a Community-based approach in this program, where you can ask a question and expect to see an answer while you go off and work on something else for a bit; though I can understand that it is a bit strange that you're not able to see how many people are "live" on the thread.

I will be sure to call out the "load more responses" button in the future. As for the questions not loading, that may have been due to comment removal, though I only removed one (it may have been removed by the question asker to your point). That said, let me know if you see this happen again.

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