[WORKFRONT COMMUNITY Q&A COFFEE BREAK] Thursday June 15th, 8am PT: Get your Adobe Workfront Fusion Questions Answered by Adobe Experts ☕

[jon_chen]

Adobe Workfront Fusion is an incredibly useful tool that allows you to automate your processes so that you can reduce repetition and focus on what’s important. In this upcoming Coffee Session scheduled for June 15th at 8a PT, come join us for an exclusive opportunity to ask our in-house experts on anything related to Workfront Fusion!

This text-only event takes place here in the Workfront Experience League Community. Post your burning questions, hot tips, key takeaways, and let’s chat about them! Our experts will be interacting live for that hour, but the conversation can continue! 

For some guidance, here are some sample topics you can ask the in-house Workfront Fusion expert team about:

• How do I convert issues into projects using Workfront Fusion?
• How do I build a Fusion process to mark an issue as Approved or Rejected after validating if the fields are compliant?
• How do you prescribe using Fusion Templates?
• What desktop/web tools do you use besides Workfront and Fusion when you are building Fusion Scenarios to aid you in your development?
• What should be the first module in my Fusion scenario?
• My scenario seems to run fine, then breaks and turns off, how do I keep it from stopping?
• People tell me that Fusion can do pretty much anything, are there any limits to consider?

RSVP FOR EVENT REMINDERS

Note: If you cannot make the live Q&A, that’s okay! Ask your questions in this Community thread now and your question will be answered in the order that it was received.

REQUIREMENTS TO PARTICIPATE 

• Must be signed into the Community during the 1-hour period
• Must post an Adobe Workfront question or comment on Adobe Workfront Fusion
• Must tag any or both of the Workfront Fusion SMEs (@ewanh or @AndyHess) in your question
• You can ALSO post your question or comment prior to the Q&A session if you are unable to attend the live event
• THAT'S IT! *(think of this as the Adobe Workfront Community equivalent of an AMA, (“Ask Me Anything”), and bring your best speed-typing game)

Andy Hess @AndyHess 

Experienced IS Professional with a strong history in Retail, Wholesale & Finance. Skilled in Business Administration & Process, Database Administration, Business Intelligence, and Integration Strategy. Focused on helping clients integrate Adobe Workfront into their enterprise technology landscape by setting realistic expectations and developing long-term roadmaps for integrations.

Ewan Hruska @ewanh 

Ewan is a Senior Customer Success Architect that works with 100's of Adobe Workfront customers each year.  His 20 years of experience leading IT and Martech teams and software practice ownership provide him with a wealth of knowledge to feed his consultative approach.  In addition to his love of the outdoors and playing music with friends, Ewan has a passion for improving procedures at scale and is a builder of Fusion templates.

By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, we just launched the latest Cookbook on Workfront Fusion! This includes 11 exciting customer and employee-submitted recipes to spice up your Workfront kitchens. Be sure to check it on the Workfront Fusion Cookbook thread! 

[skyehansen]

@AndyHess would you be able to 1) step through the process of setting up a data store in Workfront (vs Fusion), and 2) give a short example showing one at work in a scenario please. Along with 3) any best practices you can suggest to make it as riskfree as possible (i.e. what are the possible risks, what are the symptoms when they are realized, and how to protect against them)

[AndyHess]

This is a great question to get the thread started Skye,

Data stores should be thought of primarily as temporary storage, or parameterization tables, not necessarily as permanent logging or large scale data use cases.   To create one, think of this as 2 steps, of which both will typically occur within the scenario creation operations.  To start simply select a datastore module and select Add, provide a name and then the most important step, Add or select a data structure.   It is the combination of the Data store and Data structure, that create the object.  If you forget a row in the data structure, you can simply go back to any Data store module and select Edit from the drop down and add rows.

One example I just setup was to capture a triggering event from a 3rd system, a Salesforce Opportunity Stage.  The reason I want to capture it, is that in some cases we have to hold processing the transaction > create a Workfront project until a secondary field is filled out.   So in effect, track the integration from Salesforce and leverage the datastore to 're-try' processing until all fields are properly managed in Salesforce.   This technique will use 3 scenarios

#1. A Watch Field triggered event to watch for a Salesforce Opportunity Stage to reach a certain stage.  This scenario will add every intake at this stage to the datastore where the key=OpportunityID, then a text column for status, and a date Changed field to timestamp the event.   Every new record has the status of 'Pending'.  In this scenario we submit to a subroutine scenario

#2 The subroutine scenario that uses a Fusion Webhook module as it's trigger.  This scenario actually processes the transaction and creates the WF Project.  When successful changes the status field to 'Processed' or perhaps a failure message

Then #3 a scheduled event that searches (iterates) on all records not 'Processed'. This scenario re-submits to scenario #2 which will either succeed due to the fields being managed finally in Salesforce, or leaves in a holding stage. 

The gotcha, make sure in scenario #3, you delete 'Processed' records older than 90 days old to prevent growth of the data store.   Remember you only have 100MB to play with so use your storage wisely. 

[AndyHess]

One thing I would add is it is possible I missed the general premise, of using Workfront itself as a Data store.  So following up with a basic response there.

This use case has more limitations and would not work in the example above, as Workfront as a Datastore's use case is solely for parameterization or itemization.   Whether we use a series of Issues, Tasks, or Expense objects depends on the use case.   One of the best reasons to use Workfront as an itemization object for a Fusion process will involve when we need to create multiple objects or have a single object rendered with multiple lines.   One of my favorite use cases was with a client that needed to produce different video shorts (commercials) in different languages, frame sizes, lengths for each asset.  So to do this we would use the Issue object on a given project as a itemization data store that Fusion will iterate through to then push multiple tasks to the video editing platform pre-loaded with all of the requirements in one process.  The draw back.... hmm... this one is so effective and dynamic not sure I have one.   

[DanielClarke]

@ewanh @AndyHess 

We have been using Fusion for 4 years now and have 14 active production scenarios at a time, another 9 adhoc production scenarios, and numerous in development (organized in folders). Do you have any recommendations on how to document and organize the data within those scenarios for external and internal users? I often am asked "If I change this field, will it break fusion?" - I can often answer based on my own memory but if I am out of office, or as we start to have others build in Fusion I have become more unsure. Thanks!

[ewanh]

Hi @DanielClarke ,

We have developed a standard Design Document that we use to capture the following:

• Business Use Case
• Integration Overview
  • Expected Workflows (or Impacted Workflows)
  • Fusion Schedule
  • Dataflow
  • Data mapping (with highlevel object mapped as well as in connecting SFDC Account to Workfront Company)
  • Required Workfront Configuration
  • Out of Scope
• Data Stores
• Testing and Change Management
• System Technical Limitations
• Fusion Connectors & Keys
• Assumptions

In addition we export a copy of the blueprints.json (using the ... menu) and record a video of us walking through the scenario module by module.  Curious if others in the community use other things?  

[Jason_JB]

It would be an awesome enhancement for Fusion to support some exports/notes of the design. It would also be great if there was a way to bulk export all of our scenarios (or at least by folder/live status) - so that I don't miss one as I click through them.

From a documentation standpoint, I've created slide decks for our key scenarios that include screenshots and key notes as a reference.

[KIMBERLYREA]

@AndyHess  We've been Fusion users for a couple years now. We have seen a tremendous time savings on the automations just Workfront to Workfront today. We are starting to explore using the webhook to connect to other tools. 

My questions are: 

• What's the best way to have global coverage so a scenario doesn't stop running during the off hours for US and block the automation/integration? 
• How best to document all these scenarios in a way for others who aren't familiar with Fusion to know the efficiencies and and what not to adjust so they don't break. 
• How do we report better on the automations and time savings? 
• Will you be adding more prebuilt templates for Fusion?
• Will you also be considering a WSA team for Fusion like we have for Workfront tool where Adobe has dedicated resources to our account for X hours a month? 

[RandyRoberts]

@ewanh @AndyHess 

I'm interested in some of these question as well, especially documenting scenarios (notes are OK but screenshots or a document would be great), and ROI reporting.

Attached is how I've been documenting, which is time consuming and tedious

[AndyHess]

Hi Kimberly,

I'll answer a few of these.

• What's the best way to have global coverage so a scenario doesn't stop running during the off hours for US and block the automation/integration? 
• The best way is to be sure to provide proper error trapping in your scenarios to prevent a shutdown in the first place.
• Second, ensure that you have global coverage and teams that watch for Fusion email messages, In some cases I have seen clients register a service-now email address as a Fusion user so that errors get turned into tickets

• How do we report better on the automations and time savings? 
• That is difficult to manage other than estimating time saved in generation of projects / issues and other manual process by qty and a fixed time amount.  We are talking to product internally about releasing some reporting features that could assist with this.
• Will you also be considering a WSA team for Fusion like we have for Workfront tool where Adobe has dedicated resources to our account for X hours a month? 
• Yes, talk to your account executive, this is already a feature called WSA + Fusion.

[taufiq]

Hi @AndyHess, 

We have been using WF for almost half a year now. Right now we are in the middle of considering Fusion to integrate and automate the vital processes we have. 

I have been looking at the available OneDrive modules for Fusion and it looks like we are able to set up actions to upload, delete, get files and etc into OneDrive. Reference: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/workfront/using/adobe-workfront-fusion/fusion-apps-and-modul...

These look like things that we can do inside OneDrive, for example to upload a certain file into OneDrive after it has been uploaded into Workfront. 

My question is, is there a way that these action modules can be reversed? Our situation is that we would want to automate a process where a file is automatically uploaded into Workfront task level after it has been created or updated inside OneDrive. 

Appreciate your feedback on this. Thank you!!

[AndyHess]

HI Taufiq,

I would suggest that one of the best ways to manage Fusion and OneDrive is to switch your mindset a little, and have Fusion automatically create OneDrive folders in a dedicated drive space, for each project created, then create that folder in Workfront.  We suggest that you also leverage the native OneDrive product integration for documents as part of this.

Once that is performed, when the user uploads the document to Workfront, have them select this OneDrive (remote) folder.   Doing this will allow the Workfront Native connector to push that document into the OneDrive remote folder and it actually never exists physically in Workfront.  

Specifically to your point, having a remote folder in WF, for this document that was uploaded from OneDrive, it will not automatically be available in the WF object where the remote folder is created by Fusion.

[taufiq]

Hi @AndyHess 

Thank you for your reply! I would like to confirm with you further. Since the document uploaded will not be appearing in Workfront but will be in remote folder of OneDrive instead - What would someone who needs to look into the document in the project need to do?

Is there a link to the remote folder provided in Workfront for everyone to go inside the folder and look at the documents? 

Appreciate your reply on this. Thank you!!!

[AndyHess]

HI Taufiq,

In Workfront, it would look like any other document inside a folder.

The folder itself will have a icon next to it indicating that it is a remote folder, as the user descends into the folder, they will be shown the contents of the remote folder and the files will look like they are present in WF, but like the folder, will have an icon next to them indicating that it is a remote document.

All actions appear as though the user was in WF, but in reality occur remotely.

The only caveat is that the accessing user must have credentials in the remote system, and rights to these folders.

Cheers!

[taufiq]

Hey Andy, 

This is perfectly clear to me. Thank you for your insightful input. We will definitely consider this. 

Appreciate your help. 

Regards, 

Taufiq

[alferaj16]

@ewanh or @AndyHess can you walk through the basic process of how to set up a scenario that would take information from a csv file that contained project name, field 1, field 2, etc.. convert those to projects, placed into a new program within a portfolio each time the document is uploaded. 

the walk through would be the team takes an exported csv file from a different system, uploads that file to portfolio documents section, fusion converts those into projects and places them into a program within that portfolio.

[DanielClarke]

We just built this very thing @alferaj16! Downloading CSV, checking for duplicate projects, gathering required project data, validating addtl info from Salesforce, creating project from template, making assignments, and creating a supplemental issue on the new project. 

Biggest headache was confirming/gathering all the required data to setup the project and fill in the custom forms. 

Happy to discuss if Andy and Ewan can't dig in deep!

[KIMBERLYREA]

I have one like this as well and it's amazing how quick it streamlines the process. 

[alferaj16]

That would be great to discuss this further!

[Viktoriia]

@ewanh @AndyHess Can something like this be added to the Cookbook? That would be a great help.

[ewanh]

Great Idea @Viktoriia !  We won't be adding anything to the current Fusion Cookbook but we are strongly considering a new one.  Also we are looking at having a series of different events that cover this and similar topics in the autumn.