Workfront

lindselib · 1/21/25

To date the custom form updates in our instance have not been well controlled- several users are able to make them, and we often inadvertently make changes without documentation or communication with each other. I'd love to lock that down this year BUT want to do so in a way that also doesn't get in our way too much of being agile to changes in our organization and in a way that doesn't add a ton of extra work to schedules. So I'm curious, does anyone have a good approval flow for reviewing, approving, and documenting form changes?

KIMBERLYREA · 2/11/25

We only allow the system admins (3 of us) to make the changes. All changes come through a request queue issue that we validate and check the impact of the change and then either make it or reject it.

I also have a master data project where I track all the changes of master system data (fields that come from global organizations across all tools) and track when the change was made, by who, what the change was and if it impacted other teams or an integration.

lindselib · 2/11/25

Ooooh would LOVE to see what that master data project looks like/or at least hear more about how you have that set up if you would be willing to share.

KIMBERLYREA · 2/11/25

It's just a project and I track issues on it with a custom form to outline the details. I started putting the year at the name of the issue in 2024 for filtering better for me. Then if something is changed I can go back and see why it was changed, when and who approved it.

Only a handful of us can change custom form data. I lock that down across all teams and manage it. The users enter a WF request to me for all changes, user accounts, custom reports, Fusion support, ideas, troubleshooting etc,

lindselib · 2/11/25

Oh that makes sense! Thank you for sharing.

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

What @KIMBERLYREA shared would be the same approach we'd recommend, so if you're able to pull together a process in Workfront for form changes, that would be best!

TraKill · 2/12/25

Hi, Would the feature request in your request queue be a new implementation or a utilization of an existing feature, such as - "please create a Kanban board for us including xyz"?

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

Yeah mostly but also what features does Workfront not have that they wish it did so I can check the Idea Exchange and escalate up. It gives the users a way to communication to me and a way for me to keep track of things. If it isn't in Workfront, it doesn't exist for me.

EsmeraldaHe · 2/12/25

We went a bit further and only allowed our Group Admin (we have one for each teams) access to create and edit Custom Form. They only have access to their own forms.

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

For each queue and many custom forms, I keep a single document to map the build. This is stored in a space that is accessible only to system admins and group admins. See attached for a template.

Additionally, I curate the management privileges on custom forms. It can be a lot, but it's sometimes worth it.

Monty_A · 1/21/25

Is there a best practices guide or checklist that we could leverage to build a more comprehensive governance model for our instance of WF?

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Yes! When we held our Making the Case for Group Admins event last month, we included several slides that had recommendations for Governance roles, establishing goals, and an object checklist with examples. Here's the link to the post and the slides are linked there as well.

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/event-follow-up-learn-making-...

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

There is also a stripped down governance doc that another customer published to the Community forum you may want to review to help you get started: https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-questions/does-anyone-have-an-example-of-...

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

I keep a single governance document for each major area of Workfront:

Security
User administration
Companies and groups
Portfolios and programs
Custom forms and fields
Template

I would encourage additional documentation depending on the parts of the system you use:

Business cases
Baselines
Resourcing and job roles
Timesheets

My governance documents speak to:

Our processes
Security requirements
Requirements versus guidelines
Data mapping
Maintenance and auditing procedures and schedules

RandyRoberts · 1/25/25

Will there ever be a way to control what Adobe makes available to our users without our ability to hide it? For example; admins can't hide Priorities even though it's disabled, admins couldn't hide Blueprints without complaining very loudly, admins can't hide the Boards button in projects, admins can't stop users from exporting and re-importing projects to circumvent the "no project copying" rule, admins can't stop users from copying tasks from 5 years ago, the list goes on and on and on... and on. When will Adobe allow admins to admin their own instance according to their company's policies?

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

Thanks for the feedback, @RandyRoberts. I just shared this with the Product team via Slack and will bring this up on our next synch to see if this is something they would consider for the future.

v-omprakash · 1/29/25

I need to use 3 Sorting columns in Adobe workfront report in text mode but i'm able to sort only one column in text mode rest two columns are not allowing me to sort in text mode only sorting in Standard mode is it possible to sort them in text mode all three sorting?

Its showing Error "Unable to edit the column text mode data in the view builder"

MoniqueEvans · 1/29/25

This is a great question that I recommend you ask in its own thread since it's about reporting instead of governance. I don't want it to get lost, nor should you have to wait 2 weeks for a response!

KitSh · 1/30/25

Similar to Monty_A, we are looking for a comprehensive guide to developing a governance model that is tailored to our specific circumstances. Would love any best practices for multi-national corporations.

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Totally understand! I came from a global financial services company, so we had a lot of differing needs and approaches. I provided this link to Monty as well. When we held this event, I shared some of my challenges, but also how I approached it, and included some examples slides as a checklist. For me, the biggest challenge was navigating the people aspect, so meeting frequently at first, and truly defining roles (and goals) was key. Here's the link to that session, but the slide deck might help give you some ideas.

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/event-follow-up-learn-making-...

EnrikeStorolli · 1/31/25

Hellow, is there any easy way to notify an user that did not login in the WF Production instance for the last 180 days?

KellieGardner · 1/31/25

@EnrikeStorolli - Since this thread is related to Governance, I would suggest asking this in it's own thread so it can get an answer.

KIMBERLYREA · 2/11/25

I'm working on a Fusion automation for this. I already have a report of no logins within 90 days that I check and reach out and flag and go through but I'll be automating this with a Fusion automation and then attempting to connect to our IDS system to deactivate users when they leave the company easier.

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Thanks for the assist Kimberly!

StephanieSa4 · 2/11/25

Is there any plan to add an undo feature on a timeline? Something to keep track of your changes and that it won't effect the entire timelines and dates?

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

I'm almost positive this exists already. You can a change your plan mode on projects to autosave or manual save. With manual you can see all the changes you are making and the impacts and undo what you need to and it only shows for you until you hit save. This is on a user by user specific setting at the project level.

StephanieSa4 · 2/12/25

Right! But I mean more for an individual change made. Otherwise, you have to remember to switch modes each time you make a change. Or there should be a history that says date changed from x date to x date

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

Ohhhh. We started capturing some things on a custom form on the project. We only did this for the project planned start date.

We have two fields. One is the start date history of the project and the other is the number of times the planned start date changes. I'm sure you can put on there who changed it too.

IF(ISBLANK({plannedStartDate}),"",IF(ISBLANK({DE:Planned Start Date History}),{plannedStartDate},IF(CONTAINS({plannedStartDate},RIGHT({DE:Planned Start Date History},LEN({plannedStartDate}))),{DE:Planned Start Date History},CONCAT({DE:Planned Start Date History},", ",{plannedStartDate}))))

IF(!ISBLANK({DE:Planned Start Date History}),SUM(0,SUB(LEN(REPLACE({DE:Planned Start Date History},",",",,")),LEN({DE:Planned Start Date History}))),0)

MoniqueEvans · 2/12/25

In addition to this custom field approach, you can also start using baselines to see date changes over time and compare them. There should be a setting that allows automatic baseline creation; if not, the perfect use case for a Fusion Scenario

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

Excellent point! We have Fusion create weekly baselines Monday mornings.

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

Another idea @StephanieSa4 would be to review what fields are being tracked in the update stream and then if there are any that are missing that you want to be able to report on (ex: within a Journal Entry report), add those to your list.

To do this, go into Setup > Interface > Update Feeds and choose with fields, native or custom, along with specific actions you want to track.

StephanieSa4 · 2/12/25

Can you provide more insight on this fusion scenario? I have never seen or used this feature before neither has my team.

MoniqueEvans · 2/12/25

Here's a link explaining baselines and how to set up automatic baselines. If you want to go the Fusion route, I recommend working with a consultant or the Adobe Services.

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/manage-work/projects/create-projects/crea...

DanaLa3 · 2/12/25

A new question: We have just rolled out WF in our department. As a Group Admin I am finding that team's are being modified by someone other than a Group Admin, custom form fields are being deleted and just recently a user deleted several reports used by multiple departments. We've tried to keep a small circle of people who can update/manage these objects. The worst part is I can't tell who is deleting or modifying these objects. Are there any suggestions on how to better manage this moving forward?

PamelaAB · 2/12/25

Not sure if it would show but did you look in the recycle bin to see if anything is there? Then you'd know at least who was deleting things?

DanaLa3 · 2/12/25

Thanks. I did look there and the recycle bin doesn't appear to show when fields or reports are deleted. I didn't see anything out there either regarding deletion of team members. I checked with my System Admin too and he said there wouldn't be a way to research these types of issues which is kind of sad.

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

Lock down access. Make it so only Admins can delete reports. It seems like your access levels need to be updated. We made it so users can not delete reports or share publicly or system wide.

Teams I don't care as much about as they use and manage them and aren't tied to anything critical but if they were I'd remove access to delete here as well.

DanaLa3 · 2/12/25

This is great. Thanks so much.

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

Very few things in my instance are able to be deleted by users outside of Admins. I only turned on access for projects for some groups because I felt they could manage that okay themselves. For others not so much so we turned that back off. They were deleting planned projects instead of cancelling them for historical tracking. We keep a request queue for all users to raise things to my admin team and if it becomes a large volume of things then I look at potential for training and delegating ownership back to them. But I start as "don't trust with deleting. they need to earn the ability"

MoniqueEvans · 2/12/25

Absolutely this!! I second everything Kimberly is saying. You need to comb through your access levels and remove a user's ability to delete any object outside of a document and heavily limit who can delete tasks, issues, projects, and programs. I would also limit Portfolio creation and Custom Form editing to only Admins.

I also only allow a small number of users (5/10,000) to create Reports, Views, Filters, and Groupings; only 3 of the 5 can delete reports.

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Thank you Kimberly and Monique! Totally agree with your advice. And y'all know me, I'll trust until I don't trust, so when stuff starts getting deleted, then yeah - access starts getting locked down.

Y'all are the best!

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

In addition to what others have suggested, I encourage using the Description field to clearly define what the report (or any object, that is) is used for, when it was last audited, and the call to action the report data should elicit.

When I audit reports in particular, I look at use over the last month, quarter, and year. I also see if the report is embedded in a dashboard. If you ever find out who is moving your cheese, these might be good things to share.

And if you can convene a Group Admin committee across all your groups to discuss these types of things, I think that would yield a lot less confusion and more cooperative trust.

s-strategy · 2/12/25

Do you have an example of a Governance plan/document being used within Workfront. My team is looking to put our process and everything else withing that document within the system. Instead of using Word or Excel I was thinking to just track it all within WF. Any suggestions?

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

@s-strategy You can create a project in Workfront to capture all governance-related tasks, but I'm not sure I'd recommend moving away from a Word or Excel doc for your strategy and documentation. You can easily attach those to the project via the Documents area so they will still be readily available whenever you need to reference them.

One customer shared her stripped down governance docs on the Community forum if you want to those as a starting point. Here is that thread: https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-questions/does-anyone-have-an-example-of-...

There is also a fabulous Governance and Center of Excellence Expert Insights interview (15-minute) published with tips, best practices, and recommendations for getting started that you may want to consider watching!

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

I often use the SharePoint integration to link to Office files stored in SharePoint. This allows our governance to be available both in Workfront and SharePoint. For example, I will attach a queue governance to the specific request queue so it's accessible to an admin when they need to document and make changes to the queue.

jon_chen · 2/12/25

The event has now started! Our experts @NicholeVargas and @CynthiaBoon are in the thread and will be answering your questions for the next hour.

TraKill · 2/12/25

A new question: As a group admin I will this year look more into training new team members and stakeholders of our team, that are not heavy Workfront users. The system has been rolled out for the entire team 2 years ago, but the previous group admin left short after those initial trainings causing some knowledge gaps for the current team. I would love to track adoption and I know that there is the Workfront Usage Dashboard in the blueprints, but what I am missing is not only a login report by record count and an assignment report, but actually would love to track the utilization of Workfront. What did the users do by user group/job role. Is there any recommendation?
Also for surveys after Workfront trainings where did you track answers? Via an integration with Workfront or within Workfront through e.g. request queue?

Thank you for your responses and thoughts in advance!

KIMBERLYREA · 2/12/25

I do this several ways:

1. logins

2. An audit report

3. A proofing audit report

Audit report is a Note report. I have prompts on all different areas of filter like access level, group, home team, portfolio, program, and most importantly entry date to pull the date range down.

(the owner of the action would be in that red box but I had to hide for data privacy)

I have the same style of report for digital proofing comments to see how engaged they are with proofing.

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Lots of great questions! Okay - so the answer is in the grey area, so my apologies, but we can talk through it here. So if we were meeting over coffee, I'd ask what does adoption and utilization look like in your org. For me, when in the first year or so, it was simply logins. As we matured, the picture changed and I was looking for completed Tasks and Issues, Updates made in Projects, Report usage, etc. The Usage Dashboard is really helpful, but for overall "Workfront Utilization" I think the two Value Realization Dashboards might give you more insight into how the objects are being used. Adoption for me also had some intangibles but I still tried to compile them in a Sys Admin project, and that was when departments were asking for cross-functional initiatives to be tracked using Workfront, when managers were reaching out to me asking for Workfront training, or when we were being asked to build new reports so that teams could refer to them during their meetings. Another metric that I used for measuring Adoption that might not be common was how often users were submitting requests via the Ask for Workfront Help request queue. When we had loads of submissions, I knew people were using Workfront. But when users go silent, I know there is a problem.

And speaking of engagement, I have used Workfront to track survey feedback from meetings, trainings, etc., however the only thing to consider is that the responses would not be anonymous. Most of the time, that was fine - kind of like the willingness to post a review online, but when we were doing full employee engagement or Workfront adoption surveys, we used a third party, and then managed the feedback in Workfront using custom form fields for reporting.

Here are the Blueprints I mentioned earlier, so hopefully these will give you some additional insight!
Value Realization - Core Value Dashboard

Value Realization - Review & Approve

Value Realization - Govern Compliance Workflows

JasminePa1 · 2/12/25

Hi! Are there any live sessions with Adobe team where we can ask specific in-depth questions pertaining to our projects?

CynthiaBoon · 2/12/25

Hello! If you'd like to chat with me and Nichole, along with other fabulous customers (like are Community Advisors!), I'd recommend that you start with our Workfront events. We offer around 9 events per month, with a couple of them dedicated to open crowdsourcing questions. Those are our "Connect" events, so we could chat through questions, and then everyone could offer advice. Here's the link to the upcoming sessions this month, and we'll be adding the March events by the end of this week. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/events/?lang=en

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

I echo this recommendation. I've learned so much more and faster through these events because the community is so engaged, encouraging, and creative.

TraKill · 2/12/25

Do you align your governance strategy and/or documentation with your system admin or other group admins? If so, what are best practices?

NicholeVargas · 2/12/25

Great question @TraKill! Yes, you should absolutely align your governance strategy and documentation with both System Admins and Group Admins, as that is crucial for ensuring consistency, smooth operation, and effective use of Workfront across the organization. Workfront has various layers of user roles and permissions, and establishing clear governance guidelines will help prevent misalignment, errors, and inefficiencies. Here are a few best practices to help frame the initial conversation:

Define Roles & Permissions: Clarify roles and responsibilities for system and group admins. Sample job descriptions can be found in the post, Event Follow-Up: Making the Case for Group Admins
Centralize Documentation: Maintain a single, up-to-date hub for governance policies and workflows.
Change Management Process: Implement a formal process for documenting and communicating changes.
Ensure Consistency: Standardize naming conventions, templates, and workflows across teams and departments.
Training & Support: Provide initial training and ongoing support for governance practices.
Reporting & Monitoring: Regularly review system usage and compliance with governance policies.
Regular Reviews & Feedback: Schedule periodic reviews and incorporate feedback for continuous improvement.

Lyndsy-Denk · 2/12/25

Completely agree. Additionally, we have related systems to Workfront (our DAM), so it's essential that Workfront system administration coordinate with that admin, too. Lucky for me, I am also the admin for our DAM.

MoniqueEvans · 2/12/25

Also to add, when you can have synergy between systems it makes it a lot easier and cleaner to have integrations in the future. And even at a simpler level, it creates a nomenclature and understanding across the company so when you say a term it has the same meaning.

jon_chen · 2/12/25

The event is now OVER. Thanks so much for the meaningful discussion and stay tuned for our future events and AMAs on the Experience League Events page.

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