Workfront

We do not believe that the archive period can be changed by system admins.  I was not able to find any settings for this specific feature.

Great question! This is a heated debate but in my opinion, the best direction is to be very consistent with your workflow and not mix the two. It is much easier to report on Document Approvals and eventually (way down the line) this is the route that all asset approvals will take eventually so it will be less of an learning curve. Proof Approvals do have their perks with their more specific details but reporting on them can be quite difficult. 

I think in this case a best of both worlds approach is the best; but does require a lot of training and due dilligence. But this allows you to use the markup capabilties of Proof and the organization and reporting ease of Document Approvals. Here's a link to see more details on this. Use Unified Approvals and proofing together

Hey Emily!  I definitely had this issue back in the day, and here's my 2 cents. The cool thing about the Advanced Workflows is that they save time, by having it already created, but they are super flexible in that PMs can change out names, add a stage if needed etc.  What I did was to meet with the PMs and created a couple of "shell" (or basic) Workflows with just a couple of stages that everyone seemed to use, and then the PMs could adjust as needed. 

For the templates, the best piece of advice that I can give is to use Naming Conventions that make sense to your PMs.  There's not a way to sort them, so if you have a bunch of them or if the names are super similar or confusing, your PMs might not select the correct ones.

Is there, or could there be, a way to set up which workflow a proof would need before the designer finished the item? We, for instance, know that who needs to approve a piece before it is made and I can't find a way to not create a stall between the design being finished and the PM setting up and triggering the workflow. Ideally, the designer would be able to kick it off instantly, but then you have to train them to activate and use the correct workflow.

Tagging the experts in case this helps (per instructions) (@Lyndsy-Denk),  (@MoniqueEvans), (@Richard__Carlson) 

At this time Proof is static. Reviewers can add comments, but that's about as live as it gets. The only way to see tracked changes is to upload a version that displays the tracked changes, which I don't recommend.

You could come up with an alternate approach using the SharePoint syncing, but you lose the decision-making tools. It's a tradeoff.

Where do I find info on SharePoint syncing?

Check out the documentation on Experience League.

@Lyndsy-Denk  Please provide additional info re: sharepoint syncing as we are looking into this as well. 

You can find more here and here!

Hi Beth!  We talked about the proof and Workfront email notifications during yesterday's session, and one of the recommendations was to turn off those Proof Notifications in Workfront option (in Setup) since it can get confusing. I always found a Proof Approval report way more useful than the notifications, but here's the event link, if it's helpful.

• https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/event-follow-up-mastering-ema... 

That's great for the meantime, but it would be nice if we could customize notifications so that they ARE useful rather than finding workarounds. Lots of people don't log in unless they have a reason to, so it results in PMs chasing people from the report rather than individuals self-serving, which isn't scalable.

Totally agree!  I ended up scheduling the Proof Approval report each day so every users would get the "These haven't been approved yet" email.  Not the best solution.  Sorry!

Not sure if this helps but we add and remove who is able to see a proof. So version 1 may have 5 people, but version 2 may just be creative. Then once creative has approved. The version 3 we will add the reviewers back into version 3 proof.

Thank you Connie, in the case of a multiple team workflow (brand, creative, AI), especially with creative, there are many comments and possible opinions in the comments. This in turn makes it hard for the original submitter to follow and becomes confusing. (things mentioned that the submitter doesn't need to see) By keeping that part of the conversation separate between the teams involved, takes confusion away from submitter in the update comments, makes the interaction with the original submitter cleaner and less confusing or controversial. 

Have you ever tried proofing stages?  We will try to get all of the creative design review done in a stage before the legal review stage.  The lawyers just want to see the legal stuff specific to them and not the slight variations of the design which exist in the prior proof iterations.  The legal stage can be set to occur after the design stage is finalized.

What is the benefit of a "private" workflow stage and how are they typically set up? What does this type of stage mean?

A private workflow stage would only be visible for people added to it.  One example of how to use a private stage:  Allowing the content creation to happen uninterrupted without executive oversight.  In other words you can hide the stage if you wanted content creation work to happen and at the same time eliminate the "curious people looking at artwork through the system and reviewing it before they're ready" scenario.

@Richard__Carlson  

What is the benefit of a "private" workflow stage and how are they typically set up? What does this type of stage mean?

Great option I was not aware was availble.... quick add question.... can the proof be revised to public once it is ready to share? So let's say V1 + V2 are priviate but V3 can go now go public?

The private stage is just a single checkbox on the stage so you could either choose to unhide the stage or create a later public stage.

This is not currently a function. In that case, we encourage you to submit an idea. There is an oldie from 2020, but the team doesn't look further back than a couple years.

We recommend splitting the tasks so that you have one for review and another for applying the feedback you received during the review.

From there, you have a couple options for reporting:

• A separate task allows you to run a calculation comparing the start and completion of the task.
• A Proof Approval report that looks at each individual participant's interactions in the proof, including when they clicked the decision button.

Check out the screenshot attached for an example.

how can we create the following report 

"A Proof Approval report that looks at each individual participant's interactions in the proof, including when they clicked the decision button."

You are not alone in asking for this, did you see this thread? Ability to Delegate Proof Approvals - Adobe Experience League Community - 518699

For proof approvals, there seems to be no way to delegate proof approvals in a wholesale fashion.  Our PMs have to update the proofing workflows individually as far as I know.  The other person who responded linked an idea on the Idea Exchange which would provide the functionality that everyone wants (so to speak).

I understand there may be a way to more wholesale delegate "work approvals" in Workfront (project approvals, task approvals, issue approvals) for example.

Great question. It's a stumper!

We're digging into this but none of us can find where this information lives in the backend so @NicholeVargas is reaching out to Support and Product to find more details.

I'm thinking you are referring to "decision choices" and if so, this is not possible (without the use of Fusion). Decision Reasons aren’t captured in the Comments stream under “Updates”.

The only place you can see them is if you look at the Proofing Workflow. If a decision has been made and a reason selected (with a comment added) you can only see the reason and comment there.

You could probably use Fusion to “read” the decision reason and perhaps the comment made, and then write that onto a text field on a document custom form. But, then you have to consider how to handle this when there are multiple decision makers on a proof, how to capture all those decisions, etc. Could get very messy very fast.

Correct, you currently cannot generate reports for participants who do not have a decision-making role. However, you can reach out your account partner to request to join the Unified Approvals functionality. This is a limited release thing right now.

Just requested -- thank you!

In so many words - confirming what @Lyndsy-Denk said, users need to be assigned "approver" or higher on each individual proofing workflow in order for the proof reporting to pick up on the role and be able to report on it

If I recall correctly, Workfront Search is smart enough to read document text. Be sure, the text is not outlines. You may also want to do an advanced search instead of the normal drop down.

You can move a proof, but not copy. Can you say more about what you're trying to accomplish?

If you're looking to give future viewers visibility to past comments, I recommend using the proof versions function and making sure users have the ability to view previous versions.

@Lyndsy-Denk - This question comes from our external reviewers. We need to transfer their comments manually to our internal proofs. The reason being we have one "mega" proof with all clients and then send externally as a separate proof to each client individually - so we want to take the manual transfer out of this either with Fusion or some other way. 

Have you tried staging your proofs? Stage 1 would go to your external reviewers, then you add your internal reviewers in a second stage. The reviewers in Stage 2 should still see the activity from Stage 1.

I can take this one! So, I'll add the link to the current documentation below, but our team (Nichole, Leslie, and I) will be hosting an event with Jason Barron, where he will share all of the updates.  It will be on July 22nd - we don't have the registration link yet, but we will add it to this thread so that everyone here will get a notification.

There were also a few Summit sessions that shared some of the upcoming features, so I wanted to share that link as well.

• https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/review-and-approve-work/document-reviews-... 
• https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-blogs/adobe-summit-2025-recap-workfront-o... 

In my experience, when you convert a document that is linked through one of the integrations (SharePoint, Box, or OneDrive) to a proof, it essentially takes a snapshot of the file for the purposes of proofing. A user can still click the title of the linked document to go to the live file, but there's a different button to take the user to the proof itself. I can't say I'm enamored with the user experience.

Dang, that kind of defeats the purpose of using a "live link" ....

This is something that you could attempt with Fusion; however, I would be very hesitant to set this up if your creatives also upload documents that are reference files or things that aren't needed for approvals.

Yup, I've seen this. Fun fact: Adding someone to a proof workflow does not share the document with them. We suspect that when someone is added to a proof but doesn't have permission to view the document, Workfront has to make a decision of where to direct them upon exiting the proof, thus Documents.

Thank you! I had contacted support but couldn't figure out where the issues were. I will look into that to see if that was the case. 

Agree....the separate proofing app is a problem with reviewers who are unfamiliar with the process.  It's a big ask to download an app which can require some jumping through hoops if a company has permissions blocked on what you can add to your device and you may only use once.

We are long term PHQ - Proofing users and users only need to download the desktop app to replicate interactive functionality.  In my experience it is not required for static content.

I know it's not required for static content, but it is for email and website reviews if we want the reviewer to have an interactive experience with the content. I guess I'm not understanding your response. 

We experience this issue with gifs in our emails. Would love to hear the answer for this one. 

Interactive proofs are how we recommend. However, when I discussed amongst us moderators, we agreed that if the webpage is behind some sort of login (ex. a SharePoint page under SSO), it's likely not going to work well. I have users running their web builds and email through Litmus, but I have no personal experience with it.

This idea might be worth upvoting. Someone from product responded with a recommendation for looking into Frame.io.

This is quite a tricky one and it sounds like you've tried most of the things I would think of. One thing that comes to mind is the newest Fusion template that helps clean up Proofs on completed projects. I'm wondering if you could finagle it in a way to look for non-Active stages. Please let us know if you figure this out!

It has been a bit of a hurdle to figure this out, but will post a follow up if I can make some magic happen. Thanks, Monique!

I recommend connecting with support on this one.

I agree. I wish we had better reporting for proof as well. My leadership would like to know statistics around when a stage is activated, when a user opens the proof, and how long it takes them to approve. 

In various places of this thread are some links to what's coming for proof reviewing functionality. It sounds like some of your dreams may come true soon. Keep smashing the upvote buttons in the Ideas area of the community. If you want early access, check out the Unified Approvals functionality and contact your account manager to join.

I am also dying to know this! We often have a combo of internal and external reviewers who need to sign off on proofs!

Also interested in this topic.

We had to set up our external reviewers in Adobe Admin console and provision them for Workfront.  After this it seems to be working ok.

Each stage can have specific messaging and at any point you can also optionally send a message to everyone on a stage.

How do I set up specific messaging for each stage so that it automatically goes out when the stage is activated?

We frequently run into this also, the designer forgets to select the combo proof option and instead creates 2 separate proofs.  We would like a way to combine them when this happens.

On that same topic, is there a way to combine videos into one proof? So far, I haven't figured out how to do that.

I just tested it (and I asked Monique), and it's just not letting me do it.  Monique said there is something strange that happens to the file when she has tried.  For me, I'm not sure if the files were too big, but it's not even letting me Combine into the Single Proof. Sorry!

When you say "without the integration", do you mean without using the "Workfront Proof" interactive proof viewer (installed desktop application)?

I mean without the formal integration as seen here. We don't use the installed desktop Proof application.

You can move a proof, but not copy comments. Here are some functions that might help:

• You can print a proof summary that includes all the comments for a proof version.
• If you use proof versions, reviewers can look back at previous versions and the comments.

Hello!  I checked with Monique and there is not a native way to do this, but you should be able to do this via Fusion.  The trigger might be the submission of the request with multiple docs attached. Then the scenario would need to download the docs to a specific location, and then re-upload as a single proof in the same request.  It seems like it's doable, but you might need some Fusion expertise to build it.

In Setup, you can configure a default proof deadline and an automatic nagging notification. See the screenshot attached. I recommend configuring these settings regardless of what type of workflow you use.

If you haven't already, please submit this to Support. That's definitely a bug of some sort

I have to wonder if this is a feature of staging. If no one else has insight, I would submit a ticket to support to ask.

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