Hi Community, I'm facilitating some meetings with our users that currently use My Work - since Home will be the default with 2018.3 Just to clarify, Home will be the default for existing users (and new users) once the release goes live and they log in for the first time? And as a system administrator I would go into the layout template and revert back to My Work if needed? Thanks! Sydney Sydney Peterson Diversified Communications, Inc.
Hi Sydney, I just watched a video on the help site ("https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007952594?flash_digest=da4c85d095b89ea85259634774bcb3324ffd17c7#home-area-is-now-the-default" here ), and here's what I get from it: with 2018.3, Home will be the new default. Users can choose to go back to My Work (link shows on the bottom right hand side of the Home page), and switch back at will. As an admin, you can go into Layout Templates and select My Work as the default for any templates you may have. All that said, My Work is set to be deprecated in the 2019.1 release so you may want to get your users used to Home sooner rather than later. Anthony Pernice Healthcare Consultancy Group
Hi Anthony, I plan to meet with our work and plan level users to walk them through the home area between now and the customer preview stage of 2018.3. I'm not going to tell them that we can revert to My Work (unless of course there are legitimate concerns that will compromise workflow) I just wanted to make sure I understood what becoming the "default" meant for our existing users / layout templates. Thank you for clarifying! Sydney Sydney Peterson Diversified Communications, Inc.
Keep in mind that with 2019.1 Release, My Work will be going away altogether. Not sure if this affects your plans or not. Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.
Just so everyone else is aware, there is an issue with the new Home Calendar in that it doesn't show the detailed task blocks (duration from start to finish and hours per day) like the current My Work Calendar does.....it only shows the due dates and lets people plot out when they will work on things themselves. This is unaccaptable for us and so we don't want My Work to be taken away before the new Home Calendar is enhanced. Our users need to be able to see when they have been scheduled to work on Tasks...simple as that. I've been told that enhancements to the Home Calendar are planned to be released before My Work is removed....however the enhancements presumably won't be in 18.3 so they must be planned to be introduced in 19.1 in parallel with the removal of My Work. This is pretty risky for us and so we're hoping we are not left without a Home Calendar that works when 19.1 lands. David Cornwell
Yeah, it is interesting, they made the Calendar in Home so that the workers can plot out their own work and it isn't related to what the PMs or RMs do. They want to give more power to the worker to determine how they are going to work, which is okay in theory, but the reason we have a resource manager is because they don't work that way. I also wanted to note, that if you use Enterprise O365, the Outlook calendar sync is still having some issues. Not sure if that will be fixed by 18.3 or if that is going to be a 19.1 thing. Anthony Imgrund FCB
Definitely agree. The current functionality of the Home Calendar is also sort of hard to explain to users, I've found. "It's a calendar for YOU to organize your work however you want!"... but what they want is to be told when their task is due, not to decide for themselves. That information is available on the Task Details, but it is not readily apparent for the average user (even after training). For our users, at least, the expectation of a calendar within Workfront is not that it would be a blank slate to pencil things into, but more that it would be a dynamic schedule that is fed by active projects. Mike Perez Tailored Brands
Our users want a to-do list in their home area. They want quick visibility into what is ready and what is due when. Due to this an other constraints, we have not started rolling the new new home view out to users. I'm hoping Workfront will hear these concerns and act upon them before removing the existing My Work view. For what it's worth, I have yet to see the huge upside to this change and would prefer the option to keep the My Work view long term. Michelle Yard Manager, Marketing Operations Insperity Houston, Texas
It would be great if we could get an update from Product Management on the latest plans and timing for the replacement for the My Work Calendar functionality, specifically regarding how users will be able to see the full details of work that has been pre-planned by PMs and RMs. I think @Chandler Smoot is in charge of this area (sorry to drop you in it if you're not!) as he has answered before on another thread related to this topic. Thanks in advance for any updated info. David Cornwell
Hi Michelle, Your response intrigued me. For my users that want a to-do list, they switched over to the new Home right away, even when there were some huge issues with it. They hated the three different tabs and having to go an d check Work Requests all the time. They like it being one list and the ability to filter out the Not Ready. One thing I have heard though, when grouping by projects, the sorting of the tasks seems weird. Wish it was grouped by project and sort by date. But other than that, they are really happy with it. The ones not so happy are the ones that use the calendar because their RM resource contours. They have to go to one of their teams and the Working On calendar now which defeats the purpose of Home being a one stop shop for everything. Anthony Imgrund FCB
Anthony - Too bad the contouring doesn't automatically populate to the Home Calendar view. I do love that you can essentially contour your own work (so RM doesn't have to anymore) as you drop tasks and drag/shrink the time you are working on them each day, but yeah if the default of Home was to populate with the tasks and contouring into the calendar view and allow the user to tweak as necessary I think that would create a much better experience. Also if it could update in the RM view that might be easier for them as well. I know with some of my users, they don't pay attention to the contouring and end up working a little extra to hit due dates because they didn't start the project the day it was planned to be started. So that may solve that issue as well. Have you already put this into the Idea Exchange? Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.
Same as Michelle, our users like the existing My Work view and we have not started using the HOME view. We prefer to have the option to keep this view long term. Susan Chan Traffic Manager Ritchie Bros Auctioneers Susan Chan Ritchie Bros Auctioneers
Hi Susan, Can you please suggest what they cleam as benefit of using My Work instead of Home? Clearly Workfront made a huge effort to deliver much more value to Home (UI and functionalities). It's way more customizable than My Work and as I understood, My Work is going to be deprecated, so sooner or later they will have to adopt, so why convincing your users does not succeed? ImreMagyar VODAFONE Group
Hi Anthony, The bug issue with home is the lack of sorting and grouping options. For my team most projects do not run as planned, so we have to use the projected start date. Also if a task will take three weeks to complete and its grouped by Planned Completion that person will not see that task until they've opened that accordion. And the task remains in the Sept 23rd accordion even if it is Ready to Start. So my project owners were having to manually notify people when their tasks were ready to start. Why is there not an option to not group and just sort by Estimated Start Date, Projected Start Date, Planned Start date etc? My Work has tabs that make it easy to visually organize the work. It also allows each tab to be sorted by projected and estimated START dates. It also provides the necessary information without having to click on each task. Aileen Taylor Cell Signaling Technology
