A short list of things to do before leaving one's WF Admin position?

[JohnO_]

Hi all, I've mentioned elsewhere that I am going to be leaving my position here at GAF as "The Workfront Guy‚Ñ¢." I'm going to be moving into a position handling Bristol Myers-Squibb's Workfront instance. God willing, I'll be starting this new position on the 17th of December. (I've posted an ad for the freelance position replacing my job here at GAF elsewhere in the New York user group's message board.) I've started putting away all of my things and have started training people on all of the idiosyncrasies of our instance of WF. I have my own list of things that need to be done before my last day. However, since I'm always concerned about blind spots, I'm curious as to what other folks in my position have done when moving onward. I really like the people here at GAF. So, although I cannot stay here any longer, I just want to be sure that they're all set up. And I've already told my supervisor that she'll likely be getting e-mails from me on how to optimize the GAF instance when I start at BMS. When it comes to information, I'm an over-sharer. :D Any guidance and wisdom would be most appreciated. Thanks! John O'Sullivan GAF...and then, Bristol-Myers Squibb

[SkyeHa]

hey John O', congrats on your move! I took a quick squint at your ad. In situations like this, I think what is most helpful is the support network you leave behind. Workfront and its users often advocate for some sort of governance committee or SME network and when the admin role transitions it's this group of people who will be of most help. I am not sure if you have any sort of core team / committee set up but anyone who was instrumental in helping to implement your system and understands why you did things the way you did, is a potential asset to your successor (e.g. a project team grows into a core team and eventually is a governance committee). This includes the people you're training on the vagaries of your system.These two groups of people will be most helpful from a "developing training docs" perspective. "Development of Workfront reports" -- you can help this along by getting your existing reports in order. Do you have a naming convention, have you described them adequately? Are they being used? (usage report) Are you the only guy doing reports, if not then all the other report creators can be on board to help NewGuy out. Any roadmap you have from your steering committee about this is also helpful. "Provide support / troubleshoot issues" -- good structure around these two expectations are a good thing to leave behind. If you have a Workfront request queue that addresses this (and custom forms that ensure you get all the required answers), and good reports that show status (what needs to be done), this is a good thing to train your supervisor to look at and follow up with NewGuy on. You didn't mention it, but I would build in an expectation of refinement of process. If you only launched less than a year ago, it's time for your users to go back and confirm this is truly how they do things. Often users don't know what they don't know until faced with it. Now that they have been facing it for months, it's a good time to go through it with NewGuy and get a New Perspective. Caveat: If the person that is replacing you is completely new to the Workfront world, they will benefit from Ascent classes, being sent to bootcamp, the Leap conference, and after a few months, may also see benefit from some number of remote consulting hours. (Remote consulting hours may also be a useful stopgap if the search for a New You runs long) Check in with your supervisor to make sure that they are aware of all these opportunities, or at least prepared to workaround this if funding doesn't exist. Also set up a structure for regular cadence calls with your CSM. Best wishes on your transition! -skye

[NRYNR]

Hi John, I'd suggest creating a second system administrator account and login as that user from now until your last day. It'll sort of force you to go back to your other admin account and fix things so your new account can perform all the activities. Then you can hand ownership of the new account off to your replacement. --Narayan

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi John, If a picture is worth a thousand words, investing an hour or two and recording yourself (eg with GoToMeeting, Zoom, Jing, etc) as you navigate around Workfront Memory Lane and free-associate your thoughts (while they're Top Of Mind) could be Priceless for your successor...or your future self, should you be coaxed back into conversation at some point. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[MelindaLa1]

1. Run a report on reports and look for any reports that are run as you. Ideally these should run as a generic admin and/or integration admin to prevent this kind of thing. But I've seen administrators accounts shut off Friday and a bunch of all my reports are blank issues on Monday. 2. If you are using SSO, make sure that your replacement knows when the certificate is set to expire. How to access that certificate and has SSO only setting turned off. SSO will break occasionally and the admin must be able to get in and fix it. I like to put a calendar reminder about a month before the certificate is set to expire to bug IT for a new certificate. 3. Look for any approvals or routing rules that are set for you personally and reset to a team/group or replacement 4. Review your personal reports, views, filters and groupings and see if any should be shared with all admins. Melinda Layten Technical Project Manager - API and Integration Workfront

[JasonMa]

Two more to think about: -If you are listed as the Primary Support Contact with Workfront, be sure to have them update that to someone else. -If you have any APIs set up, be sure you didn't use your account to allow the API access. Jason Maust McGuireWoods LLP

[JohnO_]

Thank you all for your help-a few blind spots were seen and addressed. :D As far as Admin stuff, my supervisor will temporarily have the mantle of SysAdmin until GAF brings on a new Workfront person. It will be weird to see my picture go to black-and-white on Friday afternoon... John O'Sullivan GAF

[William--]

We recently added a system/bot account, which can serve several purposes. We generated an API key that is attributed to the bot; so actions performed by the API can be differentiated between automation versus a user action. And, the API keys don't require updating if an admin leaves. In an environment with multiple admins, each of them can "log in as" the bot account when performing system-wide work of any nature. This effectively centralizes ownership of widely-distributed or system objects like reports/calendars/dashboards, views/filters/groupings, documentation, and especially objects where admins might want to reserve manage rights to themselves but not have outright ownership - request queues, select portfolios, etc. This allows you to keep all your email notifications enabled without getting flooded, because you can pick and choose which objects you want to own and which you want the bot account to own, so you only get notifications for your objects. And lastly, it can be used for making announcements that appear to come from the system and not from an admin. It costs an extra license and takes some time to setup; but for larger instances it's worthwhile. William English Disney Destinations, LLC (Marketing Content Management)

[SamanthaWi1]

We recently has the "original" system admin leave the company. She was the person that created all of the calendars that people across the company use. When i deactivated her, those calendars were no longer visible to anyone. I have been sitting here for many months trying to figure out how to correct this. We contacted WF and everything is working as designed, so we just created NEW calendars (made by me) and shared with all of the original people. This was the only work around i found for when a system admin leaves. luck in your new job. Samantha Williams GameStop Corp.