Adding more than one Program to a Project

[emilyn63113665]

Hi there, Wondering if there's a way to add more than one "Program" to an individual "Project." I work at a performing arts organization and we often need to create one piece of content like an advertisement that promotes two ore more different concerts that are categorized under two different concert series (which we've assigned as a "program"). Is there any way to assign more than one program to a project? Thanks for your help! Emily Neveu San Francisco Symphony

[keegan_oconnor]

Hi Emily, My understanding is that each Project can be linked only to a single Program. I didn't find that information on any of the support pages about linking Projects to Programs, but there was a brief mention in this article about "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000586214">Collections : Understanding Collections A collection is a list of objects that are linked to another object. You have the following two relationships between objects in Workfront: A one-to-one relationship : One object can be linked to only one other object at a time. For example, a project can only be linked to one portfolio at a time. A one-to-many relationship : One object can be linked to several other objects at a time. For example, a project can have multiple tasks. In this case, the list of tasks forms a collection for the project. Unfortunately, I don't have a strong recommendation for how you could handle the types of projects you're describing, if the project needs to be incorporated into two distinct Programs. I'm interested to hear what suggestions other people have, though. Keegan O'Connor Green River College

[SkyeHa]

well... I'm not super helpful but I always tell users that if they need to put a project into two programs, then they might need to revisit how they define programs. :) So yeah, there is not a way to put a project in two programs and if this often happens you might want to revisit that. That said, if you OCCASIONALLY need to work around it, I would suggest truly figuring out everything you need to achieve by having a project in two different programs and the solution needs to speak to this intent. For example, if both programs require a the same ad made. Maybe in this case, one program (X) has the full project (Project Name "Ad" and all the tasks to make an ad), and the other program (Y) contains a copy of the project (Project Name "Ad from Program X") with only one task in it "deliver second set of ads to second concert hall" and the predecessor points back to the task in project "Ad" -skye

[KirkDu]

We support a lot of different brands and sometimes we work on something that covers more than one. Our "brands" are set up under Program/Portfolio, but we also have a custom field created that duplicates that list of brands. That allows us to include more than one brand (custom field). We also sometimes roll up multiple projects from different brands into a single campaign. Kirk Duke WEX NA Fleet

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hello Emily, The other folks here are spot on. You can only have a project live inside a single program. I like to use the analogy of a file cabinet: The cabinet itself is a portfolio. You can have many cabinets all over. Programs would be the drawers inside the cabinet. And projects would be the folders inside the drawers. Finally, tasks and issues would be the papers inside the folders. Note you can't have the same exact task in more than 1 folder, can't have the same project in more than 1 program, but you can have a project live inside a drawer or even at the bottom of the cabinet, but it can't be in 2 places, either. I hope this analogy helps! Thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[emilyn63113665]

Awesome thank you for all the suggestions and analogies! I'll play around with it! Emily Neveu San Francisco Symphony

[VicAl]

Love that analogy Dustin!

[JasonMa]

For what it's worth, to play devil's advocate, I absolutely agree that there are times that projects belong in more than one Program and is something I feel is limiting in WF. For example: A large IT organization could be running dozens (or hundreds) of projects that have dependencies with each other. So, let's say you have one Program (run by the Infrastructure team) that is "Infrastructure Cloud Migration" that is tracking multiple projects for migrating servers, applications, etc. to the cloud. However, there is another Program run by the Application Team, "Digital Customer Platform 2.0" made up of several mini-projects running at the same time. Now, let's say one of the individual projects the organization is doing, "Migration to Exchange Online" is clearly part of the Infrastructure Cloud Migration Program but is also a key component to making the mail functionality of the new Digital Customer Platform 2.0 work, then that project probably should be tracked as part of both Programs. As a stakeholder in either program, I will want to see that progress of that project in my Program's dashboard. Now, the concern (and why WF probably doesn't do this) is that you don't want to double count the financials, but realistically that Exchange project is part of both Programs. Now, I fully acknowledge you can handle this with custom forms as a way to flag some projects to appear on dashboards of Programs they aren't native to with a custom report...but it would still be nice if you could dual home projects. Jason Maust McGuireWoods LLP