Workfront

lindselib · 1/17/25

I feel like I've looked into this before, but can't find my thread on it so asking the question fresh. Does anyone know how to control who pulls into the list of users when you go to @ mention someone in the updates section of a project/task/issue/etc.

The problem we are facing today is as an Ad Agency we have hundreds of clients we do work for. Those clients have absolutely no Workfront access, but we do add their emails to proofs for review. When we do so, it automatically creates them a Workfront account as an "External User."

Then when we are working in the system we then 1) have a risk to tag an external user, put them on a project, etc. 2) when we go to @ mention someone in the updates we have to filter through all the external users who we don't need to communicate with. IE I need to tag my coworker "Ashley Smith" but she is 10 users down in the @mentions after all our clients also named "Ashley." The "smart assignments" works well to keep us from dealing with this too much when we go to assign work, but there appears to be no "smart" functionality yet on the updates.

I would do just about any administration needed to sequester off these external users- but I can't find any way. Anyone have advice? If not I may submit an idea for it/or maybe to add AI to the updates so that I am getting shown first people I'm most likely to tag.

Thanks,

Lindsey

skyehansen · 1/17/25

If nobody ever has to tag one of these external accounts, I would probably just constrain all the other users to only see users in the primary company (this is a setting on the access levels), and see if that helps alleviate the issue.

View solution in original post

skyehansen · 1/17/25

If nobody ever has to tag one of these external accounts, I would probably just constrain all the other users to only see users in the primary company (this is a setting on the access levels), and see if that helps alleviate the issue.

lindselib · 1/17/25

Skye for the win as always! I did a quick test and that solved it. Because ProofHQ has a seperate contact currently for the user, it appears a user with the above setting applies doesn't see external users in updates, assignments, etc. but can still add them to proof. So this will work as long as ProofHQ exists I suppose!

The only people it doesn't help I think is those of us with administrative access since we see all the things- but I suppose I will continue suffering if I can alleviate the suffering of my people haha

skyehansen · 1/17/25

true. I personally have worked in companies that have had thousands of users, so I'm pretty used to seeing 10 Ashleys, and usually just tag in people by first typing in their last name to narrow it down faster (of course, then if you have to tag in a Smith, you're similarly in trouble). So instead of typing in "Ashley" I might have typed in "Smith" -- hoping Ashley shows up as the first in the Smith list.

KatherineLa · 1/21/25

This is worth trying to fix, we've definitely had a couple cases where an internal employee tagged an external customer from the wrong customer in a discussion by accident. I've seriously considered branching access levels so only people who work with external customers can even see them in the list.