Ask Alex Shootman ANYTHING!

[NateBa]

UPDATE : The AMA videos with Alex Shootman are ready for your viewing pleasure! "https://community.workfront.com/page/alex-shootman-ama">Click here to check them out . Next week we are going to have a chance to sit down with the new CEO, Alex Shootman to do an "AMA" (Ask Me Anything). This is a chance for you to get to know who he is, what he's about, and what his plans are for Workfront. We'd love for you to submit any questions you'd like him to answer as a comment in this thread. We'll compile them and try to get as many answered as possible in the time we get with him. We're really excited he's so passionate about the Community that he requested for us to do this. We hope you take advantage of this opportunity to ask some good, thoughtful, insightful, questions! -Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at: natebagley@workfront.com

[AdamMe]

I've seen so many good and serious questions I have to ask!......if you weren’t in high tech what would you want to do....either now or dream type of job when you were growing up?!! (mine to be the starting relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants...it didn't work out.)

[DawnHa]

1^st question: Favorite country to visit and why? I 2^nd Vic’s questions, and ask further, with the system bugs / slowness and lack of response on issues affecting us, if you were in my position, how would you justify the investment in WF to my upper management? Or also, justify why we are using WF to my users! :) 3^rd: How can WF think differently about the releases? Example 1: I used to be able to report on reports being delivered. I used this to understand which reports are being sent daily, weekly or monthly. I use this information to find reports which I need to update the message info monthly. Also, it comes in handy if I am interrupted when making report changes to know what has been scheduled and what has not. While I appreciate the Send Report changes, I find the releases to be incomplete. After the release of Send Reports, I called to find out how to recreate my report and was told that I could not. This information also helps me notify others that have created reports with deliveries when there are WF issues. Example 2: Resource manager field. It appears that I can update each project 1 by 1 to add resource Managers, but I’m not clear why I cannot bulk edit this field. I would think that many users would want to update this field by Dept /group/Program (in bulk). Example 3: Usability / user experience of the timesheet. Lack of response by WF has lead us to develop our own code to highlight the line you are on (general hours is really hard to enter time on the far right when the text is on the far left) and ability to toggle collapse/expand of all projects, as well as highlight when time is entered incorrectly against Task Time. 4^th: I’ve used another system that allowed Admins to have full access to design the page the users see, so no more Overview or Custom Form, but one page with the WF fields or Custom fields that we need to see & use and in the order we need. Is WF considering this in the future? Lastly, WF Admin Training & Certification; this seems like a win-win, so I’m not clear why it not a priority. While the Admins do not work for WF, they are your biggest champions. Kind regards, Dawn

[SueWe]

1. What is your most critical target for improvement in your first year? 2. What do you believe will drive the success of Workfront over the next 5-years?

[CarolWo1]

What's your goal for Workfront in the next 6-12 months and what's your vision for the next 2 years?

[EricLu2]

Nate - There are myriad questions here. I've lost sight of how/when Mr. Shootman will be responding to some of these questions. Can you remind us what Mr. Shootman's plan for responding is? Thanks! Eric

[careyi]

What's your biggest offense - Email or Spreadsheets?

[RizwanaNa]

Thank you for this opportunity. What is the future growth prospects of workfront in the middle east? What is the plan for accommodating other languages (such as Arabic) and when is this expected? Workfront seems to be moving towards becoming a tool for marketing teams - is that true or will it continue to enhance its PM and reporting features? Rizwana Narvel Project Management Office National Technology Enterprises Company (NTEC)

[EricMa]

Hi, Alex. What are your plans to make the API more robust for your more sophisticated customers? For example, the current API is (still) not documented… ~Eric

[NateBa]

Eric, The Community team and I will be going through all the questions to compile them in a way that makes the most sense. Then later this week we'll be sitting down with Alex and recording his answers on video. His video responses will also probably be transcribed. We will publish the questions, the video responses, and the transcribed responses in a blog post here in the community for all to read. -Nate In Reply to Lucas Eric, MPM:

Nate - There are myriad questions here. I've lost sight of how/when Mr. Shootman will be responding to some of these questions. Can you remind us what Mr. Shootman's plan for responding is? Thanks! Eric

-Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[EricLu2]

Nate - Perfect. Sounds like a great plan. I look forward to seeing the results. I bet Alex can’t wait for the response of the assembled masses here, either ☺ Thanks! Eric

[AlexSh2]

Workfront Community - wow! When Nate suggested we do an 'open mike' for questions I had no idea that we would get this many great ones. Nate and I plan to sit down this week or next and do a video taped response and also post the transcription. There are so many good ones that if we can't get to them all in one take we will post a few to make sure we don't leave anything major unanswered. Thank you all for your engagement, it inspires me!

[DavidGu1]

We appreciate the opportunity to ask these questions! 1. What are your thoughts on current Workfront system performance and your plans for improvement? It was mentioned at LEAP that improvements are coming without specific timing attached. As general system speed & performance are integral to user adoption and long-term loyalty, I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts and approach concerning these issues. 2. What’s your philosophy on Quality Assurance testing a product before release? Do you have any future plans for the QA testing cycle Workfront does before and directly after releases? 3. What plans are there to enhance the "out of the box" reports to start including more targeted project management and resource management reporting information? Current standard reports don't always cut it and many reports have to be custom built from scratch with the support of consultant time because reporting features don't natively allow for things like "planned hours by job role vs. actual hours by job role,” "planned hours to date vs actual hours" and “projected variance at completion.” 4. What's your general philosophy on pushing and innovating vs. polishing a product? How do you strike a balance between "more/new/now" and refinement of the tools available? 5. What are your thoughts on the need for third party vendors to provide certain tools/features that Workfront doesn’t currently offer? Are there plans to learn from some of these vendors and incorporate certain features within the main WF product? Change takes time, patience and practice.

[CraigLa]

I would like to hear about your vision for Workfront as a communications platform. One of the most powerful aspects of Workfront is the ability to move project based communications out of e-mail and into the task/issue/project. That said, I feel like Workfront is caught somewhere in-between. Without rich text, inline images, the ability include tables it will never be an e-mail replacement. I feel like Workfront is well positioned to become a true communication tool but is simply lacking the features to get it there. Do you have any thoughts on moving further in the direction of truly replacing e-mail? (Side note, if Workfront could become Slack, complete with an app, but channels based on projects my dreams would be complete)

[JasonMa]

Since surprisingly no one else has asked it, I figured I would: Workfront has done an amazing job rolling out new features and functionality that marketing groups/firms can take advantage of as well as a strong branding effort via blogs/social media/etc. to position Workfront as the leader in marketing task management software. However, many of the organizations using Workfront are either primarily IT focused or IT-only users of the tool. In recent months, there was a heated thread on the Community forum around how Workfront intends to make IT shops feel the love and better balance enhancements for IT/general users versus marketing users. So, how will Workfront better focus on the IT user community to ensure they don't feel left behind?

[SkyeHa]

I'd like to hear if there are any plans to improve the process for requesting refinements and new features. Previous discussions on the community forum is starting to reveal what a siloed process this can be---in that, every sysadmin is on their own to passionately advocate (in an articulate way) for what they need. Compare this to the discussion forum where someone posts their feature request and half a dozen other users say "actually, I've never thought of that, but it's a pretty good idea, and I'll post a request too, and reference this thread". And compare both those to LEAP conferences where we have access to an actual product team and can advocate in person, or are allowed to glimpse their task list and vote on priority, or can talk to them about current development and change the direction of it.

[NateBa]

Hey everyone, THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTIONS! We will do our best to answer every question that has been submitted. I'm closing this thread now because we need to get these questions to Alex... but don't fret! We're going to continue to provide you with more opportunities to get engaged with Workfront down the line. This is just the beginning... -Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[NateBa]

Hey everyone! Thank you all for your submissions to the AMA interview with Workfront's new CEO , Alex Shootman! We spent time with Alex and CTO, Steve ZoBell answering questions by video this week, but some of the questions need a more detailed response than what Alex could provide by video. Alex wants to make sure we answer every question, so we're pulling in some of our Product and Customer Experience experts to help... so if your question didn't get answered in the vidos linked above, fear not! You will hear from us soon (if you haven't already). As always, let me know if I can help you with anything, and don't forget to check out Alex's AMA answers on Community. There is a lot to learn about Alex and his plan for Workfront. -Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at: