Classic -> New Experience Nightmare

[NRYNR]

I was losing sleep over this six months ago when I tested things, but had hopes the experience would have improved. After some testing, we're finding that New Experience pages load 5-6 times slower than in Classic. Try to CTRL+ CLICK an open more than one tab at a time and things get even slower. We've all become quite accustomed to pages loading quickly when popping out into new tabs. But speed isn't the only problem. I'm also getting trapped in iFrame hell where the focus of the cursor is constantly grabbed by each report on the dashboards we use. So getting to that last report at the end of the dashboard is quite an interesting ride. We also use the "Allow embedding of Workfront in an Iframe" feature, which still loads Workfront in Classic for some reason. Perhaps things are better for the users with super high-speed fiber internet connections, but a huge part of our work force is remote with varying internet speeds. However, Classic is fine even when in the most remote places with just a single bar on a Verizon MIFI.

So what gives? Now that Workfront is an Adobe product, perhaps it's time to reconsider kicking Classic to the curb. There's not one feature we NEED in New Experience, yet we're seemingly being forced to use it because of all the features customers WANT.

Is anyone else dreading the day they have to move everyone over? For those of you who have already switched, do users simply normalize working at a much slower pace? Is leadership okay with productivity declining? Am I the only one who finds the experience to be a complete disaster?

• Dashboards ~25 Seconds to Load vs. 5 seconds in classic
• Dashboards - Every report is an iframe with scroll bars, grabbing the focus of the cursor if there's a pause resulting in endless scrolling.
• Issue ~30 Seconds to load instead of < 5 seconds in classic.
• Program ~20 Seconds to load
• Project ~30 Seconds to load instead of < 5 seconds in classic.
• Task ~20 Seconds to load overview instead of < 5 seconds in classic
• iFrame - When loading Workfront in an iFrame, it still loads in Classic... confusing.
• Custom Forms Report - We're no longer able to edit forms from a report. Once edit is clicked, navigation takes us to Setup, a huge productivity killer for a team of >5 editing forms all day long.

[KellieGa1]

I've noticed the same thing. Sometimes I have to refresh report pages 4-5 times before they actually load.

[jboston]

Hi Narayan, thank you for your feedback. The experience you and your users are having is a high priority for us, and we consider each piece of feedback deeply and thoughtfully. No customer should be losing sleep over this, and if you are, let's chat about some of the improvements we're already making and some of your feedback in more detail. Some of what you mentioned regarding iFrames is already being addressed as part of a top initiative.

For the performance numbers you are seeing, this is indicative of an issue that needs further investigation with our Support team. As you suggested, those extremely high page loads are most likely due to network requests being blocked, and we would like to investigate further the specific configuration in your instance. As a best next action, we will have your CSM and account executive reach out to you on this topic.

[NRYNR]

Well Josh, I'm actually more interested in hearing from other customers on this topic, which is why I posted to the community instead of Support or a CSM.

Doesn't this all boil down to the cost of maintaining and supporting Classic? Doesn't Adobe have some extra cash laying around that they can fork over to at least delay this until the issues are fully sorted out? I'm only interested in helping you all arrive at the right thing to do for the customer.

[NRYNR]

Josh, first of all, I'd like to say that if I didn't love the Adobe Workfront product and believe in it so much, I wouldn't have even bothered to post this. But the synergy we have occurring at Truist will suffer terribly if we're forced to migrate, as I've been instructed to do by the end of this calendar year. Our merger of equals and Client Day One are just around the corner in February, leaving me with no options other than to bring the facts to the surface so we can make the best decisions, not only for Truist, but for the Workfront community as a whole. We don't need to confirm the problem anymore. It's here, it's now, and we need to know what Adobe Workfront intends to do regarding the forced migration to New Experience. I probably have greater than 50 business owners, who I am going to switch over to New Experience within the next month so they can determine the impact to their end users, requesters, project managers and report/dashboard viewers alike. Job aids, web sites, desktop video recordings, some with audio, powerpoint presentations, and other materials will all need to be updated. Some of these updates, will need to undergo formal intake, impact assessment evaluations, planning, coordinating changes with end users, and announcing as tracking of all this is now mandatory, governed, and often required per regulatory guidelines.

I've learned a thing or two through this process, and some things are simply unacceptable. Forcing your customers to change to a less-desirable and completely different product is unacceptable. We need your confirmation that we can remain in Classic until the product performs well and on our timeline, when we are ready, not when you tell us to be ready. It just doesn't work like that. Thank you for addressing this soon, as the clocks are ticking, and the sleep among us Classic users is suffering, I guarantee it.

Regards,

Narayan

[NRYNR]

Hey Josh, just so you know...this is how my project is going to switch over to New Experience. Does anyone else have a project they're trying to plan for the migration? I've had one too long and I'd really like to delete, not close, but permanently delete it today.

[MikeHa1]

I have been experiencing similar lag times. I had actually put in a support ticket, but there was no resolution form it. The delay/lag times seem to be intermittent..

[CalvinFold]

@NRYN R - inactive‚, I've had the same general experience as you and @Mike Haleas‚. Ticket gave vague "we know, we're working on it." Other posts to the community boil down to "your IT must be blocking something."

Except…my IT is always telling me that WF is not following industry practices (email notifications are a big one here) and is just expecting too many concessions. So I haven't even considered chasing-down that ghost; it will be long and tedious and alot of finger-pointing. It will involve diving into the weeds since we've done all the documented whitelisting. If it's IT-related, it's going to be some minutia of settings that WF will say to change but IT cannot or will not because of security or knock-on effects.

Personally, I wonder if the code is too bloated and simply causing drag on the page loads, and WF can't see it because their test environment is too ideal (fast inter/intranet, local servers, fast computers, etc.).

*shrug*

[JillAc]

I'm going to jump in on this too. Definitely slower page loads across the board, but also equally frustrating are pages that don't reload at all -- in Classic when you switched from Scheduling tab to Tasks (for example) the Tasks would refresh, and now you have to manually refresh to see the changes to the schedule that you made.

[NRYNR]

Kevin, you can always do what I did to rule out the network by connecting directly to your instance from outside the network with local admin credentials, an ability you should have anyway to ensure you can regain control of the instance should your Single Sign-On settings fail/need to be fixed. https://yourdomain.my.workfront.com/login and then you'll be directly connected from your computer to Workfront's server with no VPN or network between. At this point though, why waste your time? We know the truth, that this isn't a customer network or instance configuration issue.

[CalvinFold]

We don't use SSO, and since I am working from home and off the VPN, I can already confirm…not much change.

[Christina_Jarosz]

I agree with Kevin here - no change with removing the VPN and using a personal PC. The issue is still there, just as bad, just as tedious.

[RandyRoberts]

NWE is a beta pet project at best. Definitely not ready for prime time. I've been complaining about the latency and plain old load failures for some time.

I was told to open a ticket, haha. Like my support rep could actually do something about it.

Very disappointing.

[JohnWe1]

We are experiencing the same performance issues since we started using the new experience. Lag times have definitely increased. I agree with Mike. They are intermittent. Lately its been bad.

[ChrisBudgen]

Same here, we have roughly 1k users and have started with a POC, the feedback was: better design, super slow (especially if you have more than 100 items in a list and some calculated columns) and there are a lot of inconsistencies within NWE. E.g. the user edit and create modals are still Classic, filter/view/grouping selections have a different UI depending on the object, ...

[NRYNR]

A common suggestion is to reference an existing ticket when there is a larger problem at hand. A ticket has been raised expressing Truist's inability to migrate to New Experience at this time. You can reference the case at https://one.workfront.com/s/case/5004X00001aSAWkQAO/new-experience-migration-plans-failed to help Adobe Workfront Support better understand the scope of the problem.

[ManuelBa]

The very slow NWE has been discussed several times here in the forum; combined with the numbers provided by @NRYN R - inactive‚ I‚Äòd say we can call it a fact that it is considerably slow and annoying for anyone using Workfront regularly. I resign from creating support tickets here as it’s a waste of time.

Regarding the inconsistency of NWE and Classic: I have the impression we got rid of occasionally seeing the classic one after we entirely and irreversibly switched to the NWE (‚Äî> support ticket). Thus, the issue seems to be a result of the hybrid situation. Please be aware that we didn’t manage to migrate layout templates and created new ones for the NWE.

[NRYNR]

It's a One that needs to be flipped back to a zero. It can be done. it should be done. But will it be done? Ooh the suspense. Tick Tock...Tick Tock...

[Christina_Jarosz]

Interesting thought - we did this, converted everything, 'wiped' our instance of Classic and yet.....

...Classic still returns to our instance. WF tells us 'not to worry about it'.

[ManuelBa]

After a lot of bad news, a small consolation: our users like the NWE design better…

[CalvinFold]

Yeah, our users like the design too, though some wish it was a bit more compact and space-efficient vertically.