End of Year in Workfront

[LauraRa1]

Hi It occured to me today that we may want to take some snapshots of Workfront as of December 31st. We will probably want to create some specific reports as well. I've raised the question with our super user group to get their feedback. I'd also like your feedback as to what we should be doing/what you do, seeing this is our first end of year. Thanks!

[EricLu2]

Hi: I think the best way to get a snapshot is to use the software from the AtApp Store: http://store.atappstore.com/product/workfront-snapshot/ You get the snapshot in a form that is readily usable. Thanks, Eric

[KarenRu]

Hi Laura, Just curious- why do you grab snapshots of your data? What is the use case for that? tks Karen

[LauraRa1]

Hi Karen I’m not sure at this point, we are only 7 months into Workfront but I have this hunch that we need to capture data at set point - in this case end of the year. There’s lots of data fields in Workfront that continually change and you cannot look back to see what it was at a certain date. Does this help? Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image003.png@01D24727.3C928E60]

[KarenRu]

Thanks- I'm new to WF also- we're only 2 months in! Tks Karen Karen Rutz | Director, Creative Services Alumni Affairs and Development | Harvard W 617.495.8183 The Harvard Campaign http://campaign.harvard.eduFind Harvard on: Facebook< ">http://www.facebook.com/Harvard> | Twitter< ">http://twitter.com/harvard> | LinkedIn< ">http://www.linkedin.com/edu/school?id=18483> | Google+< ">https://plus.google.com/+harvard/posts> | Instagram< ">http://instagram.com/harvardalumni>

[LauraRa1]

Thanks Eric, I’ll take a look! Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image003.png@01D24727.3C928E60]

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Thanks for suggesting our Workfront Snapshot solution, Eric. Laura (and Karen), yes, one way to use a Snapshot is to capture "what was going on" at a certain point in time within Workfront. You can then use our Snapshot Viewer for basic lookups, or some other third party reporting system (e.g. MS Access, Tableau, etc.) to build whatever-you-can-imagine reporting, including trending over time. Another use is data recovery. We have a number of clients who back up their Workfront environments every Friday night juuuuust in case, so that in the event of an unfortunate error (think "accidentally deleted my Helpdesk Queue"...true story; noting that it's preventable either manually or automatically using UberCalc ), we can then help them recover that data. Finally, the most sophisticated use of Workfront Snapshots is for datawarehousing. With that objectivein mind, we've added a Timestamp field to every table we capture so that each Snapshot can be loaded in an additive fashion. Companies who opt for this approach are often joining to other operational information in different systems and/or looking for operational trends in order to improve overall efficiency. Advanced stuff, but very cool! Regards, Doug

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Laura, Some reports agencies have asked me for at the end of a year are: Number of completed projects by client (which is Portfolio for us) Number of completed hours by client Number of completed projects by PM Number of completed project hours by PM (so not their timesheet but total project hours on projects they owned) Number of projects late by client (Where actual completion is greater than planned completion) Number of projects late by PM One report that compares Default Baselines Completion Date, Planned Completion Date, and Actual Completion Date.(Again by client and by PM) This one is not my favorite because it is just a long list of projects and I can't imagine them actually looking at it, but they always want it. We also do one that compares Estimate hours, Planned hours, and Actual hours but this is outside of Workfront as we do actual hours in SAP so build a report in SQL to compare those. Hope this was helpful.

[JasonMa]

One thing that we have, and I don't know how standard this is across the WF customers, is a Custom Refresh instance. We mainly use it during budget season so we can play with resources/budgets/etc. without worrying about its impact to production or getting wiped away every weekend in the standard sandbox. If you have one, you could always schedule a refresh for Dec. 31st (though they do the refresh manually and it rarely happens on the day we request) and then it will be frozen in time as of that date. Then you can do all your reporting over the next few months.