Example Communication of New Home Worksplace Changes?

[ChristinaJay]

Has anyone sent any communications about the upcoming change from worklist to the New Home Workspace to their users?

Specifically, looking to make them aware of the change, offer to answer any questions, and to inform them not to use it until we provide more information. (in a nicer way, of course)

@AmyYo1 - any contributions?

[-JC]

Would appreciate this information as well. We want to disable Priorities for now as we have some issues with it both as an offering and in terms of how our users work. However, we can't hide the left-hand navigation bar if we disable Priorities at the system-wide level. How do we professionally say "please ignore this bar on the left that suddenly appeared, we can't get rid of, and has no use to you"? 

[KatherineLa]

"For our curious explorers, you may notice this new sidebar appearing on the left side of your screen. That is a landing spot waiting for new features that have yet to launch, and is intentionally blank at this time." if you plan to hide Priorities entirely.

OR

"For our curious explorers, you may notice this new sidebar appearing on the left side of your screen with this new feature icon shown. The Priorities option shown there should be considered a feature preview only, as it is not quite ready for prime-time. Additional documentation and training will be coming soon, stay tuned for more info. You are welcome to take a peek to see what's coming, but we are not providing support for it at this time."

[-JC]

This is gold - thank you kindly @KatherineLa! I appreciate that you thought of both options (hiding or not hiding Priorities).

[KatherineLa]

I'm planning a bit of both. I've got a few smaller groups of highly technical folks that always want the new toys. They'll give great feedback, so they'll get to keep it. Everyone else will get it hidden until I've had a chance to learn it better and get documentation ready myself. 

[-JC]

I couldn't find a way to enable/disable for certain users; only at the system-wide level. How did you enable it only for specific groups?

[KatherineLa]

Well that throws a wrench in my plan! I had seen demos where it was selectable from the waffle menu and I guess I assumed feature-parity to be able to turn it on/off for individual layout templates. (Which in my instance generally correspond to our groups.)  You are correct, that is not supported, at least at this time. I had seen that we couldn't customize it, which made sense but hadn't seen notes until now that said it was also a fully global setting.

Instructions at the very bottom. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/basics/home/use-home-area/move-from-legac...

[-JC]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news! Very frustrating. I did submit feedback via the "Give feedback" button on the Priorities page in Preview, mentioning that we don't want to push this feature out to our users yet and want a way to disable the entire left-hand nav bar. I received a response quickly asking to elaborate on why we didn't want to push it to our users yet, so it does seem like feedback is being willingly accepted.

I would encourage everyone here to submit any feedback there if you have any! 

[KatherineLa]

With gleeful credit to Copilot for getting me started, here's the current draft of the announcement I'll be sending shortly. 

Dear Team,

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the new Workfront Home Page on October 17th, 2024!  This enhancement is designed to provide a more flexible and customizable space to focus on what matters most to you and your individual ways of working.

Key Features of the New Home Page:
In-Line Uploads/Comments: Make updates, and upload documents directly from most widgets, eliminating the need to repetitively open projects to navigate around
Customizable Widgets: Tailor your Home Page with widgets that track your most important tasks, issues, requests, and approvals.
Streamlined Management: Easily manage your work with features that allow you to update statuses, log time, and add updates directly from the Home Page.
Enhanced Focus: Filter your work based on due dates and priorities to stay on top of your tasks.

Rest assured, this new feature does not take away any custom reports or dashboards you have built with us over the years. This enhancement replaces ONLY the Work List page functionality.

To help you get started, we have attached a PowerPoint deck with some walk-through slides of new enhancements for you to explore. This deck includes widget-by-widget guides and tips to make the most out of the new Home Page features.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to the Workfront Support team via our Request Queue. We are here to help you make the most of this exciting new feature!

[Kiersten_K]

@ChristinaJay 

We moved our team over in August. These were my communications to my team in July and September.

JULY COMMUNICATION: 

Workfront will be retiring the current Home area sometime this year and we will be moving to the new Home experience in August (sneak peek attached).

Over the last several weeks, a group of beta users has been trying out the new interface with their day-to-day work. We gathered their feedback and insights to ensure the most optimal user experience prior to launching new Home to all users.

Details below with additional context and timing of next steps.

• Why are moving the New Home experience now?
• We want to ensure users can become familiar with the new experience prior to peak Holiday work starting in September. Workfront has not yet confirmed the official date on when the current Home will be retired and we want to avoid any risks and disruptions to our users and their work.
•  Who is impacted?
• Any user that is currently using the Home area for their work (completing tasks, reviewing proofs, etc.)

• When will training occur?
• 7/30 & 7/31
• *If you are unable to attend the session, a recording will be provided as well as a resource guide. Open Door sessions will be made available for additional support once we go live.

• When will begin using the New Home experience?
• We will be turning on the new home experience on 8/5 for all users.

SEPTEMBER:

As previously mentioned, Workfront will be retiring the old Home experience in October. Effective October 17th, the new Home experience will become the default for all users.

If you are still using the old Home, I highly recommend transitioning to the new Home before then to minimize any disruptions to your daily work. Please leverage open door sessions or reach out to me directly to schedule another meeting time if you need any help.

Additional Tips:

I created a custom training guide that spoke to all the benefits and features available and what to use/not use so I did not include those in the above communications. Users received after the training sessions and guides are available in WF dashboard.

After 30 days of using the new home, I surveyed my users to see how it has been going using the new home. I wanted to gather the feedback to generally see how the the team liked the new home and collect any insights on things they still need to be able to do their jobs. I worked with some team members to make some adjustments to their views and columns as needed. We also had some users move over to using dashboards instead of using the new home because of missing functionality in new home.

I am planning to send a simple communication this week that they will see a new nav bar on the left side that will include future features, but they are currently not usable for our team yet based on what is available.

I hope these help. 

[AmyYo1]

I am happy to share a sample of my communications to those interested - documentation and emails. ayost@athene.com. 

[JessicaBCrum]

@AmyYo1 I would love to receive them. My email is v-jesbryant@microsoft.com

[ChristinaJay]

Thanks everyone - you are awesome!

Our team gave up on the worklist feature many moons ago and mainly work from dashboards. 

I was hopeful that we can transition to the workplace but we're running into the following problems:

-  Inability to customize columns beyond system columns - for instance we like to have a calculated column that provides the first 150 characters as well as the name and date of the update.  "Last note text" does not work, as it does not wrap or provide that info.
-  Columns that are available are not allowed to be edited - i.e. you can do Converted Request ID, but not Converted Request Name.

-  Areas seem to get error messages, or tasks seem to go missing.

- Overall crashing

[Richard__Carlson]

This might be outside the scope of your question but what helped for me was logging in as individual users an design a basic user dashboard.  I had to basically do it over and over as I logged in as each individual user - not ideal.

This allowed me to specify a basic experience from which users could opt to build upon.  In our instance it was not completely realistic to expect all of our users to recreate a similar experience for themselves by adding and arranging widgets by themselves.