External users are not allowed to upload documents to a request yet there is no easy way to turn off that feature so they don't try?

[JillAc]

This is my outrage of the day about Workfront, which are really piling up recently. The only way to stop showing external users the option to upload a document, a feature THEY CANNOT USE AND GET AN ERROR IF THEY TRY is to create separate request queues for them and turn it off. It means duplicating and managing and administering double the number of request queues because of something that ought to either have an option to choose who sees the feature -- or it should programmatically be hidden for users who cannot access it.

What are other people doing to skip and dance around this ridiculous thing that is ruining my day?

[skyehansen]

are you talking about when they submit a request? Can you arrange for the "add documents" box to show up at the bottom of the forms and the last line on the form just says "if you're an external user, do not upload a document"?

[JillAc]

Ok yes I can do that, I hadn’t thought of it but now that I am calmer it is a great solution. Thank you!

[skyehansen]

you're welcome, and ... I feel you (if that helps). Users who are going to trigger an error shouldn't see the thing that will cause this error. Having said that... this workaround, and putting in an occasional innovation lab request is the best we can do at the moment. If you do the innovation lab please respond in this post and I'll be sure to vote for it :)

When you put in the one liner, please feel free to put a section break on top of it in all caps -- whatever it takes to get your users' attention. :)

[JillAc]

Trying to figure out exactly who can and cannot upload a document to a new Request. Is there documentation about this so I can figure out who I am talking to in order to warn them that they can’t use the upload document that they are looking at? Is it based on license type? Which license types are blocked? Is it just Requestor? Or also Reviewer? How does the system know the difference between an Internal Requester and an External Requester? Ironically, the blocked people are Requestor license ‚Äì the exact people who are blocked from functionality. This article doesn’t mention any limitations, and, as usual, figuring out who has access to what in Workfront is a bizarre m√©lange of obscurity https://one.workfront.com/s/document-item?bundleId=the-new-workfront-experience&topicId=Content%2FMa... This screen shows “External” as a license type but I don’t see that as an actual option in my instance https://one.workfront.com/s/document-item?bundleId=the-new-workfront-experience&topicId=Content%2FAd...

[skyehansen]

External is a license type that you can't make more of. So you might see it in your list of access levels, but there's only one. My usual recommendation is to not have any external license users (there's a way to switch it off in the system, else you would have to run a report and convert them to a real user of some other type whenever you find them).

If your blocked people are requestors of some type and you don't have any reason to block them from uploading files, you should edit their access level to allow this. i.e. to answer your question above, it would be based on access level, not license type. Our requesters are definitely allows to upload files but obviously this will vary from one company to the next.

And we only have one type of requester access level -- any change made will affect all requesters. If you have internal and external requesters and they are seeing different things, someone must have decided a particular requester set should not be allowed to upload files.

[JillAc]

Thanks for this. I don’t think I have any External Users under this definition. I think I need to get on the phone with Support who are leading me down potentially the wrong path, if what you are saying is correct. Thanks!

[JillAc]

To close off this issue that I raised, the problem was that I named this group of people with a Requestor License as “external requestor” which made Support think it was an External license ‚Äì something I don’t even have access to or know what it is but is a status for someone who has no access at all. Turns out you can turn on documents for each license type via the Access Levels in Setup. Problem solved without weird workarounds.