Finding Items in Updates

[MirandaRa1]

Hi All, Looking for some info on how everyone manages their updates, as I recently ran a survey with our workers. One of the problems that they are experiencing is (we are on the NWE btw): Updates/comments and search. Because departments put a comment in same place, it's hard to find the comment in big tasks. Also, searching option it's hard, I can't find straight away what I'm looking for. How do you handle this? I remember something about using the hash sign - #findsomethinglater - for example - to be able to reference this in a report...can this be done to 'find' things also? I also remember reading that Ctrl+F wasn't working too well in NWE, is that still the case? As system admin I am not using the project, and/or updates on a daily basis, so before I raise a training session, it would be great to get some feedback on how others are handling this? Thanks in advance! Miranda Rais

[BarryBu2]

There's a few options you can use to finesse this. The first is the difference between condition update and last update. Condition update is the text entered by the owner of the project/task. So if you're PM puts three paragraphs of project summary in an update and a team replies 'OK', the Condition Update will be the paragraphs and the Last Update will be 'OK'. Using condition update in exec reports may well stop your PM's from throttling team members that invalidate there Hemmingway aspirations 40 seconds after they post it. Alternatively, if you're looking for items to go on record consider creating an issue form and tying it to a request queue in your project template for things such as status report, contact record or even good old 'issue'. Instead of just typing a text update, they add the status report/contact record/issue and fill in details (perhaps in more than a single text field) and it's a record that can be sorted by date etc. You can even set the fields to 'write' to updates when they are edited so it's in both places. Finally, you can build a 'notes' report with prompts, embed it in a dashboard and make this visible at the project level through layout interface. The prompts allows the user to search for particular updates within a specific project. I guess you could do the same thing at a task level, but I've never seen an individual task with so many updates this is needed. Barry Buchanan - WMA Work Management Australia

[ElissaLa3]

Also, if you have Slack and use the Workfront + Slack integration, it's nice b/c once an Update is posted in Workfront and shared w/in Workfront, all the Users with the Slack integration will get the Updates to that thread w/out having to remember to tag everyone. Elissa Lazor Digital Transformation Consultant and Solutions Architect Austin, TX 281.772.3973