Forms and reporting

[JeffMc1]

I have the need to be able to present a status report to my leadership. On this status they want project name, update and next steps forward, issues, Status and owners. I would like to be able to update the "update" section to have these differnt sections listed for the project managers to fill out and then be able to export it out to a report. Can this be done and if so can someone point me in the right direction? I have attached a copy of the form I am having to send out to get the Project Managers to update. I hate having to get them to give me information twice. Jeff McDaniel OU Medicine

[KatherineLa]

Hi Jeff, I find that a lot of 'can I do this' comes down to 'am I recording this somewhere in WF?' and if the answer is 'No' - then can it be? If I'm interpreting correctly that the Project column in your report equates to Projects in Workfront, then I'd start with a Project-level report and call in the other columns from there. Most of those fields look like pretty common canned fields already, assuming I'm interpreting your use of them correctly. For any fields I didn't already have, I'd look at creating a custom form to attach to projects to capture it. You could attach it to all your templates so it's inherited automatically. If I wanted my PMs to be able to give me the data directly, I'd create report that mirrors this PDF and share it with each of them, setting it to localize to their projects only and then set a deadline of 'Update your Next Steps columns by X date each week'. The version of the report you use could strip off the individual localization to show everyone's work together for your leadership team. As long as the field on the custom report allowed their input, they should be able to update it directly from the report itself instead of having to open every individual project one by one. And if none of that is English, let me know and I can try and mock up some screenshots. Good luck, Katherine Katherine Stibley

[BarryBu2]

Katherine is spot on. If you enter it all in the updates section, it's one big blob of text, not discrete components. When converting the status report into a form, you could create a project level form which is easier maintenance. The downside is there isn't really a 'history' as such. Each time the status report is updated, it overwrites the previous status report. Alternatively, you could create it as an issue report, and in your project templates add an issue queue using the form. The issue would have a status, so you could do an issue based report based on the category (i.e. form) and the status. PM's need to 'close' their previous status report and file a new one. I'm sorry if that's a bit densely packed. Let me know if you want me to explain further. Barry Buchanan - WMA Work Management Australia

[KatherineLa]

Building on this again, I realized there's a key learning here that might help you and your team. When you start wanting to collect more data in Workfront than previously, you may get push-back from your PM team saying 'I manage 50 projects at once, I don't have time to go open them all up and update these forms for you every week, I just want to fill out the old PDF.' And that feedback is entirely valid. The key thing about Reports in Workfront is that they themselves can be used to update data on a custom forms, without ever opening the project/task/etc - regardless of where that form is actually housed. I've been trying to get my PM team to think about Reports as very pretty real-time Excel sheets instead of just static data with some success. For example, the screenshot here is a Project-level custom form that captures some basic data we use for client reporting. Nothing particularly special, but it's repeated on dozens of projects and certainly not realistic to open each one to make the updates. So we don't. That client team has a Report that shows all of those fields as columns, and they can click into each one to directly edit in-line as shown in the second screenshot - just like they would have in the old world of disconnected Excel sheets. If you have common language you want them to use, or a set of pre-canned responses, you can control that in the Custom Form as well. For example, in my environment 95% of projects have a particular amount for several of those fields shown, so I pre-populated that when I attached the Custom Form to the templates. My team can update it for the 5% that need it, and otherwise ignore it, reducing their data entry needs. Figuring out those process improvements can be a big part of getting positive reinforcement behind the change management requests. Katherine Katherine Stibley