Give External Access to Workfront

[ChristaLe1]

Hi - we are looking to give access to folks external to our company so they can provide status updates and be assigned tasks to specific projects. I woud like some ideas about how to best implement this solution. Currently our configuration is pretty wide open, meaning everyone can see everything. Thanks Christa Levine | IT Project Manager, PMP t: 510.683.2122 c: 408.772.2339 "http://confluentmedical.com/" confluentmedical.com

[SkyeHa]

I'm not sure what you're asking, so allow me to give a little general perspective. normally, in order for you to be assigned a task in Workfront, you would need to have a Worker license. * If you're willing to pay for more licenses you'd just assign the external people as Workers and train them as you normally train your internal folks. Otherwise, Reviewer or Requestor licenses are the way to go. * If your company structure or budget structure doesn't allow for random folks to be assigned a Worker license, our solution has been to put the onus on the PM to manage the task. The task is assigned to the PM, and it's their job to track the work done by the external person. Again, if the external person is assigned a reviewer / requestor license, I believe they can still access the task and provide updates, you would just need to train them. * I see that a few of our PMs ignore this restriction and continue to assign Reviewer names to tasks. That's not a great way to do things, because the Reviewer cannot see the work assigned to them unless we provide them with a dashboard or report. They also cannot "work on it" (if I remember correctly they cannot affect the status in any way) so someone would still have to change the status on their behalf. Hope this gives you an idea of what your options are.

[EricLu2]

Hi - We have something called the Collaboration Package. This gives us Reviewer licenses. A Reviewer license doesn't cost anything, as it is part of the Collaboration Package. We use Reviewer licenses for, among other things, assigning them to third parties who have need to create and contribute to issues. We can assign them to tasks. The only thing they can't do is charge time to timesheets, alter tasks, and so on. You need a Plan or Work license for some of that. This site explains the license types: https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216669668-Understanding-License-Types (from the help file) Review The Review License is part of the Collaboration Package. The purpose of the Review license is to provide permissions to resources who are not project owners/team members but need to access Workfront to see all of the items they are involved with. For example: A stakeholder participates in an ongoing legal review of marketing materials as part of the work process. The Review license allows these resources the ability to log in to Workfront to see updates on work. In addition, they can participate in the work process by approving projects, tasks, or issues. They are not able to approve timesheets. The Review license is essentially a read-only license type, with the ability to approve. A secondary use for this license type could be to provide limited access to external project stakeholders (i.e., vendors, subcontractors, clients, etc.) that may need to see the timeline, status of a project, or approve information but do not need to have permission to collaborate through the system. If a user with a review license is assigned work, the manager will be prompted with a warning. The warning is a reminder that the user will not be able to edit or complete the task or issue. The warning will also show on tool tips to aid in the assignment process. Hope this helps!

[RobertGo]

Hi Christa, we have the same need, even for some members of the department who normally would have a Work or Plan license, but don't work on projects enough to justify the extra license expense. They are given the Review license, and we have drafted and will soon be piloting a procedure for how PMs can engage them in Workfront projects and tasks. The PM's keep the Reviewer assigned tasks up to date by communicating with the Reviewers through Update. For time logging we assign the Reviewers to a Project Coordinator, who logs time on their behalf, the power for which we enable through the "Allow administrative access for...Timesheets & hours" checkbox on the Access Level that we assign to the Project Coordinator.

[SkyeHa]

Robert, I'd love to see your procedure doc, if you can share--specifically if there are areas in it that talk about how Reviewers can keep track of the work they are assigned.

[RobertGo]

Please review and correct any mistaken statements and assumptions. Thanks!

[SkyeHa]

thanks Robert. It's always cool seeing how other people handle their workarounds. This is pretty much what I suspect my PMs do and I don't spot any mistaken assumptions in your document. My only suggestion to my own PMs would be to make a reviewer dashboard with a report that lists tasks assigned to that reviewer, so that the reviewer can better track their work. In other words, tracking everything through updated status in My Updates is useful when you have one or two tasks to keep track of. For a greater volume of tasks, I always suggest they have a report sorted by due date of the task. This can also help a reviewer to keep the PM "on task" (like if the reviewer thinks they are done, and the PM has not changed the task status in X amount of time, the reviewer can call the PM on it).

[RobertGo]

Great suggestion Skye. I have incorporated a new dashboard for our Reviewers showing incomplete tasks they are assigned to so they can be better aware of their work requests and get feedback on how their communicated statuses are being recorded. Thank you.

[LizSc1]

My issue with Reviewer access is figuring out how to limit what that user sees to just the projects I share with them through view/contribute permissions. I am attempting to provide an external partner PM with rights to view our projects, but I don't want "All Projects" visible to these external team members. What is the combination of access & permissions to make this possible?

[EricLu2]

Hi: I add all external reviewers to a separate group, and in some cases, a separate company. They have no visibility by default. I have to explicitly grant privilege by individual external reviewer for them to see anything. In one case, I built a team of them and grant privileges to only that team. The policy we follow for external reviewers is deny all access by default, grant access by exception. Does this help at all? Eric

[LizSc1]

Thanks, Eric. It does make sense. How do groups and companies differ from teams? My assumption would be the hierarchy is Company > Team > Group. I can’t seem to find an easy comparison of what this means as far as access and functionality.

[GregBe1]

I don't think I'd suggest a hierachy like that. "Teams" really have nothing to do with Company or Groups. A Team is a collection of people, which can be across companies and groups. We basically use Group as the department the user is in if internal and if external, we just use the group "external".

[LizSc1]

Gotcha. The main view that I want to make sure is not visible is "All Projects" or any project they have not explicity been given access. I will try creating a new group for our client and see how that works.

[EricLu2]

Hi: I view companies as a way to divide projects, not people. I have multiple companies here, and I have people that work projects in multiple companies. A company, to me, is part of the hierarchy of defining work. It doesn’t have anything to do with people in how I use it. A Group, to me, is an aggregation of users for the purpose of assigning security and screen layouts. I don’t have many groups. A team, to me, is an aggregation of users for the purpose of giving visibility into this project, not that project, this report, not that report, sending messages to a set of people all at once, and so on. A team aligns with our organizational structure and our project organizational structure. I have a team for each portfolio and teams for each major project. I can do a Resource Allocation report for this team or that team. I can schedule the overdue task report to go to a project team. I have a list of overdue timesheets that goes to a team that equates to everyone working for a specific resource manager. I have lots of teams. Bunches. Does this help at all? Eric

[BenettaPe]

Liz, I have limited access to "all projects" for external users, by doing the following - shown in the attached word document. Hope this helps.