How do you handle assigning vendors to a task without giving them a license?

[DerekSa]

we work with a lot of vendors and want to capture their efforts in project tasks, but don't want to utilize a license for that. Is there a way that you capture vendor work without assigning a license to a vendor?

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Derek,

Depending on whether you're or not you're expecting them to see (or -- we'd need to chat further -- edit) "their" data, you could set them up as Users for the sake of planning, but then either not set them up as Users, or set them up as (free) reviewer license.

Regards,

Doug

[DerekSa]

Thank you Doug! we aren't necessarily planning on them seeing or editing their tasks... we are fine making those changes... just mainly not wanting to have a bunch of tasks that are assigned to no one. I'll play around with your recommendation! We are fairly new to Workfront, so still trying to get things nailed down.

[DerekSa]

I guess for some more clarification... in our past PMIS, we utilized a common vendor name for each vendor that we used frequently... (ex: Vendor, ABCD Company or Vendor, EFGH Company... etc.) and when we had projects with that vendor, we simply assigned it to the vendor in that manner.

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hmm...thanks for clarifying, Derek.

What I was proposing is best suited for individuals involved in your Workflow (e.g. sub contractors who might contribute some particular function). You can certainly genericize such "placeholder" users with the name of the vendor, then, as you evolve your Workfront process to take advantage of particular Roles (think "skills"), you could switch to a more granular level of individual users who have such Roles.

On the other hand, as you map your work into Workfront (so many choices...)

It is also common practice to use either the Company or Portfolio or Program objects or Custom Forms to map the Customers with whom you work; so although you did say Vendor, perhaps one or more of those options might also factor in.

Like a new pair of shoes, plan on trying on several pairs, walking around in them for a bit to check the fit, and don't fret if you later decide to swap out to something more bigger (and/or more comfortable) as you grow.

Regards,

Doug

[DerekSa]

Thank you for the dialogue Doug! it has helped quite a bit! What I ended up doing, which I think will work for our situation... We created a user with our "PMO" email group email and then created a Team for each vendor that we typically use with the PMO user as the member assigned to that team. We can then assign work to the correct Team and monitor that way.

If that ends up not working, i'll make sure I come back and update this comment with what we do.

v/r

Derek Saltzgaber

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

My pleasure Derek; glad you found a path that aligns with your workflow.

Regards,

Doug

[RandyRoberts]

Sometimes with vendors, I'll add a reviewer account and add a form to that user with phone numbers, contacts and shipping codes and stuff like that. I will also add spec requirement sheets for printers. This way whomever deals with that vendor can go to their user profile and get all the info they need about utilizing that vendor.