How do you leverage WF to reduce emails?

[NateBa]

As a new Workfront employee, (and with the help of the Community) I'm learning the ins and outs of Workfront. Here's a question I'd love to explore... How do you leverage Workfront to reduce emails? (Sounds simple, I know. But I'm really curious.) -Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[EricLu2]

Um, WorkFront increases the volume of emails that people get here and at the last place I worked (that used WorkFront). It doesn’t reduce the volume of custom, targeted emails. It increases the visibility into the actions others are taking on the project - which might trigger the custom, targeted, ad-hoc emails. I’m scratching my head at how WorkFront would possibly reduce the number of emails people get. I’ll be fascinated to hear if it does for others… Eric

[NateBa]

Maybe the proper question is how are you using Workfront to eliminiate unnecessary emails? Or to use email more effectively? In Reply to Lucas Eric, MPM:

Um, WorkFront increases the volume of emails that people get here and at the last place I worked (that used WorkFront). It doesn’t reduce the volume of custom, targeted emails. It increases the visibility into the actions others are taking on the project - which might trigger the custom, targeted, ad-hoc emails. I’m scratching my head at how WorkFront would possibly reduce the number of emails people get. I’ll be fascinated to hear if it does for others… Eric

-Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at:

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Great question, Nate. When demoing/training Workfront, we emphasize that instead of perpetuating emails with multiple CC's, users can intercept the conversation and paste it into Updates under the appropriate object (e.g. Issue, Task, Project, etc). This gives context, history, and focus...in addition to eliminating the other emails that would otherwise have occurred. Part two of this plan is (are you sitting down?) recommending that Users turn on minimal email notifications from Workfront, so that only those "worth" spending time reviewing come through, and instead, teaching folks to use the native Updates within Workfront. Of course, this is primarily intended for Users who log in to Workfront frequently enough that seeing Updates is at a reasonable cadence. As an aside, I've observed that tracking Updates -- slightly more formally than email, but essentially the same amount of work -- has lead to some other Better Behavior: people chose their words more carefully, and because it is more collaborative by nature, folks seem to be less finger-pointy, choosing to solve the problems vs avoiding (or assigning) blame. Regards, Doug

[Mohini__Mini_Si]

This is a really interesting question Nate. I think the way we use it, the number of emails kind of balances out. A lot of our emails were reduced when we started using the request queue feature in Workfront. With the collaboration package, we were able to add users and give them visibility into our projects without additional costs. This helped cut down on emails because our Marketing team was no longer getting ad hoc requests, request details, and updates through email. All the conversations about projects were being kept within Workfront to help streamline workflow and cut down on emails which could easily get lost in the crowd. Depending on the person it ends up balancing out because of the number of notifications they get. We have people who fill both sides of the spectrum and everything in between; some choose not to get a single notification, others choose to get every notification possible, and some only get what they want/need. So depeing on who it is, the emails are either reduced or remained status quo.