Is adding "I know you saw it" a Bridge Too Far?

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

A while back, Workfront introduced the Report Usage view, as below, which has several cool columns in it, including Last Viewed By: Name, Last Viewed Date, Last 10 Viewers, and Views this Month / Quarter / Year. As I recall, the main usecase was to help decide which Reports are (still) in use, so that those that are not could be periodically purged.

Last week, though, I had a thought provoking conversation with the PMO leaders at one of our clients, in which we discussed the idea of taking the concept of report auditing even further. In particular, I proposed -- half jokingly -- that every time a person ran the Project Status Report for a project, we could log a note (using the API) that they'd done so, and even fish that fact out and present the "Last Viewed Date" on the report itself (e.g. under the Sponsor's name, and the Project Manager's name, etc.). After a rather long pause, we realized that -- whether we went as far as formally reporting that "viewing audit" information, it could be very useful for the Project Manager (at least) to know who saw what, when...particularly on the external (reviewer license) stakeholder side. Imagine waiting on a client to get back to you on something, but systematically knowing when (and how often) they've looked at a particular Project report. Spooky, but powerful. Of course, as one colleague pointed out, "just because they saw it, doesn't mean they GET it..." but that's a different issue.

So! Although I was tempted to make this a poll question, I'm actually more interested in hearing some opinions, for those who'll venture theirs:

Is adding this "I know you saw it" viewing audit logic a Bridge Too Far?

Regards,

Doug

[Heather_Kulbacki]

What about reports that are on a Dashboard? - I believe if the Dashboard is opened, each of the reports on it gets another tick that they've been seen - when in reality, maybe the user only viewed the first report and never scrolled down to any of the other reports that may be on there

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hmm...good point, Heather. in the case in hand, I’m adding the logic to a single one page report on a dashboard that is then shown as a custom tab on a project, so the open:saw ratio will be high. As you say, though, multiple reports would be a lower ratio. (Schemey Fingers) maybe I will also track how long a report is left open...meh. Nah. Too tenuous. Regards, Doug

[skyehansen]

I was thinking calling it "I know you saw it" might be a bit much, but that's only because I personally am never clear what someone can see unless I set up a report to run with a specific user's permissions. So for me, I would hedge my bets with "I know your login credentials went there".

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Thanks Skye,

Agreed, and good timing, as I'm adding that logic this morning, and was mulling over the best wording for the note. I think I'm going to simply go with the factual "[Report] render registered as [User Name]", without adding any presumptuous verbiage around whether it was then scrutinized, understood, or -- come to think of it -- done via Login As. By then creating a note report that searches for Note Text containing the special phrase "render registered", I can at least then display those factual events, for PM intel, but leave the interpretation and followup to the PM.

Regards,

Doug

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Mbwahahaha...

As our PMO leaders enthusiastically approved, I’m VERY pleased to confirm that going forward, every time a project's "Project Status Report" custom data tab (the first tab, by design) is opened, a "render registered" update is automatically recorded underneath the project, capturing the date, time, project name, user name, and email address, for auditing / training / trending / telepathy purposes.

I invite you to check out the screenshot from a working example, and stay tuned for more as the concept unfolds!

Regards,

Doug

[RandyRoberts]

Did Workfront do away with the Report Usage view? I don't have it. It looks pretty useful. I wish I could do that with Dashboards!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Randy,

I just confirmed that the Report Usage is still available and working for me in both Classic and NWE, as SysAdmin, with no Layout Template; so perhaps, if you have the latter, it is hiding it on you.

Once you track it down, as a random thought...

You could roll your own dashboard version by creating a 1:1 "Dashboard Footer Report" for each Dashboard (e.g. something trivial, like a dashboard report filtered to the dashboard upon which it will be placed), then place it at the bottom of said dahsboard with zero height (or just enough to see the name of the dashboard...just to be cute), and then (by association) infer from the number of times each such Dashboard Footer Report has been "Report Usage'd", the number of times each such "parent" Dashboard was in fact viewed.

Regards,

Doug