Is there a consensus on best ways to organize custom forms and fields for organizations new to Workfront?

[JMitchell44]

I have interacted with dozens of WF instances at this point and one thing that always strikes me as odd is the haphazard creation of forms and fields, even in an environment with dedicated admins.

Has the community agreed to a general approach that fits *most* orgs for structure?

I like to use uniform prefixes for forms and their unique data, and a global tag for fields that apply across the company (Regions, Business Units, etc.). Anyone have a sure-fire method?

[Heather_Kulbacki · Accepted solution]

We've got 3 distinct groups in our instance now.

When we set up the first group (our team) we didn't really anticipate the need for prefixes. When we added the second group somewhere in the first year-ish of using Workfront, we added prefixes to all forms, but not fields.

About 4 years into using Workfront we added the third group. This time I used prefixes for everything. 

• forms
• fields - here I used the prefix in the name, but not the label so users don't find the fields weird-looking
• reports - since this team relies heavily on dashboards, I only used the prefix on those reports where the report name didn't sound completely weird with the prefix added in. Those reports filtered by $$USER.ID we generally include "my" in the report name and those seemed real weird with the prefix.
• dashboards
• roles
• teams/group
• layout templates

also since some reports included the prefix and some do not. I created a dashboard with 2 reports on it for myself to easily find their reports when updates are needed

• all dashboards that included the prefix in the name
• all reports that are on a dashboard with the prefix in the dashboard name

[JMitchell44]

Thanks Heather!

I'm convinced that Prefixed name + good looking label is the right way to go. Depending on the instance I'm working in sometimes that draws out time when creating a new report because of so many label adjustments. But since setting those up is usually a one time thing, I think it's worth it.

Oh! I hadn't thought about prefixing group names. I have a client I should do that for right now. Thanks!