Logging Project Decisions in Workfront

[AdamOb]

Hi everyone, I am looking for a good way to log major decisions on a project in Workfront. I haven't been able to find an appropriate field or parameter out of hte box, and am looking at possibly creating a custom form. The problem I have is that there can be more than one 'decision' to log per project. I've started looking at adding an Issue for each decision with a custom form attached. This isn't ideal, but it will help enforce standards on what information we log and make tracking that much easier. The only other option that we've discussed so far is to use the project status updates. My concern is that this is going to be much harder to report on than using a custom form and is harder to enforce best practices. I'm interested in how others are capturing decisions for projects (not proofs or approvals) in Workfront. Thanks in advance. Adam Oberhaus Tableau Software

[joshh79242137]

Hi @Adam Oberhaus , I'm interested in this as I have heard almost this exact same thing from other customers. My current consideration to solve this, and I believe a few other needs. I'm contemplating adding a new field called "Update Type". This would be a native field, with custom options. The Update Type would be a drop down that shows up on the Updates input box where you add notes to things. Some ideas for options are: - Decision - Meeting Notes - Standard And could go on and on. Once an Update gets logged with an associated Type, that would be a reportable field. So you can have a standalone report showing you for example, all of the project decisions that have been made over a certain time or for a certain project. Even grouped by project. You could also add a tab to your project layout that showed just the Project Decisions, or just Project Meeting Notes, for example. All of this is just an idea right now, but I would be interested in feedback on this potential solution. Thanks! Josh Hardman Product Manager, Workfront

[AdamOb]

Hi @Josh Hardman , I think that would definitely be of interest to my team. Having the ability to differentiate the updates by a native 'type' would have a lot of benefits. It would provide a low barrier to entry and would help us easily report on it. Having the ability to customize the type beyond the initial 3 options you mentioned would be nice as well, but the 3 listed would meet a large % of our use cases currently. Put me down as a +1 for the idea overall. Adam Oberhaus Tableau Software

[MarkTEvans]

Josh, This would be a great addition. I'm looking at creating a "Meeting Minutes" type report where a PM can select the timeframe and pull all updates to the project. However, with the added "Update Type" field, that report would be much easier and could just pull from that date of the meeting with that field type. Count me in. -------------------- Mark Evans LifeNet Health --------------------

[BrianMa2]

This would definitely be useful for us. There are too many documents, emails, and printed notes circulating around. I envision a project manager hosting every meeting with Workfront the only thing on screen. Easy, on-demand views for them to toggle through showing status/progress, capturing meeting notes live (or immediately following) in Workfront. This could then be sent as a PDF to everyone as the meeting minutes. Then everyone is (literally) on the same page. Brian C. Mauger Bloomberg L.P.

[Christina_Jarosz]

As a work-around, I added a task-level custom form and if the item needs to be discussed at the next meeting you select 'yes' to filter on. The task filter then displays the last note text, update, etc. I imagine you can do something similiar and if it should be included in the minutes maybe populate a date field? Include in minutes and the date - and then it will filter based on date. Just a thought. Christina Jarosz Ascensus

[JasonMa]

We solved this using a custom form on Documents. The theory was that a project decision isn't real unless you have something in writing backing it up (e-mail, document, meeting notes, whatever). So, anytime a decision is captured in one of those, we add the document to the Documents tab and then have a Custom Form called Related Decision Information on the document that captures everything about the Decision (description, date, type of decision, is it final, etc.). From there we created a report and display it as a tab on the project showing all of the Decisions for that project. Jason Maust McGuireWoods LLP

[MarkTEvans]

Absolutely! I've created a report for all task notes with a time frame prompt. So, I can just add that to a tab in the project, as you go to your meeting, just click into each task you discuss and put your update there, then go to the custom tab, select the time period of the meeting....BOOM, meeting minutes created. Now as far as an agenda, I've seen one similar to what you are describing Christina, but I've also seen one, from a LEAP 2016 presentation, that is a dashboard with all weekly work, then upcoming work, so you just talk about the pertinent pressing issues and the agenda is automatically created each week. It was pretty slick. Mark Evans LifeNet Health

[EricMa]

Hi, Josh. Really like your idea! A couple of thoughts/queries: 1. Would the user be able to apply (or change) an Update Type after the Update has been posted? I can see many situations where either the user neglected to choose an Update Type when posting, or else it wasn't clear what the Update Type should be until later (e.g., the "decision" was proposed and documented in this Update but wasn't officially approved until after posting). 2. Would the Update Types be customizable for our instance, like Statuses and Severities? ~Eric Eric Manning Language Line Translation Solutions