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Logging time: how granular are tasks in your project timelines?

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Level 4

I'm running into an issue where designers are struggling to log their time because our tasks are too granular.  For example, we include each revision round in our timelines so it shows Round 1 (parent task) > Design, Copy Writing, Stakeholder Review (children tasks).  When there are many rounds, it shows up in designers' timesheets as Project Name > Design, Design, Design -- because it shows tasks from multiple rounds, but the parent tasks aren't listed, so they don't easily know where to log their time. 

 

Another issue is how to log meeting time.  Inputting a meeting task every time there is a meeting, and then making sure you log time to the correct meeting, is too time consuming. 

 

The feedback I'm getting is it would be much more simple to have general buckets to log time against for each project such as Research, Design, Meetings/Reviews, etc.  The only way I know how to do that is to have tasks with these names that run the entire length of the project, but then how would you organize the timeline to show all the rounds/revisions and other tasks a project manager needs to see in order to manage the project?

 

Any tips or advice you have would be greatly appreciated!

1 Accepted Solution

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Correct answer by
Level 4

Thanks for your reply!  It's always good to see what others are doing.  We decided to include the round # in the task name so it is clear when looking at timesheets.  We wanted to keep the rounds in our timelines to the stakeholders have visibility as to when they are going to see the next rev.  Here's an example:

 

Screenshot 2023-03-08 at 9.47.47 AM.png

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2 Replies

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Level 1

Hi @Justin_Charles -- ever since the Timesheets interface was updated to new Workfront Experience UX, our users have struggled with it. There are lots of issues (I've voted for many Ideas around Timesheets improvements), but the one I'm getting the most complaints about is that we've lost the ability to see parent tasks. Following Workfront's own advice, our projects come from templates, and task names are all consistent. Meaning on a user's timesheet, the exact same task name will appear multiple times within a project. The old UI allowed users to hover and see the parent task, but this function is gone, and the new Open Summary function isn't customizable and doesn't show parent task. Below is an example of just one part of one project for one user...

To address your question, we quickly moved away from the granularity you use. We don't have tasks for rounds of revisions. Instead, we've moved towards a catchall task to capture the rounds. Our tasks work as follows:

  1. First draft for internal review
  2. First draft for requester review
  3. Rounds of revisions, final approval due (where the due date on this task is to indicate that's when final has a hard stop to get the project done on time)

 

WFTimeSheet.png

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Correct answer by
Level 4

Thanks for your reply!  It's always good to see what others are doing.  We decided to include the round # in the task name so it is clear when looking at timesheets.  We wanted to keep the rounds in our timelines to the stakeholders have visibility as to when they are going to see the next rev.  Here's an example:

 

Screenshot 2023-03-08 at 9.47.47 AM.png