Maternity/Extended Admin Leave

[NatalieTe1]

Has anyone in the Workfront admin community had to prepare and execute a transition/training plan with colleagues prior to going on maternity or long term leave? Hoping there may be some helpful tips or advice out there for making this back up support less painful for everyone involved while ensuring full system coverage. Thank you

[Madalyn_Destafney]

Are you referring to an admin covering for you or you’re helping a user prepare for being out (ie reassigning tasks due during that time to someone else, sharing templates, etc.)?

If the former, of course instance documentation is key. What worked well for me when I left a position and a new admin was taking over was I created a WF project called ‘WF Instance Documentation’ and used that to put info in task details, upload relevant docs, etc. I organized it by having parent tasks for topics like reporting, integrations, request queues, etc. were all parent tasks. Under them were tasks for specifics with info in task details. So under the integrations section, had a task for each integration we used with any info the admin should know (contacts, ‘user profiles’ set up for the integration if relevant, etc). 

Let me know if this makes sense! Really wanted a way to have documentation live IN WF and not in disparate places. Practicing what we WF admins preach

[skyehansen]

if it's at all possible, I'd have your company buy a few workfront system admin hours and if I were needing to train colleagues to be system admins, I would sooner send them through the bootcamp program with workfront and have workfront handle the heavy lifting there. If you have a CSM or account rep who can walk you through what is involved, this would be your best bet for least painful transfer and insures that you can just train and document on instance-specific stuff.

[NatalieTe1]

We have a WSAF package until Feb 2024 which is great. I connect with out Adobe Workfront Admin and she's going to help with coverage which is great. Good idea, thank you

[ChloeWY]

I'm actually working on this right now too!  I manage a smaller instance.  I'm not sure how large yours is.  

Managers have been putting in requests for reports and dashboards like crazy right now.  They're trying to get everything buttoned up before I leave.  The plan is to leave with Workfront in a state everyone is happy with to minimize any Setup changes while I'm out.  We did discuss sending a colleague to the Admin Bootcamp, but due to the minimal changes anticipated and the cost of the class, we decided not to.  

I took the Admin Bootcamp last year.  All the information from it is in a binder that I'm leaving on my desk, and my backups know where and what it is.  

I'm doing Workfront refresh training for plan and work license holders before I leave.  That training PowerPoint and the PDF Workfront User Guide we created are in our company SharePoint folder.  

I'm also going to teach/reteach a couple people how to submit support tickets about a month out.  I want it somewhat fresh in their minds.  

I also have a leave plan for all my work in general that has a Workfront section.  Here's the text if you want to copy.  

• X is knowledgeable about Workfront reporting, dashboards, custom forms, and other system settings. 
• Y and Z understand our Workfront processes. 
• A is an admin in city who can give people access to projects. 
• B is our Workfront Account Manager; email@adobe.com; phone number.  She cannot answer technical questions but can point you in the right direction. 
• Workfront support
  • Phone number:  (844)306-4357
  • Website:  https://experienceleague.adobe.com/?support-tab=home#support
  • You must be logged in to open a support ticket.  This account is the same one used to register for Adobe Summit. 
• The Experience League forum has documentation, training, and how to guides https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront/ct-p/workfront.    
• Workfront also offers free on-demand training courses https://experienceleague.adobe.com/#dashboard/learning. 

Good luck!  

[NatalieTe1]

Thank you! This is helpful as we actually have a smaller instance as well and only about 50-60 users at this point in time. You too!

[Lyndsy-Denk]

This is an excellent question and you already have some great ideas to work with! My company offers US employees what we call personal growth leave (PGL) that is a month long. Employees earn it on their tenth year and every five years after, so we're in decent practice of expecting longer leaves. Here's what I did in preparation for my own PGL: Document, document, document. More specifically:

• Identify the bare minimum your sub-admin needs to do.
• Add the covering admin as an Authorized Support Contact. This is an option in the Product Category dropdown when submitting a ticket (screenshot attached).
• Centralize your documentation and share it with at least two other people. Make it easy to access.
• Create digest documentation that focuses on the most likely scenarios the sub-admin will cover: user management, troubleshooting tips and guidelines, and tech support (especially instructions for accessing Workfront support). Use hyperlinks in case they need more specific governance and key articles on Experience League for more detail.
• Announce to your user base what the protocol is for accessing support (if it's different while someone is on leave). I created a Workfront Help Desk request queue for long-term stability and linked to that queue in my out-of-office autoreply for those folks who can never remember to use the ticketing system.
• Use that Workfront Help Desk queue as a backlog for any requests for the system admin needs to tackle upon return.

I wear additional hats around new hire onboarding, so I crafted stock messaging for my admin to use if a new hire started.