More Questions

[KarenRu]

Hi All, Sorry I'm being a pain w/questions. Warning- RANT: Less than 24 hours after we went live- we kinda got shut off in regards to support hours. Long story, but basically I "used" up all our time to get to launch, and now I'm left to my own devices to bring my team from not quite operational to operational. I was directed to call the help line, log in a ticket, use the community forum (which I'm doing!), go back to the online training modules or book a 4 hour consultation. (did anyone else have this experience w/their implementation). I'm Workfront's biggest fan, but really dissappointed in how my account has been managed over the last 12 months. RANT OVER Meanwhile- back to the question at hand- Do any of you have experience with templates? I'm finding that perhaps I didn't pay close enough attention to template start day and template end day, Please see attached PDF. In some cases the task ends on the same day the next task begins. And I think generally speaking we don’t want that: Currently- in workfront in the example I provided it’s like: Task 1: 1 day: 10/1-10/2 Task 2: 1 day: 10/2-10/3 Task 3: 1 day: 10/3-10/4 I think what we want is: Task 1: duration 1 day: 10/1-10/2 Task 2: duration 1 day: 10/3-10/4 Task 3: duration 1 day: 10/5-10/3 How do you all handle your task start and end days? And if I want to fix this- do I manually have to go into all our templates? tks! Karen

[RhondaTr2]

Hi, Karen, this may not be the same issue but something similar happened to me and it ended up being the start date (or completion date if you are scheduling from completion) was not set to 8am on that date. In other words, from 11am on 10/3 to 11am on 10/4 = 1 day. Anotgher thing that threw me for a loop was that our company has 7.5hr work days, however, setting up workfront with a 1/2hr in our work day threw off all of the "whole" hours timelines. Noth sure that helps, but worth mentioning. Good luck! Rhonda Cancino Marketing Traffic Specialist 817-252-6919 Pier 1 Imports The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. George Bernard Shaw

[ShellyLo]

To add to what Rhonda is saying, it also looks like you are wanting your duration to be 2 days so that Task 1 would span from 10/1-10/2, then Task 2 would start the following day. Basically, a 1 day duration should technically last only 10/1 and then Task 2 would start and end on 10/2. Make sense?

[LauraRa1]

Hi Karen No, in fact our experience has been far from that. We relied heavily on our config guy for a couple of months after and even now I’ll email him for help with a report. The community is great though and we’ll all try and help you through. Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image002.png@01D22072.B5F7EB50]

[KarenRu]

Thanks Laura! I do love this community! I'm going to try to get the additional help we need, otherwise- I fear our implementation will not succeed. tks Karen

[DavidGu1]

I think Rhonda might have pegged the problem here. We encountered a similar situation. I've attached a PDF that might help you work through this. I'm not sure where you are in the process of familiarizing yourself with the system so I tried to cover a lot of bases. Step 1 - Verifying you have a default schedule set up and you know the start/end times. Step 2 - Verifying that the templates you have created are using that default schedule. Step 3 - Creating a view to help you look at your projects and see what their start/end times are and if they're using the default schedule. The biggest problem here (and why your projects are probably off) is that the project owner must always set the start/end time to match what the schedule says whenever they first create the project. Editing the project to fix the start/end time to match the schedule should fix the majority of these problems. Hope this helps! Change takes time, patience and practice.

[AnthonyIm]

As others have mentioned, the issue is the start time of your project (if you are working from a Start Date). We run into this issue a lot with our agencies that are not in EST time zone, which is our system default. Do you have schedules in different time zones? If the person who created the project has the same time zone as the schedule attached to the project, 95% of the time the start time will be 9am. If they are different, that is where you run into issues. Workfront will start the next task right after the predecessor ends. So if Task 1 starts at 9am, a 1 day duration would have it end at 5pm. But if Task 1 starts at 11am (because the project start date time is 11am and you have the task constraint ASAP), the task will be 11am 10/1 but doesn't end until 11am 10/2. So a 1 day task looks like it is 2 days. For our project managers, we created a view (Standard with Dates & Times) and formated the Start Date and Completion Date so that they show the times. It is then really easy for the PM to see what the issue is (because sometime is it because they set a Must Start On wrong) and fix it. Hope that is helpful.

[EricLu2]

{{Karen}} We weren’t dumped like that at all. We had great support. I’d make a few phone calls and find out why they cut and ran. Eric

[DavidCo3]

Hi, We used a Workfront partner here in Australia (WMA) who provided consulting support throughout our implementation. We were cautious up-front about allowing enough consulting time in the project budget and at this point we still have some left over, luckily. I know that doesn't help you now, but the timezone/duration advice above is very good, and we are all here to help as much as we can! You can do it! Regards, David.