New User/Account Requests - how do you get accurate information from requesters? We have tried a variety of options in our custom form to try and get accurate information but we get accurate information about 50% of the time.

[MaryMc1]

We have a field that has the requester fill out an existing user to model after and we've also added a typeahead field for job role and teams and still requesters continue to give us incorrect information. We have used the info they put into "model after" and cross referenced the role and team to try and get us more accurate info and we've put in general questions as well on how the user will use the system like "submitting requests," "create/manage projects," etc. I am curious how other admins handle it to try and get accurate info. Any advice on how to get above getting accurate information in 50% of the new user requests we get? We do have a limited amount of worker/planner level licenses so we try to make sure those license types aren't going to users who truly won't be using it. For context, we have roughly 950 users in the groups we manage. Thanks!

[skyehansen]

I think the problem is that requesters really don't have any context for what the answer should be. You're asking a group of people who've never been in Workfront, what they'll be doing once they get here. They don't know, and they aren't going to know until they've learned how to use Workfront. And if they are new to the company, they don't know how to identify with a group or a team you work with! So it's a bit of a catch-22 and the only way you can get out of it is to understand this, and find a way around asking them.

I think the questions you've used and what you're trying is helpful. Ultimately leaning a bit more on the other users in the system, and employing a good cleanup process could get you the rest of the way. Most teams have some sort of onboarding procedure for new arrivals and answers to your questions should be stored there. Similarly when you implement a new process, give them the answers or tell them what to ask. Setting up good avenues of communication or the expectation of regular training could take it the rest of the way -- e.g. if your company's newhires always start on Thursdays maybe coordinate with your users to send newhires along to your office hours on Fridays and walk them through the process of how to find the answers to your questions.

On the other side of things, being able to report on the users of a process and getting your process users to self-audit, as well as running regular ROI reports (e.g. paid license users who are neither assigned to work nor owners of objects, people who haven't logged in in the past 90 days) and employing strong enough governance to remove or downgrade them when they show up these reports, is/are a part of what lightens your maintenance load.

[MaryMc1]

Hi Skye,

Most of the people submitting the requests are existing WF users. We don't have anyone submitting requests for new access that aren't already in the system. So to that point, what are your thoughts on ways we can educate a large group of users of what to put into the fields in our intake form? Because that catch-22 is accurate in that they themselves aren't invested enough to know, or maybe care, about information that is critical to the admin team. Do you have any thoughts on ways around asking them? That's what we're really looking for help on or how do others manage that dilemma?

We've gone as far as asking what area of the company they work in to at least help us determine a little bit better what WF teams they'll be in and users can give incorrect information then too! And unfortunately, being such a large organization, we don't have specific days that new hires are integrated into our company so they come on a variety of days and from all business segments.

Curious when you mentioned, "give them the answers or tell them what to ask," could you elaborate on what you think that could look like? I like that train of thought and we've tried doing with simply asking how they'll work in the tool and a user that's in a similar role to model after but is there a way to get the average user to see their own, or someone else's credentials, to then know what to put into a role or team field?

We do already have a good cleanup process and review our users monthly and we do downgrade users that haven't logged in X amount of days, etc. So we are keeping our user group "clean" in that sense but we do really try to put our users into teams and roles to utilize in resource management and in building reports based on teams rather than individuals as we have a lot of movement in our organization. So that part I feel pretty confident we are tackling this well as an admin team.

Thank you for your input and looking at my post! 😀

[skyehansen]

I don't know what your workfront looks like, but in ours, we are constantly implementing new teams. My feeling is every time we implement a new team (equivalent to implementing a new process, really), they should pony up a headcount on their side that is the SME -- this way you're not getting hit with requests from every single member of the team, they are coordinating through their SME. This SME is tasked with being a bit more familiar with Workfront terms. If you have a queue topic for profile updates, you should be able to print off that custom form (there's a download custom form functionality now) with the correct answers for that team already input. Give that to the SME and tell them that for every new arrival on the team, they need to put in the exact answers as what your file has.

For your other comment on how existing users are also giving the wrong answers, have you considered taking an informal poll asking why? Is there one specific question that's being mis-answered? If so, what did they read into the question? (or why did they select the answer they selected?)