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Project Details--> Custom Forms tab

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Level 5
Is there a way to have the Custom Forms sub tab under Project Details be the default under details, instead of Overview? The Custom Form is where the meat of the information is for the workers and it would be helpful to have less clicks to get there. I looked in layout templates but didn't see anything. Thanks! Janelle Janelle Hicks Lifespan Corporation
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Level 2
Hi Janelle, I am a Product Manager at Workfront looking after Layout Templates area of the product (as well as a few other areas). I would like to inform you that what you are asking for is currently not configurable through Layout Templates. But we are well familiar with the requirement, and are currently designing a solution that will allow you to decide what information (i.e. Overview, Custom Data, etc.) to see first on projects, tasks and issues. Hope this is good news for you. :) Kind Regards, Mariam Paronyan, PMP Product Manager Workfront

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Level 4
Great news! Please allow the ability to customize the user details as well. Certain customers want time-off, org chart etc to be brought forward (or removed), -- Melinda Layten, Senior Consultant Work Management Improvement CapabilitySource - 2018 Workfront Services Partner of the Year Phone: (484) 505-6855 site: www.capabilitysource.com email: melinda.layten@capabilitysource.com - we simplify your work so you can run your business -

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Level 9
Great news indeed! Anthony Pernice Healthcare Consultancy Group

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Level 6
@Mariam Paronyan this is good news. If the new approach could also include functionality to expand/collapse custom forms, that usability tweak would be icing on the cake for those of us with multiple forms attached to projects. Catherine Hayes Manager, Business Analytics and Project Operations The Channel Company Westborough MA

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Level 10
I second and third and fourth that idea. The side-eyes I get when I show people where to find the custom form is enough to kill a mosquito from a mile away. The number of times I have to get up and show someone where the form is (again!) makes it so I don't have to go to the gym. �� The other idea I would add to the Layout Template mix is to be able to customize the tabs based on Portfolio or Program – some tabs just don't make sense for different project types. (Or if there's a way to do this, please let me know!)

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Level 2
While on the subject of Custom Forms improvements, Mariam, I'm really hoping you can share this requirement with you team as well: Custom Forms are not easy enough to read. Specifically, the appearance of the "question" text is not different enough from the "answer" text to easily parse the info contained within. Really hoping you can add an option to customize the display of Custom Forms (e.g., font, text color, formatting, etc. Thanks, Aaln Alan Golub Major League Soccer

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Level 2
Thanks everyone for your valuable feedback ! @Catherine Hayes , another good news, we do consider making Custom Forms expandable so that it is easy to switch between different Custom Forms attached to the same object. Would you find it useful to have the same capability for Custom Form sections? @Alan Golub , what you are asking for is also a known requirement, and Product/UX teams have a priority to research on the overall experience with Custom Form Builder / Custom data display. But there are no timelines at this point I could share with you. @Jill Ackerman , hopefully the experience with finding custom data will soon be improved enough so you do manage go to gym ! :) Question for everyone,would you like to see Overview, Custom Forms and other other second level tab information displayed on the same page (given all those sections can be easily closed/expanded) ? Mariam Paronyan, PMP Product Manager Workfront

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Level 6
Thanks for the update, @Mariam Paronyan Yes, the ability expand/collapse sections within custom forms would be very valuable to us. I'm excited to hear expandable custom forms are on your radar. Greatly appreciated! Catherine Hayes Manager, Business Analytics and Project Operations The Channel Company Westborough MA

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Level 10
Hi Mariam, When we developed our "http://store.atappstore.com/product/custom-submit/">OCD (Overlay Custom Data) solution to improve the UX for our ESP for Oil & Gas clients (1500+ custom parameters per project) several years ago, we decided that having collapsable sections was the best alternative: open in collapsed mode, visually expand and/or print just what you need at the time, but also expand all so you can brute force Find On Page in your browser or smartphone. Combined with the ability to configure edit / read only / or hide at a field level, OCD was a game changer, which out which (we've been assured) Workfront would not have been selected, let alone adopted. Here's "http://demo.espsuite.ca/hse/">live demo to illustrate in a tactile fashion. Accordingly, I encourage you to use a similar expansion (vs tabs) technique in your redesign, and suggest a custom form section expanding sections within a hierarchy expanding sections for each custom form as the best of all worlds. Good luck: I look forward to seeing what you settle on! Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

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Level 2
@Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore , thanks for sharing your insight into this topic !! I would love to watch the demo of the solution you mentioned, but the link seems to be be broken. Could you please double check the link? Mariam Paronyan, PMP Product Manager Workfront

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Level 10
My pleasure Mariam, Curious. The links in my previous post both seem to work for me. The Live Demo opens a webpage with four green buttons, each of which in turn creates a particular type of Issue in Workfront with the relevant custom data form automatically attached, then uses OCD to present the custom data in the expanding accordian view I'm endorsing, as below. Do you see the same results? Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

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Level 10
@Mariam Paronyan , IMO, I think I would prefer to be able to customize where overview, custom form etc can be located rather than have them on one page regardless whether the areas are collapsible or not. I think it will then become an issue of I want custom form first, then overview.. or people asking for overview first, then custom form or they will want what's default collapsed or not, asking the page to be customizable again. Polly Co

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Level 10
I'm glad to hear that work is being done in this area! Looking forward to reducing the number of clicks for the user. One thing I'd like to see for custom forms....When you create a project, select what form(s) should AUTOMATICALLY be attached when a new Task is added. We have to spend a lot of time monitoring exception reports and then "fixing" newly added tasks to ensure forms we rely on for reporting are attached. It would streamline things for us, plus I'm sure the PMs would appreciate less nagging from us when we have to add them because they overlooked this step! I posted something similar on the idea exchange, but it's not getting enough traffic. Admin Kelly-Wehrmann SSFCU

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Level 10
Hi Kelly, A common request: so (yes) we're enhancing our "http://store.atappstore.com/product/ubercalc/">UberCalc solution to automatically attach a predefined set of forms. You're welcome to send me an email if you'd like more information. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

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Level 10
@Mariam Paronyan , I love all the suggestions on this thread and would love to participate in any beta opportunities in the future. I especially like the suggestions to combine overview and custom forms into a single view, determine the order that they appear, and the ability to have forms and sections in forms to appear collapsed or expanded! Like someone suggested I think it is important to have the ability to be flexible with the application of these settings because not all projects are the same and some data is more important than others depending on the project. I would like your feedback on my earlier comment related to having the ability to assign "default" forms that should automatically be attached to a project for any new Task or Issue that is added. This would be a dream come true for us for two reasons: 1) Me and the other system admin had to spend a lot of time monitoring exception reports to ensure that PMs have attached forms (depending on the project) to the new Tasks/Issues that they add. If we could automatically assign default forms to each project, for each of these objects, this would help reduce the amount of time we spend on this. 2) We have views for PMs that use fields from our custom forms, if the PM populates this field using in-line edit functionality and a form was not already attached to that Task/Issue, Workfront automatically attaches one. It seems to pull the first form ever created that utilizes that field. For us, in most cases it is the wrong form, because there are several forms that we no longer use, but cannot delete from the system because we would lose data on older items. This also results in more work on our side to identify these and correct them. In respect to forms in general, it would be nice if we had a separate attribute on every field we create to have a "label" to indicate how we want the field to appear in list, chart, and matrix reports, etc. that is different than the name that is the actual field name. Again, change drives this requirement. Sometimes we have created fields that are a little more descriptive of what it should be, however, that doesn't always play well on a form, especially it we make a minor tweak. For instance, our department used to be named MIS (Management Information Systems) and was renamed a year ago to ET (Enterprise Technologies). Some fields that we created that were specific for our department and were named to also indicate ownership of the field for anyone who was using the form. For instance, our MIS Review field. This field is used in a lot of places, filters, views, reports, etc. both in builder and text mode code. We need to rename this field ET Review, however, we don't have the ability to easily accomplish this without creating a negative, cascading effect on everything that uses it. Something that should be a simple change turns into a major project to accomplish. Additionally, it's not always easy to find every location in Workfront this field is in use in standard and text mode code. Do you know if there are any improvements in this area? Admin Kelly-Wehrmann SSFCU

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Level 2
Hello @Admin Kelly-Wehrmann , @Janelle Hicks , @Melinda Layten , @Anthony Pernice , @Catherine Hayes , @Jill Ackerman and others on this thread who I might have missed. Please be aware that one of our UX Designers and I are looking forward to validating the early prototypes of a solution designed to eliminate distinction between native and custom fields. The prototypes we have put together will provide a high level overview on how native and custom data may potentially be displayed on a single screen, how custom forms/sections will be expandable/collapsable, etc. I am going to initiate a new conversation to spread the word among other customers too. But I wanted to make sure the opportunity to review our UX prototypes is communicated in this channel too. Please use "https://calendly.com/mariamparonyan/ux-prototype-validation"> Calendly - Mariam Paronyan to book a time slot at your best convenience. Please also be aware that for the 1st Validation phase we need to have a call with a limited number of customers. Hence, for the time being, the call window is set for July 24 - Jul 30 period. Though if you are not available during this window, but strongly want to review our prototypes, please let me know. Looking forward to talking to you in person. Mariam Paronyan, PMP Product Manager Workfront

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Level 2
Hi All, @Mariam Paronyan Is there an update for this proposed feature? Working with @Svetlana Silina and this is something our employees are asking as they use our custom form and bypass the overview form completely. Thanks, Tim Tim Shenton

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Level 3
Hi @Tim Shenton , Thanks for following this up! I'm a Product Manager at Workfront and I've taken over Mariam while she's on maternity leave. I want to update you that the initiative is on our priorities list and is being actively worked on! Stay tuned for more updates! Kind regards, Gevorg Kazaryan, Product Manager Workfront

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Level 5
Thanks for the update @Gevorg Kazaryan . Another question has come up and I figure I'd add it here in case it's something that has already made it into the list of project details/custom form tab updates. Will there be a way to access the project details/custom forms tab from anywhere within the project? From a document or proof in review (or even from a task), it can be cumbersome to follow the breadcrumbs back to the task, back to the project and back to the custom form data to gain context into what's being reviewed. And then back again to the document you're reviewing. Thanks Janelle Janelle Hicks Lifespan Corporation

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Level 3
Hi @Janelle Hicks , thanks for the question! At the moment "Details" are tied to objects that basically means you'll be able to view the details from anywhere within that object. However, your feedback is very valuable and we might consider the enhancements in that navigation. Thanks, Gevorg Gevorg Kazaryan Workfront