Project Number Help

We use the project reference number. Ours has been six digits for some time. Is six digits too much for your purpose? Thanks, Eric

We didn't use the reference number because a.) it does not appear sequential to relate to the object type (eg projects only) and so difficult to remember and can't recall which projects went before or after the reference number. 2.) It can progressively grow to more than 6 digits as you stay longer in Workfront. We've sent a feature request for autonumber generator since the start of our implementation. If more people request this, this hopefully makes it to an enhancement to the app. We currently generate a number outside of Workfront but moving away from that app as well and what we're thinking of doing is generating the number through Sharepoint (autonumber in a form) and having that as a link within the project form. So when a project manager creates the project and loads the project form, they just click the sharepoint link in the project form and gets generated a docket number for their use. They just need to paste the project name into the sharepoint form and submit the form so they'd have ownership of the docket number. Sharepoint can log who entered the form, the docket number and then the project name.

It is. We're running into issues where they're trying to shorten files names--while keeping all pertinent information. Also the PMs are used to having the project numbers burned into their brains, and 6 numbers is stretching their mental capacity, since they're used to 4 digit numbers. :-)

I will also submit a feature request for it. Hopefully some additional support will get it moving faster. It's shocking to me that it's not a standard feature.

Hello - the idea exchange is now open. I've submitted a request of autonumber - project numbers under the Others section. Please vote! https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115001218447-autonumber-field-docket-numbers

We generate our project numbers outside of Workfront as well. Our project numbers are 2 letters, 3 or 4 numbers, then the fiscal year (ex. RM-103-18). The 2 letters also tie into the Programs we set up so it helps with reporting options. Shelly Long, PMP, CSSGB Marketing Traffic Manager Pier 1 Imports Accelerate to Excellence

For an immediate solution, I created a custom form with fields for a year, campaign number and job number. This form lives on all projects. Then I created a report titled "Next Job Number" and every time we resource a job, we also manually give it a job number (and fill in the year and campaign number, if applicable) and include the job number in the project name. It's working well, but it would be amazing if we didn't have to take the extra step.

Hi Amy, This was a big deal for us- and I was actually surprised that WF didn't have a feature that generated job #'s for the marketing/creative industry, because we live and die by job #'s! During the sales process- I obviously didn't dig deep enough to understand what they meant when they say they generated reference #s- which doesn't really satisfy our need. Sooooo during implementation we decided on a custom field, on our "OFFICE USE ONLY FORM". We concatenate: the portfolio the job is in (which maps to our business units), our fiscal year (17) and then we truncate the reference # to the last four numbers. So for example- a typical job # for us would look like: FAS 17-0223. We understand the job#'s won't be in any sequential order. Which at first was a bummer for folks who were used to relying on the job# to give them an idea of how many jobs we've done. Now, folks just need to utilize the job# as a way finding device- nothing more. And Amy- my team felt the same way- 6 numbers were too long! and one could imagine that WF would get into 7 and 8 digit numbers very quickly. I'm only hoping during the course of a fiscal year we won't end up with any duplicate numbers.....but I guess we'll cross the bridge if/when it happens. Hopefully in the meantime- WF adds the auto job# generator!!!

Hi All, We recently set up WF in our departement and I was also wondering why there are no automatically generated project #s. Are there any updates for this issue? Thx

Hi: There is a autogenerated Reference Number for every project. They are unique to each project. That is what we use as the Project Number. You can go to Project, Project Details, Overview: [cid:image001.png@01D2EB30.E71730E0] Hope that helps. Eric