"Work On It" Button & Actual Start/ In Progress

[CommunityUs]

Hoping someone can help! I've searched high and low scouring the support area for the answer and still no straight forward yes or no on my question. Question: What EXACTLY does clicking "Work On It" affect? The expectation is that it would change the task's status to "In Progress" and set the actual start date to that moment in time when the user clicks "Work On It" Users in my organization are not finding this to be true. Which is an issue because we have predecessors using the Start-Start relationship and thus are not triggered unless the users are manually changing the progress rather than clicking "Work On It". Is anyone else experiencing this? What is the actual purpose of the button? I'm finding it hard to get buy-in from users to click "Work On It" AND update the percent complete to something partial to get the Status triggered to "In Progress"...they're barely using the Home/My Work views. Any suggestions? Thank you in advance :)

[VicAl]

Basically it just assigns it to yourself and moves it from the Work Requests to Working On tab in our My Work. That's pretty much it I think. It's just to acknowledge that you accept the Task. I don't know if Working On goes away when the new Home replaces My Work.

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Stephanie - are not alone in this. When we onboard a new business unit into our instance, this always confuses. Workfront has work originate to the user as a request. This gives them a chance to look it over, see if it makes sense, and if they can do it by the due date given. If they can, they can hit the Work On It (which sets the Commit Date). If not, there are options for them to reply back to the project owner or reassign to someone on their team. With using My Work (where there was a Work Request tab that was separate), we used to recommend that users go through the Work Requests at least once a day and click Work On It for requests that looked good just to move it over to their Work List (so nothing was missed). With the new Home feature though, we've been recommending that users do not just instantly accept work. Since everything is in one list, you won't miss it, plus the Not Ready and Ready To Start features are really nice (now that it is one list). I think once Home takes off more, the idea of Work On It triggering the status to change to In Progress is a great idea. Something that might help you out: For my project managers and their hotsheets, we have been using the field Assignment and Status. That way if the PM sees that the assignee's status is Requested, they haven't looked at it yet. If they see Working, the PM knows they have looked at the task and clicked the Work On It button. (And if it is Done, then they know that assignee click Done with my Part and they don't have to bother them). This has worked out well for our teams. Hope that is helpful Anthony Imgrund FCB

[BreeMa]

I have been actively training (and re-training) people to STOP using the "Work on It" button because it doesn't appear to be linked to anything reportable and it's really just to help users on the My Work screen. As pointed out, clicking the button does not change the Task Status to "In Progress," but it DOES change it to "Complete" if you select "I'm Done." It's kind of wonky and confusing. As the My Work screen gets phased out/replaced by Home, the button is even less helpful for everyone, so I'm really pushing people to break the habit of using the bright orange button. That said, there is one instance where I do need it: When you have multiple users on one task who all need to complete the same step at the same time--You need to have you need the option of "done with my part" which is only an option in the "Work On It" drop down. It seems to me that WF expects users to select the Task Status update (New/In Progress/Complete), which is reportable and cleaner. It makes a lot more sense--I've set up dashboards that roughly mimic the Home Screen and include the task status update. This allows me to run daily reports and make sure who is actually working on what (as opposed to before when people were selecting "work on it" for everything assigned to them and I had no idea if I needed to follow up with people until it was almost too late). I also removed the "Percent Complete" column from all dashboards/task list views and replaced it with the Task Status drop down. I've found it most effective and straight forward. Bree Main General Nutrition Centers, Inc.

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hi Stephanie, In addition to the great information provided by fellow Workfront users here, I will add in there is one more portion to this. A work item (Task or Issue) has 2 statuses, one being the visible status (New -> In Progress -> Closed for examples.) and the other being the Owner's Status. You'll notice if you assign a task to a person, that person clicks Work On It, the Task status doesn't change, but when you change the Task Status manually to say Closed, the task will still appear on the person's My Work / My Home, and the Assigned To box remains blue, instead of turning yellow, indicating that the task is still active, not actually complete. So, while technically the Owner Status can change the Task Status (when hitting Complete) the Task status cannot change the Owner status. Only the owner can indicate whether or not they started the task, worked on the task, or completed the task. Other people can change the Task Status, just not the Owner Status. The Work On It button is primarily to indicate whether or not the owner has actually accepted/completed the work (which is why it shows up in My Work) and set the owner's commit date. I hope this info helps you all out! Thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[CommunityUs]

Thank you everyone! This was pretty helpful, we have been going through our second round of re-training folks once we refined processes & templates and finding more things like this popping up. It is certainly tough to be training on one thing, finding out that really isn't best practice and now having to change others' habits that we put in place.