Reducing System Administrators

[ColinWe1]

We are in the process of trying to reduce the amount of System Administrators that we have in the Workfront system. We are afraid if we have an Audit we will get dinged for the amount of system administrators we have. We have attempted to make what we called "Sub-Admins" It was a planner license with a little more power. We ran into a ton of issues after doing this that people couldn't do a huge chunk of their work. We had to move people back to system administrators because of this. Has anyone else attempted something like this? Colin Wehrle

[Christina_Jarosz]

Off the top of my head - create a single 'Admin User' that can be logged in/logged out of for system changes. This reduces the amount of impact others can have. Try creating a group level admin for those folks - login through two different browsers after doing so, and see what they can/can't do as one role vs. the other.

[Exp_-_GevorgKa]

Hi Colin, I'm very curious to learn more on your use case. Would you mind elaborating on issues you ran into when moved System Administrators to the Planner licenses? What sort of limitations prevented them from doing their work? What are the tasks they need to perform without being a System Administrator? Thanks, Gevorg Gevorg Kazaryan Product Manager

[NRYNR]

Hi Colin, There are only a few things that require system administration rights and you shouldn't need to access them all that often. I suggest creating an Plan access level called "Power User" or something like that and turn on every single option in the settings. You'll probably run into issues due to the sharing of objects, such as the inability to edit portfolios, programs, projects, tasks, reports, custom forms, etc. This has everything to do with the sharing on the objects, which can be remedied by logging in as an admin and then sharing the objects with your admin group. I'd only have admin accounts for 2 people (you and your backup). The account you operate under on a daily basis should be a "Power User" or plan license. The biggest benefit I see to this is that I'm using Workfront as a normal user, which gives me the experience of my average user. This helps me support my users better when I'm not operating in a fully-capable fashion. Hope this helps! Thanks, Narayan

[ColinWe1]

One of the biggest issues is with proofing. Once I reduced them from system administrator to Planner they lost the Icon. I put a ticket in with Support and this was the response. I can confirm that this option is only available if you are an Administrator, and also have a proofing license. This option will disappear if either of those things are not true. So the only way to make this show up again is to make those users an Administrator again.

One thing I would ask here, is what is the reason these users need that button? I am just asking because that option is basically used to make admin changes on the proofing side of things, but to use any of the proofing items those should be available within the Workfront side of things. I do however, understand that they had this before, so it may be something they need, and in that case, moving that user back to be an admin is really the only way. Colin Wehrle

[ColinWe1]

The only problem is we use SSO and this would create a headache for some people. Colin Wehrle