** Release 2019.4 Major Problems **

[NRYNR]

Release 2019.4, which is scheduled for Production the week of November 11 (see the Trust to verify your date), does not work and is a mistake. From the perspective of an end user, you've ripped away the familiar experience of the old and replaced it with a replacement that offers nothing new in terms of capability. It was bad enough that we couldn't rely on the custom interfaces to remain stable or even part of the system... remembers MyWork. However, now you've taken away the stability of views in reports and dashboards, which I viewed (until today) as the last holdout in the onslaught of new and ever-changing interfaces. Let's fix this before you create problems.

From the perspective of an admin who customizes views heavily, this release breaks much of my work and will cripple my instances if released in this state. The way HTML is rendered has been messed with so significantly that custom HTML isn't rendering anywhere close to the original. Heads up Community, if you use HTML in your views, you're going to want to get in and look at these things ASAP to gauge the impact this release will have on you.

The only reasonable solution to this problem is to postpone changes to reports and dashboards. It's clearly untested and I've only listed my issues below, but know there are more on the way.

Release Schedule (per Workfront Trust)

Title: 19.4 Release Deployment - Clusters 1, 3, & 5

Planned Start: November 14, 2019 8:00PM MST

Expected End: November 14, 2019 11:59PM MST

Critical - Will break reports resulting in a work-stoppage.

Severe - Will have significant impacts on the presentation of information.

Cosmetic - Will annoy users and likely result in requests to reformat column widths in reports.

Identified Issues (ordered by priority)

• HTML Formatting Missing
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Critical
  • Likely the result of certain new HTML characters being restricted due to security concerns, resulting in partially-rendered views. This is inconsistent with what is in production today. (See screenshot below)
• Auto-Collapse
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Critical
  • Seems half-baked and isn't sticky and needs to be reversed. All those years of training users on how to leverage the browser's CTRL + F to find data are out the window with this. Expanding each report on the dashboard one at a time is not a reasonable workaround.
• Anchor Tags Injecting HTML (Case 00174420)
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Critical
  • (<a href="https://www.google.com">) in your HTML don't work anymore. I've logged an issue for this one with support since it's the most bothersome.
• link.url in Text Mode Injecting Line Break (Case 00174420)
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Severe
  • If you use "link.url=customDataLabelAsString(Field)" for rendering hyperlinks, a line break is now added to the view breaking the presentation.
• Dashboard Refresh
  • Status - Confirmed
  • Severity -Severe
  • Loading dashboards repeatedly requires a refresh to load data
• Column Header All Caps
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Severe
  • Column headers are used for much more than simply a label. For example, we use them to provide instructions, naming conventions and best practices for fields, often in complete sentences and case-sensitive. Changing this to all caps is unacceptable.
• Column Header Text Cutoff
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Cosmetic
  • Text in headers used to always display regardless of column width. Now text is being cutoff and words broken mid-way.
• Parameter Report > Forms Missing
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Cosmetic
  • When viewing a parameter report, we can no longer see the custom forms that parameter exists on. See screenshot below.
• Column Header "Description" Fails
  • Status - Unresolved
  • Severity - Cosmetic
  • When hovering over the column header, a description should display if added. See this recording of the behavior since a screenshot doesn't capture the popup tooltip.

[kynabaker16]

Hi Katherine and all,

We are definitely working on updating the official release notes right now and there will be an official Announcement Center message soon too!

Thank you so much for your feedback on this!

Kyna

[kynabaker16]

Hello all, the release notes have been updated. Check it out: https://experience.workfront.com/s/article/2019-4-List-enhancements-91923249

[JohnSe1]

Steven - as others have states before me, thank you and your teams for keeping an open dialog to our needs!

Not to pile on to this fun adventure - but after spending a couple days giving a hectic training demo to 50+ people in 4 different business units on the changes coming next week - in particular the new auto collapsed features. As I suspected many of them were going to have users that didn't want that feature! During these sessions I was correct with a small minority being UPSET that they were collapsed along with some of the formatting. BUT the vast majority found the new update to be a nice refreshing experience. Especially since sone of their members have large amounts of data and no longer being restricted to "50" items on most dashboards it was a nice win! Now seeing that Workfront is pulling back this update for more research - I will need to undo the work I just built up - sort of creating extra busy work both times <sigh> - I have already started this process and as I assumed some folks are asking Why or more of that's fine - but we want to choose to keep the new version....

This feature add seemed like a sudden add - or at least possibly one I overlooked in testing as I have been busy with other onbording workflows.

Lastly - one of the other big wins was the "new" filtering option on all list types now (except on dashboards?) For many this is a better approach than having to use the browser to leverage this. So kudos for that!! And the overall look and feel of the new format was also a Ohhh ahhh moment for many (well except for the missing/miss located horizontal slide bar issue...).

again thank you

John

[stevenz74702849]

Great feedback John! I knew that no matter the decision it would cause reverberations and I appreciate you sharing the challenges it was and is causing.

I have shared your feedback with my product team (the good and the bad) so they can be sure to get an even better experience for your team in the future.

We are super excited about the new look and experience for the overall product. As we were validating the changes for the 19.4 release we took the entire Product organization back to the Classic version (what you are all on running on - unless you opt in the beta) of the product for several days. I have to admit that I was very excited to get back in to the new Workfront experience this morning as it is so much easier.

We are still working through the "sharp corners" in the new Workfront experience, but I can assure you, it will be a fantastic productivity boost for your teams.

[Kelly_Wehrmann]

@Narayan Raum, thanks for starting this thread and to everyone for providing feedback. I have always found Workfront's approach to engage with us on the community refreshing. :)

I received a notice this morning that a lot of the list changes were being rolled back, which I think is a good thing. However, I wanted to bubble up a Task list defect that we have reported to Support that will be problematic for our project managers. I am really hoping that this defect will be fixed before the deployment to Production next week.

On the Task tab, if your View spans with width of your screen, the only way you can access the horizontal scroll bar is to scroll all the way to the bottom of the Task List, use the horizontal scroll bar to move right/left on the view and then scroll back to the portion of the Task List that you wanted to view.‚‚‚‚ This is a loss of functionality compared to the current production functionality for the Task List (tab).

@Kyna Baker, are you aware of this defect; can you provide any insight?

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Thanks Kelly,

Yep: I hit that a couple of days ago, too, so reverted to this "Classic Task List" workaround and -- in case you get stranded -- invite you to consider doing the same, using the Package that @Narayan Raum kindly assembled.

Regards,

Doug‚

[kynabaker16]

Hi Kelly, We are aware of this and have a solution for it! Thank you so much for your patience. Kyna

[OliviaCh]

Hi Kyna

Do you know if the solution will be applied before the release this week?

Thanks

Olivia