Requests for Teams vs Job Role

[Halie_Baer]

I could use some help formatting our process for task/project requests that aren't going to specific users... 

Background - We are an in-house marketing team, so we don't track hours in WF or use workload balancer. We currently send design requests to the job role "graphic designer." Their admin then filters those requests through a report/dashboard and reassigns them based on skill or workload. The downfall is when their admin is slammed, in a lot of meetings, or out of the office, tasks can get backlogged until I as the project manager notice it and reassign them. 

Question - I like how the team requests show up on the homepage for users. Our team very much works off of their homepage and don't venture too far from it. Is there a way to get the job role requests to show there? Should I put them all in a team instead and send requests to the team? I guess I don't understand the difference - how is your org structured? 

Thanks! 

[VictoriaLinn]

Hi @Halie_Baer - We utilize team assignments on tasks often for users to pull their own work from a work basket/queue. If you want to use the native reports on the home page, then you would have to change the roles to team assignments. The other thing with assigning to a team and not a job role is that depending on the permissions set at the project-level, the users might not have the ability to self-assign with the job role because they don't have contribute access on the task (but with the team assignment they should get the contribute access there, unless you have more customized permissions happening). The last point too, we use teams for this because our users like getting notifications when there is work to be pulled.

Hope that helps!

[KellieGardner]

If you utilize a Team for assignments then members of that team can self assign work without needing to be assigned from a project manager. Job Roles function more of a way of a smart assignment scenario to know what kind of user should be assigned but would still need to have an assignment made by someone.

I would suggest assigning to a team vs job role. 

[skyehansen]

You could do both. Assign to a team and a role.

The team could still be a triage team -- sounds like the team would be a combination of their admin AND you (and whoever else is in the position of having to farm out the work).

Or as others have mentioned, you could opt to bypass yourself and the other admin completely, and create a team out of all the graphic designers if you think they would be ok with farming out the work by themselves.

Regardless, assignment to a team is meant to be a way to notify and indicate to a set of users what needs to be done.

Either way, I consider roles to be more of a placeholder for hours and manpower. e.g. if you need two graphic designers on a task, you would put in two roles, each with 3 hours each. Then when you assign the people, you know you need two of them and they get assigned with the pre-existing hours, and it makes resource or capacity management more meaningful.

[Sujatha_TS]

I would suggest assigning to teams vs job role.

If we use "Team" for assignments each member in the team will be able to get to work on it/ self-assign it to themselves. If we use "Job Roles" function might need to be assigned by someone else.

[Kiersten_K]

We have been using Teams over Roles when projects first kick off to our Ops team to review and assign since day 1 of using Workfront. Our organization works in a very paced retail environment so being able to have the Ops Team assigned ensures that everyone on the team receives the alert that new work needs to be assigned as soon as possible. Also, this is nice place for the Ops manager to be able to see quickly what is still in the queue for the team to work on for that day without having to go to another report. This setup also helps prevent any potential coverage issues when teammates are out of the office. Hope this helps!