Scorecard for a Request

[FrankFo]

Has anyone built a scorecard similar to what is available for a project scorecard and apply it to a request (Issue). We are exploring to have a way to prioritize the many requests that we receive to determine the order to work the requests. We have a custom form where customers enter a request and want them to answer some questions to result in a score that will help us sort requests and ensure that we are working on the most important items first. Thanks Frank Fornataro DHHS

[VikkiGI2]

Hi Frank, I am by no means an expert in this but we set up something similar for a client demo whereby we scored certain questions/fields in the custom form and then set up some reports with conditional formatting so we could visually see a certain type of request, e.g. those needing internal approval/which location the client was in etc from the whole list. When you are in the custom form (via Set Up) and select the field you want to score, click the Options button and select Show Value, another line appears under the option; I added in my scores there, then created some calculated fields in an Admin only section at the bottom of the form referencing the fields I wanted to score; Then created an Issue report and pulled in the custom fields showing the scores and set up some conditional formatting so we could see at a glance what type of request it was by the colour of the line. This was shown to me by one of the Workfront technical guys when we were trying to come up with a solution for a potential client that would be receiving thousands of requests globally and needed to easily identify them from the list type views of new requests etc. Hope that is of some help! Vikki Gibbs WF System Admin Paragon Customer Communications

[TimGr1]

Hi Frank, We've used a scoring process in a couple of different flavors in our department. We have been able to setup with custom forms and based on what gets selected, it will calculate items. Did you attend the Leap conference in 2019? There is a really good presentation that is available that gives good insight into how to do different types of calculations. Based on the scores in the custom form, I create a report to show me the individual scores and the total sum (each is a field; I sum the sums of the other items together to get my total). I've used it for product management to score what enhancements we should work on with our vendor (what's the most critical of the critical), we've used it to score general requests to our business units as well. This is at the issue level since the initial request goes under that bucket. We review with the requestor to confirm the need of the request and either do it quickly if it's something simple or convert it to a project. The built in project score card functionality can mimic what can be setup with custom forms / fields at the issue object level, but has more functionality to build out a business case (one can argue is a project charter or at least to confirm need) and you can customize score cards and then output a PDF that shows what the project is. We don't use that yet at our company but it would be something I'd like to try. I prefer built in functionality over custom functionality but for issues it works. I use a lot of "If" statements which look something like, IF({Name of Custom Field}='Choice in the field',10,0). This says that If a custom field name has an individual value I selected and identified in the calculation, then if it's select and therefore "true", give it 10 points. If it's not selected and therefore "false," give it 0 points. If I have a lot of these fields, I'll then do SUM({Name of Field 1}, {Name of Field 2}, {Name of Field 3}). I'll then do a sum of sum with SUM{Sum Score 1}, {Sum Score 2}, {Sum Score 3}). Keep in mind, I don't know SQL and I'm told it follows the same type of logic or concept. I have been hunting for a way too to collapse the amount of calculations I do with more "or" logic (which is || in the calculation) but I haven't been successful yet so I've had to do a lot of individual calculations per selectable item on a custom field which isn't ideal but it works. I've reached out to the community a few times but haven't been able to get it to work yet. I also learned that calculations don't work for multi-select custom fields, you have to do individual selectable items currently (please others correct me if this has changed or if you figured out how to do this). I'm happy to do a WebEx call to show you what I mean as well if that's easier. I learned a lot at the Leap conference in 2019 to implement this for the first time at our company (that I'm aware of but happy to be wrong there too) and it's helped to get a bit more adoption of the tool internally. Please let me know if you have any other questions. I'd be interested to see what you come up with to see if I can learn something and simplify my calculations. :) Tim Greek, PMP IEHP

[MichelleBo1]

@Tim Greek do you remember the name of the presentation you attended for this at Leap 2019? I would like to see if there is something similar coming to Leap 2020 Michelle Bowden Fiserv ETG

[TimGr1]

Hi Michelle, The presentation was called Express Yourself- Getting More out of calculated custom data. If you go into the site for the presentations, in the search field type in "calc" and it'll pop up. I also attended a presentation called Getting Out of Office: Taking Release Management Out of MS Office Suite. This will allowed me to connect to two resources at Aetna who setup a scoring system and they helped me work through some mechanics of calculations and how it works in WF (invaluable info). Let me know if you have any questions or if you come up with some calculations that work for you. I'm always on the hunt for better ways to do it. Tim Greek, PMP IEHP

[TimGr1]

And this may help as well Michelle (I found it the other day for some internal questions about calculations where it may yield some additional help); https://experience.workfront.com/s/article/Condition-operators-in-calculated-custom-expressions-4055... Tim Greek, PMP IEHP

[FrankFo]

Vikki, Appreciate you sharing this worked great and brought us real close. The only difference I took was to make calculated fields in a separate custom form tied to the Request Object and kept the Total Score on both the Custom Form to answer questions and the Custom Form for calculating the scores. The next step I would like to take is to prevent the requestor from seeing the Custom Form created to calculate the scores. We do not want to share the algorithm to calculate and how we weighted each question. Just want them to answer the question (of course they should be able to see what answer would give them a higher score). To explain why I did it this way; this would store the information and answers selected which would give us the ability to slice and dice the questions and answers if needed to determine how many requests have what answers, score averages as well as where the higher scores and answers are coming from. Again really appreciate all the answers and doing this was very easy although I wish there was some way to make the value be the score; just could not make that happen. Frank Fornataro DHHS

[ElissaLa3]

Hi Frank, I have done this both ways as indicated in the other's responses. But if I understand correctly, you have a separate form that you attach to the original issue? You can make sure to create a new section on the form above your calculations and only give Admin access as shown in the screenshot.

Elissa Lazor Digital Transformation Consultant and Solutions Architect Austin, TX 281.772.3973

[FrankFo]

Thank you I am not an ADMIN for our state but I can have our Admin team make this change and then if I need to get the information I am assuming I can do that via a report. Frank Fornataro DHHS

[ElissaLa3]

Yes that's correct. Elissa Lazor Digital Transformation Consultant and Solutions Architect Austin, TX 281.772.3973

[MikePe]

Hi everyone!

I am a bit late to this party, but this thread is describing exactly what we are also looking for at my organization, and I have a few questions for you all...

We are using a request queue based process, so, much like you were at the outset of this (I imagine), we are looking at two options: A) changing process to work Business Case/Scorecards into the sponsor's stage of the request, or B) using custom forms as you all have described. Have any of you noticed any limitations compared to what Scorecards offer, or unforeseen difficulties/blindspots in your data?

I had a bit of trouble implementing the above calculated field snippets, but I'm going to swing through the LEAP link Tim so graciously shared before I get too much further into that :)

Thanks!

[TimGr1]

Hey Mike,

Did you attend the 2019 Leap conference? If so, then you can access the link. If not, then you won't be able to get into (FYI). That being said, I'm also happy to discuss with you what I've learned when developing the scorecard.

The main goal that I used out of the scorecard was to drive support team members to a discipline of evaluating a request against the needs of the organization, but also to create the visual that are publically accessible as to where a request lives. I would then use this information in this experiment (I used it for product mgmt as I was wearing project and product mgmt hats at the time) to show how critical is a critical request.

I frequently ran into a problem, as is human nature, that "my" request is the "most critical." And it could be, but when adding this objective system, it allowed for people to see their request on a bigger picture. We then can have discussions, which is the most important part of the score card to bring people together and to share a vision, you can then say which is more or of lower importance for the moment. The scores can then be adjusted up or down to help with that.

Another engine that I haven't dived into that may relate to this is portfolio optimizer if you convert these to projects (one of my next items once I get to it). I convert the requests to projects as it offers additional report and financial capabilities over an issue object item and then bring details in from both objects over dashboards that I then use to manage product mgmt meetings.

The other thing that I did with scoring that I thought was a great visual and benefit of using the application to do the heavy lift for me was that with the custom fields, I could choose our company's strategic areas / goals to weight the request against that, along with adding other factors to differentiate the score enough. I used other scores about compliance to regulatory needs (specific to my healthcare space), severity of workaround and if one exists, priority chosen by the team member, and age of the request. This helped me to tie in the request further to the company vision so that it all rolled up.

There's a lot of flexibility here.

[MikePe]

Thank you! This is very helpful -- I was able to get my calculated field up and running with a bit of tinkering and you wonderful folks in this thread :)

I am experiencing an unexpected result, however, and I'm not sure if I did something wrong (I'm still learning the ropes on Text Mode). The code attached in the screenshot is giving me a score of 50 when I select SMS, Blog or Social, even though I am attempting to have those equate to a 25... At first, it wasn't giving me a value for Email at all, but now that's working fine and it's the options in the 25 range that are incorrect... did I miss something?

Here is the text (not sure if posting on Community will mess with the code though):

IF(Channels="EMAIL",100,IF(Channels="OLM_BANNER","SITE_ASSETS",50,IF(Channels="SMS","SOCIAL","BLOG",25,0)))

[FrankFo]

‚We implemented a custom form scorecard. When our requestors submit a request they are required to answer 7 questions that were identified by the management of the requesting teams. Each answer has points associated with them. Once the request is submitted there is a simple algorithm that adds the total score and divides the total by questions answered.

This has helped us greatly as we are an Agile team so when we look at the request backlog they are ranked highest score to lowest score. Depending on availability and our teams capacity we select the highest scored item that we can complete within a sprint (Iteration) and plan our iterations based upon the ranking with some adjustments based upon availability and capacity.

The scorecard has helped us to prioritize. The custom form is a simple calculation to capture the points from each answer and totally them at the end. We also have a calculation to add up or count the questions that have answers which become the denominator for the points to be used for ranking.

[FrankFo]

‚I am assuming that the Channels field is a multi-select field and would guess that if you picked more than one items then the results in the database would be each selection followed by a "," or ";". I recommend removing the quotes (") between each selection and represent the multiple selection like so IF(Channels = "SMS,SOCIAL,BLOG", 25, 0). I would first make the selections and if possible in a report pull the field and see how that is displayed in the report.

[MikePe]

Thank you Frank -- the Channels field is a single-select dropdown field, so unfortunately it does not appear to have taken the change well (I did give it a shot, as the suggestion was sound!). When I made the change, the value it was displaying for the SMS, SOCIAL and BLOG selections was showing as 0 (I presume because the IF statement was demanding all of the above be selected, but I'm not certain).

[TimGr1]

Hey Mike,

I found that for a drop down field, I had to create a specific calculation for each selection and then do display logic so that depending on what gets chosen, it'll only show the one item with the score after the custom form is saved from the selection by the requestor.

First calculated field - IF({Channels} = "SMS", 25, 0)

Second calculated field - IF ({Channels} = "SOCIAL", 25, 0)

Third calculated field - IF({Channels}="BLOG",25,0)

I'm sure that others are better than me at doing equations and there may be other approaches, but this was how I was able to get this stuff to work. See if that works to at least get you going and then you can do a v2 that has a better equation that you can work out in the background. :)

[MikePe]

Oof! That sounds like it is going to be painful! We have probably 17 different channels, so I'll definitely need to be hiding these calculated fields away (I'm thinking maybe on a separate, hidden form altogether, if not a hidden division of the scorecard form) All the same, a painful solution is better than no solution -- I really appreciate your guidance, and I'm going to give it a try. Thank you!

[TimGr1]

Definitely let us know how it goes once setup to see the user experience (both from request and from fulfillment of request end). If you find other calculations that simplifies (I know it has to exist), I'm happy to see it too so that I can clean up mine. :)