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Seeing the Wood for the Trees

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Level 4
My team often jump to a task straight from the Notifications Panel at the top right of the Global Navigation Bar. This is great! I want them to act quickly and jump on tasks. However, this is like parachuting into a forest without a map and compass! They have no idea where they are in the Greater Project (forest), and when you are in your fourth or fifth Iteration, many of the Task descriptions are alike (trees!). Yes there's the Breadcrumb Trail top left of the screen, but that doesn't help Hansel and Gretel (my Developers (names changed for humorous effect)). Does anyone have any suggestions for a quick way to see exactly where you are in the Project from a Task which may be indented four times...? Thanks, Phil http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iT-JAFdgZAk/VjKALLikjBI/AAAAAAAAHIk/GpgX2xZ9HQM/s1600/nano11.gif
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Level 10
Nice GIF. We expand the name of the task to include information about what phase/iteration part of the project it is in. We have to have longer task names to easily incorporate that information. Brute force, true. Eric Eric L. Lucas, MPM Manager, PMO | Sourcing and Delivery Services Office: 904-727-4218 | Mobile: 904-377-4426 Crowley Maritime Corporation | http://www.crowley.comhttp://www.crowley.com 9487 Regency Sq. Blvd. | Jacksonville, FL 32225

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Level 4
Thanks, Eric, Yes, we have started that too, but I was hoping someone here had a more elegant solution....... Cheers, Phil

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Level 10
I hope there is a more elegant solution too. Neanderthal Project Management isn’t my strong suit. I appreciate a clever finessed solution. ☺

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Level 10
Hi Phil, I think an answer would be to expand the breadcrumb trail a bit further....to show a chain of up to around 5 levels of parent task names (this would cover the bulk of tasks I'd expect). At the moment it only shows the project name and the parent task name. We can submit a feature request each on this if you think it is a good idea. As a workaround, we also tend to do what Eric does (build more detail into the task names) but this is a bit clumsy. Cheers

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Level 4
The other elegant solution suggested to me was to be able to click on the top level project name in the Breadcrumb trail, but instead of the page opening at Task 1, it opens with the subject task centre screen. This would definitely help with 500-plus task projects. I think mass tickets are a great idea!

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Level 10
Yep - opening at the right position of the task in the full list would be great. There are a number of other occasions when editing tasks where you get returned to the top of the list. Perhaps the same feature could work in both cases.....

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Level 5
Create a task level dashboard that shows the information on parent, parent.parent, parent,parent.parent, etc You can also pull relevant information from the project, the custom form on the task, etc. You can also have a calculated field on the custom form that has the breadcrumbs you need them to see.

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Level 4
Ah.... You make that sound so easy :winking_face: Please can you give more detail for a novice like me...? https://media.giphy.com/media/CT5Ye7uVJLFtu/giphy.gif I got as far as three layers, but couldn't crate a column for Parent Parent Parent...

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Level 5
Copy your parents parent column and switch to text mode. You can replace parent. with parent.parent. or even parent.parent.parent. It's a nice recursive. Then if you have 5 generations in adjacent columns. You can collapse all of your seperate columns for parent.parent.parent.parent.name, parent.parent.parent.name, parent.parent.name, parent.name, name into one column using shared columns. Between each name column insert a blank column with the following text mode: valueformat=HTML value="-" width=1 sharecol=true And in each of the parent columns also add the sharecol=true line So you'd have name-name-name-name-name or ----name depending on the number of parents

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Level 10
Hi Melinda, Would you be able to share a screenshot of your "Task level dashboard" so we can visualise the end result? Sounds interesting. Thanks

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Level 10
I like the idea of a task dashboard which I assume would be within the task screen. I'm able to create the report that see all the parent tasks but this report will pull all the tasks in all projects. Is there a way to do it in the report that self identifies the project and the task, something similar like $$USER.ID but for tasks?

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Level 5
When you add a dashboard to an object, Workfront automatically includes the filter that it only shows the results for that object. So I create a basically unfiltered dashboard of the columns/information I want to see and add that dashboard to the task/issue/project custom tabs and it shows up on all instances of that object pre-filtered. You can also add that to the layout so it’s set for that group of workers. Melinda Layten mlayten@gmail.com Independent Workfront Consultant

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Level 10
That works great! I never thought of just going and trying that out. I've often have ideas for Project and Task dashboards but had balked at having the users be prompted to generate the report. Thanks!

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Level 5

Here's a project level dashboard I'm currently using to monitor our service level agreements. You can see that's its a mixture of custom and system fields. Agreed Budget Estimate and Agreed Planned Completion Date are calculated fields that set when a project becomes active. This initial estimate is then checked against the system Planned and Actual fields. And all our displayed together to make it clear what is happening on each project.

These reports are unfiltered but only show 1 project which is the current open project.

Melinda Layten

mlayten@gmail.com

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