Seeking Recommendations/Advice for Managing Project Brief Changes and Sending Updates

[Kiersten_K]

Seeking Recommendations/Advice for Managing Project Brief Changes

Our Challenge:

Our email team handles a high volume of projects simultaneously, often needing to update briefs when promotions or product storytelling modules are added, removed, or changed after they have submitted the brief in Workfront. Currently, the team manually updates each brief’s fields (which can vary) and then sends a recap update to the creative partners to inform them of the changes. This process is time-consuming and tedious, and we’re looking for ways to improve efficiency.

Proposed Solution:

I am considering creating a project report with all the fields that might need updating for current projects. 

I’m exploring whether Fusion could help automate the project recap updates. The challenge is that Workfront doesn’t indicate what has changed in a field once it’s saved. I’m hesitant to include many fields in an update since it’s unclear what has changed from the original request, and I prefer not to add new fields unless they are needed to help automate. I want to make sure I am not overlooking something before proposing the report option with still having to send the manual recap updates.

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[Richard__Carlson]

We have a similar situation in that we have a lot of projects - we need a brief - what is the best way to have a brief apply to a bunch of different projects - how do we best manage that process, but also how do we manage updates to the brief -> pushing updates to the resulting projects.  Currently we are building a bigger more comprehensive brief in Workfront, but, if I'm honest, I almost feel like having an external brief might be easier.

How would we effectively communicate changes (in a form) out to a larger team?  It really boils down to the individual taking the extra steps to communicate.  Then, all of the affected projects / project owners would need to be updated to the changes.  This is the problem - it doesn't get done.

I would love a more systematic solution, because even if an external brief simplifies the process slightly, theoretically, all of the project managers would need to be updated as well.  I'm trying to imagine how that would work.

[Madalyn_Destafney]

Hey there! I remember working on something where many users needed to know if certain fields in a custom form changed - and when the change happened and what the change was. I ended up making a journal entry report with all the fields I wanted tracked as columns and had the old vs new text as cols and who made the change(s) and ONLY pulled in changes in the [past week] to keep it up to date/not showing changes from long ago. You could adjust that filter based on your needs. I think I also had conditional formatting in columns to make a cell a different color if the change happened in the past day or something, not completely remembering. But overall this helped. Of course the relevant users need to have the report pinned and check it however often as needed if they need to see if something changed, but just a thought for you. 

If you go this route, be sure you have the relevant custom form fields tracked in your sys updates in Setup.

[Richard__Carlson]

How does the report work?  Does it pull in all of the creative brief changes for a single project or multiple projects?  If multiple, is it grouped by project?

[Madalyn_Destafney]

I think I had the report filtered to all projects in a certain program and all the projects in the left column with the fields I wanted to show from the brief/custom form in the subsequent columns with the old vs new text, updated by, etc. Then of course values only show in the report if there were any changes in the wildcard timeframe given in the report.

[AmberRusso]

I don't have any firm solutions, as I'm working through something similar with my team, but here's what we do currently:

• Current: To record changes in the brief/scope after initial submission, we require Change Orders to be submitted. That means all projects are set up as request queues upon creation. There's a custom form attached to the Change Order to help classify what the ask is (change in mandatories, in deliverable types, etc). and to gather details. The Change Order is an issue that the Project Managers review + update the project details/brief with
• Current: PMs tagged impacted teams (Creative) in the Updates section so they're aware a Change Order has come in and review specifics
• Future: Creative only sees the Change Order via tagging, and they work on a task assignment model, not issues. So next steps are to create a Change Order task with a deadline that appears in their work list so they understand what the changes are and how long they have to implement them

Hopefully something in that process jogs your brain!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @Kiersten_K,

Your point about "catching what's changed" reminded me of a Magic Reports solution we developed for a similar use case a few years ago which (translating to your situation):

• allowed users to enter their Brief in a Workfront Rich Text field so they could use bold, bullets, italics, etc. for emphasis
• we also invented a convention so they could tag colors to that text (e.g. <<blue>>My important Text<</blue>>
• the results would then render with those colors on the "Current Brief" (Magic Report) custom tab
• to track the evolution of that data, they could also (on that same tab) click a button to "Generate" an official version that would lock that data in as of that date (geek stuff: in a calculated parameter on an immediately closed issue, thereby creating a time series, applying this theory)
• with that time series in hand, users could also select a special "Compare From Date" (i.e. they just returned from a one week vacation, so want to catch up) that would then compare and highlight any new text (e.g. bullets 4 and 5 were added) within the last Generated Brief prior to that Compare From Date and the current contents...noting that if it was "different enough", it would all appear as new

If you think this might be an approach worth considering for your team, I'd be happy to chat further via doug.denhoed@atappstore.com

Regards,

Doug