Tracking Contact to a Project

[khdlr]

Good day, as I am new to Workfront, I seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle. For my projects I have loads of contacts that are not "Users" of this system. I engage with vendors, contractors, etc. They all have contact information. Often times I need to call them or send them an e-mail to check on an order. I really don't want to be switching back to archive e-mails to find these contacts and their information. How do I track contacts in Workfront? I will have many contacts for one projects. Is there a way to do this so a report can be generated later showing a contact list for my project? Thank you for your help Kevin Hinderleider Smurfit Kappa North America LLC

[VicAl]

What we do in those situations is create a Workfront ID for them. Since their email address is their Username it works out well. Just give them a Reviewer license so you don't burn any licenses. Then you can tag them on your comments on Tasks and they can simply reply to the email (without having to go into Workfront itself) and the reply will get logged in your Task too. Then you'll have a log of the correspondence all in WF. Then you can also write a report to list off what you want, since you'll have them in WF. And the WF mobile App actually has a Contacts tab that will list ALL your WF Contacts. So if you add them to Workfront, you'll have a multitude of ways to list your contacts or display them. Let me know if you need more information.

[khdlr]

Vic: Thank you for your reply. This make sense, and could use some more information from you. Is your workflow (for adding "Contacts")?: 1. Go into setup and add the person as reviewer 2. Add a company to assign them to in their profile 3. Update the settings for the profile Or something different Once created how do you associate them to a project? For most of these folks, I don't want them to have access to my project, I just need to keep a contact list so I am not fumbling when trying to find their e-mail address or telephone number. Thank you for your help Kevin Kevin Hinderleider Smurfit Kappa North America LLC

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Kevin, Vic might have other insights, too, but to confirm, yes, the three steps you've correctly described are the main trick. From there, you've then got many options on how to then leverage them, but for your "strictly contacts" case, I'd suggest you consider: - adding one Issue (or Task...we're bending rules here to get a 1:many relationship) under the Project for each Contact you need - assign the User to each such Issue (or Task) - mark the Status as Closed (or consider creating a special Status called "Contact" that is based on the built in Closed status) to prevent those Issues (or Tasks) from interfering with the Open Items (or Timeline; noting that Closing a Task will also lock in its Actual Start and Actual End Dates) - add "individual" custom data to such Users (eg start date, last refreshed date, last correspondence date, expiry date, cell, email, timezone, Is Customer, Is Supplier, etc.) so you only have to maintain them once - add "project specific" custom data to such Issues (or Tasks) for sorting, grouping, and filtering purposes (eg Project Position, RASCI Default, Onboard Date, Offboard Date, etc.) - build Issue (or Task) views that pull the custom data of interest together (and optionally add colors to help draw attention to missing and important data) - use those views to build reports, dashboards, and custom tabs tabs so that (at last!) you have a "Contacts" tab on every Project that automatically filters to just those Issues (or Tasks) that show exactly what you care about If do you travel to Contact Beach, I'd love to see a screen shot Postcard of how it turns out! Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[VicAl]

Of course Doug's answer gives you lots of options. He provides the PhD response, while I typically give the GED one �� . Yes, that is how you create it. Basically you're just creating a WF Profile, which inherently show in the Contacts of the mobile app. The only need the required fields (email, name, Home Group, and the Reviewer license) . And it sounds like you want to enter their phone number too. The other information is up to you and how you want to use it. For example, the company name isn't required and doesn't provide a whole lot, EXCEPT, if you want to do things like create a report to show just the people from that company, or Group by the Company, etc. Rates are only needed if you want to track them (planned and actuals) etc. So totally up to you what else you want to add. You can prevent them from seeing your project simply by doing nothing �� . Just don't give them access to the project (i.e. not adding them to the Sharing options and not assigning any Issues or Tasks to them). As far as associating them to a project, let me know what you're trying to accomplish there. I'm sure there's a good reason, but I'm confused because you didn't want them to have access to the project. If it's just to see who's tied to a project, we can do some things there. But let me know. And feel free to give me a call if you wish. Sometimes it's easier.

[khdlr]

Thank you for the detailed instructions on how to set this up. I truly appreciate your time!! To answer the question, what is it I am trying to accomplish let me try and describe the use case. On almost any project I have contacts that I may need to call to obtain additional information. On one project in particular, I have about 5 people that I need to call to obtain information about the project or provide updates. I only need a location to document their company name, name, title, e-mail address and telephone number. I don't want to jump out of workfront to go digging in my e-mail to find their contact information. It would be good to have a built in solution for capturing a "rolodex" of peoples contact information that are related to just a particular project. I may use Workfront a bit differently than others as I use this as a central project management tool across multiple divisions and departments. I have folks that work on a project and will be provided with a license and I have others that are just purely contacts that we may need to contact during the life of the project but are only their for reference purposes only. I'll be sure to add this as a feature request. Thank you again for your help. Kevin Kevin Hinderleider Smurfit Kappa North America LLC

[VicAl]

Hi Kevin, OK that makes sense. For me, I would create an ID for all those people. You can use a Reviewer license so it doesn't cost you anything extra. What if you create a Team for each of those groups you wanted to associate with a project. Then you can run a User Report that has the info you want for each team – essentially a rolodex. You can even then send a WF comment to the whole group if you want.