Using Workfront Teams for Short-Term Project Teams

[BeckaJo]

I'm looking for guidance on how people handle the idea of "project teams" vs. Workfront "Teams." According to Workfront's support article, "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216740998-Understanding-Teams">Understanding Teams , there's a difference. Are you using formal Workfront Teams for your ad-hoc project teams or are Workfront Teams just for established functional teams? The origin of this inquiry stems from users asking a simple question: How do I quickly tag all of my project team members in updates and share objects with them? Our PMs are managing projects with teams of anywhere from 2 - 30 people. I think that everyone can admit that having to tag (or even just remember) 30 people is a big ask for project managers. Using Workfront Teams seems like it would be a quick win - set up a Team for each project and assign the appropriate users to each Team. However, I could see a downside with having so many teams that it becomes overwhelming. And, can you delete a Team after a project is over and not lose the historical information tied to that team? What's your experience been? Do you have best practices that are working well for your teams? Becka Johns Project Manager, Process Improvement ProMedica

[DavidCo3]

Hi Becka, We use teams based on our functional teams (home team), although we often have people with secondary teams which are related to other functions they perform. In terms of project-specific teams, we have done this on a couple of occasions but generally we don't. If we want to message all the people who are part of a project, we would go to the Staffing tab of the project, then to the People sub-tab then click the 'Update All' button which lets you compose a message to everyone on that project. You can also selectively remove some people and add others if required. Deleting a team looks like its main impact would be that it will disappear from any tasks which have a team assignment. If users have it set as their home team then it will also revert to them having no home team. They're the most obvious impacts but there could be more. Regards, David Cornwell

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Becka, As David said, the best thing is going to Staffing and the People subtab. I am curious, what do you mean "and share objects"? What objects are the PMs sharing with the team that are not in the project? We tend to keep all project related items inside the project so everyone on the project has view access to it. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[BeckaJo]

Thanks, David and Anthony for your responses. It does look like using the Staffing tab is the way to go. However, when I add users using the staffing tab, they do not inherit any sharing permissions for the Project. You'd think that those would go hand-in-hand --- add someone to the project team and they at least get view access to the Project. Is this a Project setting that can be adjusted? Or do you separately need to set the Project sharing permissions with each team member? Becka Johns Project Manager, Process Improvement ProMedica

[AnthonyIm]

Well... I can't believe no one in my company noticed that before! Yeah, I would have thought they would get view access as well! I'm going to put in a ticket and just say that I found a bug. ;) Anthony Imgrund FCB

[AnthonyIm]

Here is what Support said: This is functioning as designed. The way to add someone both to the Project Team and Sharing is to give them an assignment on the Project via a Task or Issue. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Anthony is spot on. The staffing tab was meant to show who had been assigned work at some point in the project's life cycle. To add someone to the project team, you would want to assign them to work. As for inheriting permissions, there's a lot of factors involved, but the primary ones stem from the project settings under Access, and since you're not assigning someone to something, the system doesn't have the trigger that would set the access for the user. Hopefully this makes more sense! Thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[DavidCo3]

Thanks @Dustin Martin for your ongoing contributions to the Community. I know some other Workfront people also do help out, but you're consistently offering assistance. I presume it's not on your job description, so I just wanted to say this is appreciated. I hope more Workfront people engage with the Community over time. cc @Alison Milbury David Cornwell

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Thanks David! You're right, it's not in my job description, but anyone that's worked with me knows I try and make sure our customers have the best experience possible. If I can add some of my experience here and there and help people out, we're all better off. I appreciate the shout out! Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[BeckaJo]

Thanks @Dustin Martin for the explanation - that helps me understand the intended functionality. And I second David's comment - thanks for lending your expertise to the community! Becka Johns Project Manager, Process Improvement ProMedica

[Kelly_Wehrmann]

I can vouch for @Dustin Martin ...he does go above and beyond in his efforts to provide a good customer experience (I hope Workfront Mgmt is recognizing him for that). Many moons ago he helped me with numerous help desk tickets. He was always thorough in his triage of reported problems, diligent in following up, and provided a good summary of the resolution (even if it wasn't the outcome I was hoping for)! :) Dustin, I can't thank you enough for all of your contributions. Admin Kelly-Wehrmann SSFCU