WFPro Tuesday Trivia

Happy Holidays Everyone!

WFPro Tuesday Trivia looks fun, I received the All Discussions Digest for Wednesday December 11, 2019

So this is a Wednesday Trivia Feedback response.

Is the screenshot describing a record containing properties of a form field type?

Okay it's been a couple of days and there are some great responses so let's jump in...

@James Hill ‚- Sorry but this doesn't have anything to do with approvals, but thank you for trying!

@David Cornwell - Close, but it's actually a task report.‚

@Joe Salas - Great to see you back in the community! You nailed it. The report describes a field being used in a specific form.

When I posted this trivia, I didn't really know where it would go. But let's keep going because if you stick with me, it gets a whole lot more interesting. So this task report is showing tasks with custom fields. And, as Joe indicated, each task's custom fields describe . Here's a look at a piece of the form in the designer:

So, if you look at this much more robust example of tasks using these fields, can you think of a reason why I might want to document parameters in this way? Let the trivia continue! :-)

Narayan - A big headache for our team is getting an "export" of custom form parameters. We either make screen shots or catalog the parameters using an excel file with similar columns.

I'm unclear why it's a "Task Report" though?

Hi James,

To relieve your custom form parameters documentation Big Headache...

I invite you to consider our Report Categories and Parameters solution, which automatically enumerates your Workfront categories and parameters into an Excel spreadsheet that you can use for clean up, maintenance planning, and backup documentation.

Regards,

Doug

Hi James,

Exporting custom form parameters was also a huge challenge for us, and Doug's Report Categories and Parameters solution is what I've‚‚‚ used in the past to evaluate the forms and fields in our instance.

Regarding the trivia, thank you for the thought-provoking question. The reason it's a task report is because we're using the task object to catalog custom forms, fields and other things. We are tracking all of the fields we plan to create or have already created in our instance as tasks in a project. Therefore, the list of tasks in the project becomes the blueprint or data dictionary for the custom forms and fields, also known as a WFPro Package Manifest.

Now let's look at the package manifest for the WFPro Navigation package for a better look at a package manifest in action. We'll start by looking at just the form and fields. You can see a full manifest for this package here, which is currently at 140 items and growing! The manifest is the only reason I can manage the amount of things I create in Workfront. Without it, I would lose a significant portion of my day to searching Workfront. Also, you'll begin to notice more object types in the manifest, such as Dashboard, Portfolio, Project, etc.

Can anyone see the value in documenting these additional objects, such as reports and dashboards? What if I told you it could replace that long list of favorites or bookmarks, and could potentially eliminate the need to use global search?

One final note, the reason we use the task object in the WFPro Package Manifest is because I always follow this simple rule: Task = Planned, Issue = Unplanned