Workfront Job Role History Loss

[JamesBe1]

Hi all, We've been having a problem with one of WorkFront's "features" causing job role history on hours booked to a project to be lost. Here's what happens: Bob is a Software Developer (his job role is "Software Developer") who is assigned to a task "Requirements Gathering for Web UI Improvement". Bob books 100 hours as a software developer. Because he's worked hard and made the right connections, Bob is promoted to a management role in our business department. His job role changes to "Business Management" and he is subsequently unassigned from the Requirements Gathering task and replaced with a new "Software Developer". Now all of Bob's 100 hours he worked with the role "Software Developer" are automatically updated to "Business Management". The PMs CPI is thrown off because they were budgeted for only 50 total hours for "Business Managers" (a much higher paying role) and bob has exceeded that with his 100 hours. The history is lost as well. How do you all handle this situation? Is it a problem for you or is the auto-update of role a nice feature for you? James Bender Jackson/JTS

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi James, For these types of promotion/rate change situations, I'd suggest you periodically lock in the rates, rolls, and hours by creating "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216744788-Creating-Billing-Records">Billing Records . If that approach works and you'd like to adopt it as policy, I also invite you to consider automating it using our "http://store.atappstore.com/product/auto-bill/">Auto-Bill solution, as discussed on "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=79e1dc4c-1693-4b12-adc8-66d20665f0c9&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm79e1dc4c-1693-4b12-adc8-66d20665f0c9#bm4">this thread. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[JamesBe1]

Hi Doug, I tested this out and it does not seem to help with the resultant incorrect CPI calculation that our PMs are most concerned with. The problem is the actual hour objects are automatically updated to have the user's new role. This means when we're doing role based CPI, the whole calculation is re-done and the history is completely changed so that the hours the user booked as a Software Developer (where their cost was $50.00/hr) are now appearing as if they had booked them as a Business Manager (where their cost is say $62.00/hr). When doing any kind of comparison between planned and actual hours by job role on the project, the reports automatically become fallacious because the history is changed. Have you had any experience with this before or do you know of a way around it? James Bender Jackson/JTS

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hmm...I see your point, James, Rereading this "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=79b6f4b9-b109-47f0-97fa-92115ce782b2&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm79b6f4b9-b109-47f0-97fa-92115ce782b2#bm2">CPI topic about a year ago, @Vic Alejandro included a screenshot that indicates Performance Indices can be calculated on either Hours or Costs...but from your comments, I presume it's the latter that matters to your PMs. This Workfront "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/216632028-Calculating-Cost-Performance-Index-CPI-">primer implies (as you've observed) that a recalculation of finances would use the (new-but-arg-not-improved) role to recalculate Actual costs. A bit more recently, on "https://community.workfront.com/discussions/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MessageKey=7261a6d3-5299-498b-a4f4-a477c307309d&CommunityKey=aaafaff0-5e4e-4e38-8903-f1f990935567&tab=digestviewer#bm7261a6d3-5299-498b-a4f4-a477c307309d#bm17">this thread , @Lucas Eric asserted: "You can change Billing Rates and use effectivity dates. Beware, however, changing the cost per hour for any resource. It will not only recalculate the roll-up cost of that project, it will change the cost of every project that resource was assigned to - for all time. It will completely recalculate everything. It's a mess." It's possible I'm missing something, but short of (yes I tried this one time and it was horrible) creating a "new person" each time there is such a CPI-influencing edit and bulk assigning in flight Tasks, I suggest you raise a ticket and/or Idea Share with Workfront. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[AdinaPi1]

What we do is create a new account for users when their job role (or team or contract type) changes. We then deactivate their old account so we still have that historical data. Adina

[VicAl]

Yeah we saw the same behavior and didn't see a way around it that didn't feel like a root canal. In the end we just decided we don't currently track our planned vs actuals closely enough to care about the discrepancy. So we just looked the other way �� . But if there's a feature request we'll certainly vote for it. In a related item (since you're using the CPI), the SPI doesn't work either (it doesn't use the Baseline). So I have this feature request to fix the SPI & CPI indices if anyone wants to upvote that - "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115006151767-Fix-the-SPI-CPI-Indexes"> https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115006151767-Fix-the-SPI-CPI-Indexes .

[JamesBe1]

Thanks for the advice and workarounds! I like the idea of creating a new account if someone undergoes a major change in contract that affects their roles, rates and such. I wasn't sure if this was an issue others were having or if we are just getting too granular with certain of our analyses and audits over here at Jackson. Vic, I will definitely be up-voting that idea we've been struggling with that one as well. James Bender Jackson/JTS

[MichaelLe]

James Many of us have the same issue with this for various reasons. Although it is already under consideration on the idea exchange, one more vote is always appreciated. "https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115007377313-User-Costs-by-Roles-Rates-with-specific-time-periods">USER COSTS BY ROLES/RATES WITH SPECIFIC TIME PERIODS In the end I think the new user approach is the best idea for your situation. We use the billing record approach because we dont use CPI calculations. Good luck! Michael Lebowitz GuideWell Connect

[KarenMa]

I second James - please upvote this idea in the idea exchange so Workfront understands the volume of their clients facing this challenge. We're having a lot of issues with accurately calculating revenue over time for users that have received one or more roles changes. It is especially tricky when you want to "fix" a user's record if the hours have already been approved/locked and they were not allocated to the task. We cannot use billing records to solve as they do not create date based records of the hours. We're currently exploring an API based solution. I like Adina's suggestion of multiple accounts per user. Karen Marck Wunderman Worldwide