Workfront Reporting Improvements

[sydney_peterson]

Hi! 

Since I started as a System Administrator in Workfront in 2016 the reporting functionality hasn't really changed. I recall at one point there was some noise about something to do with Canvas, but when I signed up to try to get access it was rolled back. My manager frequently asks for charts, but the way the charts look in Workfront hasn't changed since I started in the tool - the user viewing experience is really poor and most of the time, he ends up putting the Workfront data into Tableau (after exporting it to excel to do some calculations that Workfront can't do like sum of task data as a % of the column total for a larger data set) 

As the Workfront Administrator it always pains me a bit when my team has to take the data out of Workfront and put it somewhere else. So, I'm just curious if there's been any progress made on prioritizing Workfront reporting improvements, especially but not limited to the charts. 

Thanks! 
Sydney

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi @sydney_peterson,

Your thoughts align well with our www.atappstore.com homepage mandate to “…increase efficiency by showing live data in in meaningful ways from right within Workfront without the time delay and complexity of exporting or integrating to other specialized software”, which have lead to our catalog of 50+ solutions.

To check my assumptions, though, I’m tagging @mattmitchell to explain how Canvas Reports and the Data Lake beta (+ eventual general release) factor in.

Regards,

Doug

[lgaertner]

Hello Sydney,

you are absolutely right, the current reporting functionalities urgently require an update.

I can hardly wait for the release of Reporting Canvas, because unfortunately we didn't get to enjoy the beta test either. I did not see anything of it yet and I also do not know when we could expect it on our instances, but I hope someone here can provide us with some details...

As you mentioned exporting data to import it into Tableau: Today I received a welcome mail for the Workfront Data Lake Beta. This should make it possible to link Workfront directly with BI tools in the future. I just had a brief look today, but it looks promising.

Perhaps you still have the chance to participate.

https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/beta-announcement-workfront-d...


Regards

Lars

[sydney_peterson]

Thank you for the link to Workfront Data Lake Beta. I would've missed this opportunity otherwise! Not sure if I will make it in, but I did submit the required forms. 

Thanks again! and fingers crossed this is a step in the right direction for some much needed updates to Workfront reporting.

[sydney_peterson]

So I did end up getting into the data lake beta, and spent months just trying to navigate the interface to get some basic tableau visualizations into place. then, due to snowflake security concerns, my access was turned off by our internal security team and now I can't move forward with learning it. Not to mention, if you are an experienced Workfront System Admin, but don't have any SQL background, the data lake / tableau connection is seemingly impossible to comprehend. 

I am very frustrated at the lack of reporting enhancements. my team continues to say how much better salesforce visualizations are (my team wants to be able to see things like percent of column total for tasks, or specific calculated field percentage representations and Workfront native reporting can't do this. I also continually get asked for top 10 client data, or top 10 producers and I cant get this without pulling everything and pivoting in excel) It just brings people out of the tool and they seek the data another way or use another excel sheet to find what they need) 

I also spent months developing external lookup fields only to realize they don't work in any other area of the tool. (not from the plugin, can't in-line edit in reports, can't see the field in reports or dashboards) so all that work was essentially pointless. 

Perhaps I've missed some roadmap calls that improvements are coming but as I mentioned it is just frustrating that since 2016 since I started in Workfront, reporting is essentially the same as it's been and I have to constantly hear how Salesforce is so much better. 

[Rafal_Bainie]

just to add to everything that has been already said. Point of clarification:

1. Reporting Canvas idea has been dropped by Adobe due to performance issues it was causing. I was lucky to be part of beta, but didn't really benefit from it. There were some road blocking bugs for me.

2. Canvas dashboards is something that is intended to substitute the previously mentioned and dropped idea.

This is generally available if I'm not mistaken. But the problem with this is that it:

- lacks functionality terribly

- functionality is being added extremely slowly

I hear about the data lake and did sign up for that as fell. I hope this won't be a disappointment 

[AleciaM1]

More information regarding the reporting canvas and its incremental rollout can also be found at https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/workfront/using/product-announcements/beta/canvas-dashboa....