Workfront Usage Guidelines

[DanielCo]

I am working on a set of Workfront "Commandments." Does anyone have something similar? Keep your Working On list clean. Send on hold items back to your Work Request list. Keep your commit dates current. Use document versions (don't upload a second version as a new document) Enter your time daily

[LauraRa1]

No, but I'm keen to follow this thread as this is something we are starting to work on and desperately need!

[EricLu2]

{{Daniel}} There was a thread on this forum about best practices. I posted what we call the “Friday Morning Processes”. See if there is anything in there you can rip off. If you can’t find it, send me an email (eric.lucas@crowley.com< ) and I’ll send you the Friday morning process deck directly. Thanks! Eric

[DanielCo]

Eric, That Friday Morning Processes post was indeed helpful for providing guidance to PMs. I am looking to develop guidance for team members. How should team members who are doing the work use the system? What should be mandated?

[NateBa]

I'd love to make a list of Workfront Commandments and put them into a blog post for future reference. If you guys put something great together via email, let me know or CC me and I'll put something bloggable together. In Reply to Daniel Cooley:

Eric, That Friday Morning Processes post was indeed helpful for providing guidance to PMs. I am looking to develop guidance for team members. How should team members who are doing the work use the system? What should be mandated?

-Nate Bagley --- Workfront Community Manager - Work Smart, Work Happy Message me directly at: natebagley@workfront.com

[EricLu2]

Ah, yes, I see the difference. Thanks for clarifying that. Here are some thoughts: 1) Timekeeping a. If you don’t know where to charge your time, ask the PM; b. Never charge your time to the task directly, always demand the task automagically appear in your timesheet; c. Book your time daily (yes, it’s a hassle, but you’ll have less stress in your life, especially on Monday morning when you don’t have to remember what you did last week); d. If you’re doing work and there isn’t a task in the plan for it, get with the PM to get it fixed; e. If you did something out of the norm, be sure to create a timesheet note to explain what you did; 2) Work/Tasks a. If the work effort on a task looks wrong, get with the PM to get it fixed; b. If the duration on the work effort looks wrong, get with the PM to get it fixed; c. If the task is overdue and you’re getting annoying emails, get with the PM to get it fixed; d. If your team uses Commit Dates, be sure the date you commit for each task is accurate; 3) Communication a. Enter project updates at least weekly; b. Enter project updates in your timesheet or on the MyWork screen; c. When you create a project update, be sure the Percent Complete is accurate; 4) Using WorkFront; a. Be impatient - don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure something out, spend no more than five minutes figuring something out, then ask for help; b. Create and use favorites; c. If you use a report often, ask someone to schedule it to run automatically so it is in your email inbox; d. If you need data from the system, ask someone to build a report for you - resist the urge to export data to Excel and manipulate it there; e. Commit to using WorkFront - don’t use Excel as a shadow time and work management tool - if WorkFront isn’t doing what you need it to do -in terms of reporting, for example - be impatient and ask someone to show you how to get WorkFront to do what you need it to do; f. If you think WorkFront is doing something wrong, close your browser, go back into WorkFront and try again. If it is still looking strange, call someone and get a ticket open with WorkFront Tech Support; g. Learn to clear your cache often; That is what I can think of off the top of my head for non-PM things to do… Hope this helps… Eric

[DanielCo]

5. Mark your tasks In Progress when you begin working on them.

[JasonMa]

Eric, your 2A, B, and C are absolute musts on any list, in my opinion. Words to live by for a lot of the PMs, I know. I think the one that I would add to the list would be: "If you don't like the way Workfront shows you the information, create a new View that shows it the way you need it" My biggest advice for new Workfront users is to heavily customize/color code a View for Tasks that makes sense to you. Personally, I made all Parent Tasks lines blue and bold, Milestones (custom form version) in green, and tasks that impact end users in Red so I can have my Tasks tell me the story of the project better.

[DanielCo]

Jason, Why did you elect to use a custom milestone instead of the out of the box milestone feature?

[EricLu2]

{{Daniel}} You didn’t direct the question to me, so forgive my impertinence while I elbow in on this question… The out-of-the-box milestone capability only allows you to assign a specific milestone to one task in a plan. We have plans with multiple go-live events, but we could only assign one task the go-live milestone. I created a custom attribute, added in our milestones, and now we can tag any number of tasks as a Go-Live event, or a testing event, or whatever. Does this help? Eric

[JasonMa]

Essentially what Eric said, but we also have certain reports that look for Tasks without Resources assigned, Planned Hours entered, etc. We jokingly call it the PM Naughty Report. Since, by definition, a Milestone doesn't have time or assignees, these would show up on the report and create "noise." Additionally, we use the Workfront version of Milestones to tag the High Level Parent Tasks for our project phases (Initiation, Planning, etc.) so we can view them on some of the specialized Milestone reports. So, this helps us tag individual tasks in a way to keep them off this report.

[SteveTe]

god bless this one!

[EdMi]

Was this every produced from a year ago? If so, could it be posted for the rest of us..

[DanielCo]

Unfortunately no I never did generate a document, though thread reflects what I think ought to be included in such a document.

[EdMi]

Bummer... It was, still is, a good idea.

[MichelleYa]

If your task has a long duration (more than one day) show progress using the "slider bar" . Update the progress regularly so the PM knows something is happening and the project will be less likely to show At Risk. I see this is an old thread, but honestly, these reminders never go out of date. I love the naughty list for tasks missing assignments, planned hours, etc. I want to do that here.