[WORKFRONT COMMUNITY Q&A COFFEE BREAK] Wednesday, February 21 at 8:30am PT: Project Template & Timeline Best Practices

Template Tip (Overall WF Tip):
Utilize teams when sharing instead of to individual users. This allows teams to flex or individual users to more easily step into a role and an admin only needs to add them to a team rather than making sure they have access to individual templates / projects / reports / etc

We do this too! We use the column in our weekly team meeting to jot down updates on the fly.

Template Tip:  We have a custom field called "notes for scheduling" which we utilize to store ancillary instructions that might be needed by those who will be using this template to convert/create projects. It can be helpful when creating the templates as you don't have to maintain a separate SOP or anything and all the notes on the process behind the process can go here. 

When our project coordinators are going to create projects they have two views- one with this column and one without. They will toggle it "on" for more complicated or unfamiliar/new processes so they make sure they are setting up the project correctly. Here is an example: 

Template settings can be a fantastic source of data when you need to review what was true about the project/tasks BEFORE it encountered the end-users and their changes. For example, any sort of text filters that look at the name of something the user can change are prone to errors when someone gets creative with their adjustments. But a filter that looks at whether the name of the task on the template it came from 'contains' certain keywords is much more robust assuming you have good oversight on template change management.

Exception reporting can also be driven much the same way, by comparing whatever the value was when it inherited from the template versus what it is in the current project. 

The absence of template data on your tasks is also useful data in and of itself. I had a need awhile back to analyze how often people were adding ad-hoc tasks to projects on top of the template, and was able to isolate them by looking for items where the template data was missing instead. 

I'm also interested in learning more about this. We don't presently do it because of not being able to add it to templates, but I like the idea of referencing it within the template to remember to add it, but would also like to know if Fusion could help with this.

My company really loves ability to set cross-project predecessors, as we have quite a few departments that are dependent on each other's work across projects. The only complaint they have is how manual it is to set up CP predecessors for each project.

Right now, in our templates, we're just making note in the task description that this task has a CP predecessor for 'Project X - Task Line Y' but it's not perfect and is fairly time consuming. It also allows for human error as it's very easy to miss a predecessor by accident.

My question is - does anyone have a better method of applying cross project predecessors across templates? Does anyone use Fusion to automate this process (not sure if it's even possible with Fusion?)? We're considering purchasing Fusion but are still working out the cost/benefit and this would be a major win if it could help make this process more efficient.

TEMPLATE TIPS:

1. Ensure you are reviewing the people section on a template as a last check (auditing it as necessary) to avoid embedding users in projects created from templates. 
   • This error can occur if you create a template from a project. This is due to users that were assigned to the project or included for oversight being automatically added to the "People" section on the project. Although you may unassign the users and add roles in place of them on the template you create from the project, they will still remain in the "People" section for the template unless cleared out.
2. Best practice is to create a template from scratch if possible to avoid the first tip.
3. Creating smaller task section templates that are not always necessary on a project is a great way to streamline templates. You can create the common task sections in the main template and provide the smaller "sub-templates" to add as needed.

Hope these tips are helpful! I wanted to add now as I am not sure I will be available on the designated date and time, but hoping too.

TEMPLATE TIP: Using the Gantt view helps me check whether my predecessors and task constraints are set up properly in a template. I'll often use it before creating a test project in production or preview.

Question: How to manage the same template to suit multiple timelines (i.e) same set of tasks/milestones, just different SLA's based on the complexity of the project?

Usecase:

We currently are creating around 4-5 Project templates for different stages (Lot of tasks) of a teams end to end process. Each template will have different timelines based on the scope of the project. We do not want to leave it up to teams to adjust durations as it would mean, no SLA guideline to begin with. At the same time duplicating the templates (P.S -we also have another variable apart from timeline, which may need duplication of the templates at each team level)) would lead to significant number of them and so lot of maintenance work.

Is there any best practice or an easier solve other than duplicating the templates? 

Here's a post from @randyroberts with a bunch of userful filters. https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/workfront-discussions/for-those-trying-to-clean-up-their-templates-i-have-some-goodies/m-p/547158#M84