Product Communities

My name is Danielle Riccitelli and I’m a Group Manager, Product Management at Adobe Workfront. More specifically, I am responsible for all things Agile within Workfront. I wanted to take a moment to share my thoughts on agility, from why you would want to consider agile ways of working, and more importantly, the massive power that comes from harnessing Agile and mixed-methodology work management within Workfront.  First off, what do we mean by Agile? Agile is a set of principles, but it's also a mentality and a new way of thinking. It is a transformation in the way organizations structure themselves, plan, execute and iterate on work.  Adobe Workfront’s State of Work report uncovered that 60% of workers are either completely overwhelmed or are barely hitting their deadlines. It’s not 

Leap — Workfront’s premier enterprise work management conference — took place last week with thousands in attendance to discuss ways of elevating and reimagining the way work gets done. Focused on the power of enterprise work management to help organizations switch from reactive to proactive mode, this year’s Leap conference shared best practices and customer stories about how to adapt and thrive in the new world of work.  Whether you were able to join live, watch an on-demand session or missed it altogether and wish to watch it at a later date (it will be available for the next 90 days), below are highlights from the virtual conference, broken down by the order of events.  For a downloadable post-conference presentation that you can customize and share with executives detailing your takeaways, tips and recommendations for further maximizing value with Workfront, click here.   KEYNOTE The 2000s brought forth new C-Level executives based on external even

In this age of digital transformation, an increasing number of employees are finding themselves taking on the role of Project Manager without actually having a background in project management. What used to be a role designed to simply manage projects with clear start and endpoints, now has evolved into a cross-functional role of organizing people and processes while managing resources to produce results for both stakeholders and the company. Because of this, project managers have become more valuable to organizations, and the demand for their skills and strategic roles has grown worldwide. The following best practices provide insight into how to be a successful project manager within Workfront.  Organization is keyPrior to launch, a project is simply a mix of data, requests, and unspecified objectives. The role of a project manager is to sift through all the information and establish a clear timeline that is both easily manageable and realistically attainable.Start by creat

We know that for people to do their best work, an intuitive and connected experience is a necessity. That's why we've invested in usability and productivity as key themes for Workfront's 20.1 product release. Join us for a live webinar on March 26 to hear from Scott Lee, Workfront's VP of Product, to learn how this release can help you: Be more productive and faster with the new user interface - designed and built with our customersConnect with other customers, increase your product aptitude, and access more about Workfront in our new Workfront One platformExplore new productivity features, including timeline planning, template layouts, and mobile enhancements You'll also get a sneak preview of what new products and features are coming next from Workfront. Click here to register.

By now you’re probably familiar with the new Workfront experience and how it came to be. Workfront’s new user interface will help you focus on the right work, drive results, and contribute to your company’s most important initiatives. The Workfront 21.2 release (planned for May 2021) will be the final release with new features and enhancements in the Workfront classic experience. If you’ve not yet made your plan to transition, there’s no time like today to get started! In this article we’ll debunk 5 commonly heard myths associated with the transition to alleviate any concerns you may have about making the switch—and hopefully even get you excited to make the move! MYTH #1: Everything in Workfront classic will have to be reconfigured in the new Workfront experience. It will be like having to create a new instance from scratch. REALITY: The configurations required to make the shift are minimal. This is probably the #1 myth surrounding the new Workfront experience, but rest

Match report colors with your company’s style guide using text mode.Do you have list reports or custom views that use conditional formatting, or column rules, so that a color can be applied to a specific row or cell? Did you know that you can use basic text mode to get those colors to match your company’s style guide?There are a few places in Workfront where you can select a custom color:MilestonesCustom statuses, priorities, and severitiesCustom chart colorsBranding colorsWhen specifying a color in Workfront, you have two choices:Select from the color palette, which will also give you the RGB code of the color you select from the color spectrum (green = 39aa00, as seen in the image below).Use an existing RGB code (from your company's style guide, for example), which will give you the specific color corresponding to that code.Whether you select the color from a color palette in Workfront or find the RGB code in another application, you can use the RGB code in Workfront wherever an

Did You Know? Disconnect During the Holidays By Delegating Approval Requests. The holiday season is upon us and, for many, this means time off! Time away from the office is essential—but logging in to Workfront while away to make approval decisions is not. Did you know that Workfront helps you disconnect by allowing you to delegate project, task, and issue approvals to a single user for the duration of your absence?  While you’re away, work still needs to get done, deadlines met, and approvals made. Delegating your approval requests to a trusted colleague allows you to be away without having to worry that past-due work will be stuck in your queue, awaiting your return.  You can pick and choose the start and end dates of this delegation period, or leave it open-ended if you are unsure when you’ll be back. When you delegate approval requests, the user to whom you have delegated approvals receives an email notification regarding approval activity.  To un

The Connect2Lead blog series quotes researchers and authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s definition of leadership as, “the art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.” They later quote Bernard Montgomery, a British military hero, saying leadership is “The capacity and will to rally people to a common purpose together with the character that inspires confidence and builds trust.”  Have you ever wondered which community members are leading enterprise work transformation in their organizations and contributing to the overall growth of Workfront One? If so, then look no further. Now you can see a list of the top 100 contributors on the Workfront One community.This community leaderboard updates in near real-time and awards points for all of the things you’re doing here in the discussion forums. This pulls from all of our groups, not just the All Discussions groups. So if you don’t see a conversation in the All Discussion groups you want to chime in on, ch

Anthony Imgrund is a Project Manager at Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. He’s been with the company for 13 years and is also the System Admin for Workfront, where he spends about 75% of this time managing the agency’s global instance of Workfront. He also works on FCB’s SharePoint 2013 environment and a custom tool for the New Business team. Anthony lives in NYC, and loves theater and music. He recently presented on resource management in a Workfront Virtual User Group for creative agencies. Read on to see how this customer has found some unique ways to work around and with existing functionality in Workfront. How FCB is using Workfront FCB has one global instance of Workfront, which Anthony says makes his job easier. But they do have 16 different agencies and business units currently in the tool, so they rely heavily on Workfront’s group functionality to separate those business units out.  With groups, you can have

Did you know? Workfront has 70 reports built into the system to get you started tracking and measuring work! These reports are intended to provide quick and easy visibility into the relevant information about the work being done, for you and your users. Some of the 70 reports help you focus on getting work done and monitoring work in progress. Reports such as: My ProjectsProjects By ConditionMy TimesheetMy IssuesMy Submitted IssuesMy TasksTrouble Tasks Let's dig deeper into Workfront system reports: -- Video coming soon! -- To access reports in Workfront, go to the Reporting area, click the Reports tab, and then click All Reports. The list of available reports can be quite long. The All Reports list shows you every report available to you in Workfront, whether they’re the built-in reports or ones written by your users. So let’s create a filter to see just these “out of the box” reports and filter out the reports that users in your organization created.

I use Workfront to manage my work and plan my week. Take this morning, for example. After pouring a second cup of coffee and preparing a breakfast sandwich, I roll up to my desk and laptop and turn to Workfront Home and notice the late tasks still remaining after reconciling earlier in the week. I wonder - how did I let that get by me? I’m reminded that any platform is only as good as you commit yourself to it. I send a quick update to the project owner and tackle the next task.Barring my own human failings, Workfront allows me to recover quickly and communicate effectively around the work that I do - and reminds me to stay on top of things.Workfront is essentially my work information resource and planner. I am a Senior Consultant within Workfront’s Professional Services group and much of my time is spent working with customers helping them with Workfront and I take to heart the way I work and use Workfront effectively. I’ve worked with many customers over the years and Workfront helps

Making it easy to get to the information your team needs is an integral part of centralizing work and mastering enterprise work management. Consolidate key reports on dashboards for groups of users, elevate critical data points and simplify navigation to help your team quickly access relevant data and improve the user experience! Below is a list of must-have dashboards for you and your team: For the System Administrator - The Workfront Clean-up Dashboard with an added User exceptions report that highlights missing user settings. This dashboard will help the System Administrator easily find Workfront data that may need to be cleaned up, may cause resource planning issues or that can affect reporting.For the Project Manager - A dashboard that shows pertinent project data and calls out exceptions that need to be addressed will enable a Project Manager to quickly see the health of their projects, address project-specific issues and ensure reporting integrity. Consider includ

To continue the 3-part System Administrator series on people, process and technology, this week’s blog will focus on understanding your processes, from the perspective of administering Workfront. Summarized below are four key areas outlining the work management understanding that you need to have based on feedback from others just like you, who’ve not only taken on this role but have created a successful career out of it. Often the role of System Administrator will include helping to define, manage, monitor and maintain your organization’s way of working. This means that you are part of creating the overall workflow process — maintaining both knowledge and facilitation of how work gets done. To get you started on defining the baseline for your work processes, ask yourself the following questions: How is the work being requested?How is work being fulfilled?How is work being reviewed and approved?How is work completed and handed-off?How is work being assessed for value, priority, a

Every organization has at least one person who can steer things back on track when the unexpected happens to ensure that strategic plans are executed, and executed well. Whether or not that individual or team of people have the defined role of project manager, they are the ones responsible for bringing multiple departments and stakeholders on a journey, together, to turn project plans into action and to communicate all changes along the way. Outlined below are several features and solutions Workfront offers to make that job easier.  UTILIZING PROJECT TEMPLATES FOR QUICK SETUP Having a strong process before Workfront is what makes Workfront work. With a well defined and clearly diagrammed process, you can reflect that in Workfront using templates.  Customizable project templates capture all of the repeatable processes, information, and settings associated with your projects in a single place. By using project templates, similar or recurring projects can easily be cr

Training > Additional Resources > Training in the new normalWorkfront One launches Training Blog and Best PracticesTo say the pandemic has introduced new challenges to the work landscape is an understatement. “Normal” as we once knew it has no roundtrip ticket and we are faced with redefining what the new normal looks like. The Adobe Workfront Training team is pleased to announce the launch of the Training Blog as we aim to redefine how we interact with customers to provide the most relevant content for their needs.   Each month, and sometimes more, you will have the chance to explore featured content based on themes and topics written or curated by our team of subject matter experts and content developers. We encourage you to bookmark and visit the Training Blog to receive updates on on demand content or new live training offered by our training delivery team.  Featured Content Best Practices As they

Workfront offers numerous features and functions to help organizations transition from ad-hoc to strategic work management. It is simple to get started, simple to quickly progress and scale and simple to measure and show value in your work. Knowing where to start, how to identify and streamline current processes, and ensuring all users are on the same page are some of the challenges many system administrators face. The Setup area is where the foundational design of the system is built, but during implementation this part is often handled by a Workfront expert.  To provide you with the building blocks for success, this week will kickoff a Workfront is Simple series starting with the most important aspect — people. Below, user management best practices are broken down by license types, access levels and user organization. LICENSE TYPES License types — Plan, Work, Review, Request and External — are the first level of access on a system level. They define what a user can or can

If you were to spend a few days at the Workfront offices watching us work, attending our meetings, listening to our conversations, you may be surprised about how much of the conversation is about you. Your experience with our products. Where your team is going in the next 3, 5, 10 years and what their modern work management needs will be. We are intensely focused on delivering what you need – in our product and through your interactions with us. As a company, we have spent the last year identifying how best to do this. The framework of our conversations has been your customer journey. I’d like to give you a brief example of what a customer journey is by telling you about the person credited with inventing it, Jan Carlzon. In 1981, Jan Carlzon became CEO of the problem-ridden Scandinavian Airlines. At the time, the airline was near the bottom of the list for least punctual airlines in Europe, losing $17 million per year. Remarkably, Carlzon turned the airline around in one

Within your projects, each of your tasks have a Planned Start Date as well as a Planned Completion/Due Date. Typically these dates could change for multiple reasons such as dependencies, delays, or changes in prioritization. As you change dates in your project plan, you might want to understand how your current project plan compares to the plan, let’s say a week or two ago. That’s where baselines come in. Baselines are a snapshot of your project plan and key pieces of information. These snapshots will allow you to compare information from the current plan, to the original plan, or any other point in time, to identify problem tasks, scope creep, and other trends over time. See more on baselines here.  Calculating ‘Slippage’ is a way you can see how each individual task compares to the original Project plan. This requires you to capture at least one baseline for a project. The specific baseline you want to compare your current project to should be marked as the “Default Baselin

In order to perform Resource Management activities, such as making assignments, measuring utilization, or understanding work capacity vs. demand, a handful of information must be gathered and documented. This week’s blog will define some of the suggested building blocks of data needed to properly use the Workload Balancer and Resource Scheduling tools in Workfront. DOCUMENTING KNOWN PROJECT WORK Once a project has been approved it can start to be planned. This typically involves a project or traffic manager defining and validating a list of activities or tasks, their durations, and dependencies or dates. To ensure successful resource management, there are a few other pieces of information that must be included: Assignments: Each task should be assigned the Job Roles or Users that will be contributing their effort to the completion of the work. Planned Hours: This represents the amount of effort needed to complete the task. For example, while a task may take 5

Why share your expertise? You are not alone   Customers often share that they feel siloed. There is value in connecting with other administrators to help, learn from, and elevate each other to accomplish goals faster. Everyone wants to be part of a family - or a community - of individuals who they can trust, depend on, and lean on for guidance.Others need your story - share it to teach and impact those who are just starting their enterprise work management journey within their organization. We are stronger and better together!You are doing big things  You are doing amazing work every day in your organization. This is an opportunity to highlight your story to show others the impact that you’re making, to paint a picture of what is possible, and to help guide others on their journey. As you transform work management within your organization, you’ll achieve positive, measurable results, move toward fulfilling your success story, and creating true competitive

Workfront reports don’t just have to be a simple list with standard views, filters and groupings — they can be dynamic visuals used to tell a story, compare data, paint a clear picture of how work is getting done across the organization and keep the targeted audience engaged. There are six different types of charts in Workfront — bar, column, line, pie, bubble and gauge. Review the Resources on Workfront One In order to apply a chart to your Workfront report, you must first add a grouping. For a quick refresher on report groupings, click here. Once a grouping has been applied, you can begin to create and customize basic or 3D charts to highlight data trends or patterns in an attractive and easily digestible way. And if you want to have the colors match your company’s style guide - no problem - enter in the appropriate RGB code. To learn more about adding charts, review the article, Add a chart to a report, and watch the short, 6-minute video, Create charts with reports, on Wo

Beginning on July 14, 2020, various improvements are now available on Workfront One. These improvements affect search, navigation, your ability to provide feedback, and much more! Categorized results as you type Now when you search Workfront One, possible search results are grouped into helpful categories in the drop-down area as soon as you begin typing. Filter the search results page After you type your search and press Enter, an improved search results page displays. One new improvement is a new filtering area in the lower-left corner that allows you to apply helpful filters to the product documentation. For example, has your organization moved over to the new Workfront experience and you no longer want to see Workfront Classic documentation? Simply select “The new Workfront experience” to view only the articles that apply to you. Or are you only interested in results pertaining to Workfront Fusion? Select that in the Product area to filter your results further. Set perso

The world of work is a world of constant evolution and change. Some changes are incremental and can lead to something monumental over time. Other changes are monumental on their own and are thrust upon us. I recently read a story in Jim Collins’ classic ‘Built to Last’ about Johnson & Johnson and how J&J started producing a talc powder in response to a physician who complained about patient skin irritation. Johnson & Johnson then started including a small can of talc as part of the standard packaging with certain products. Customers unexpectedly began demanding the talc powder as a stand-alone product and J&J responded by creating “Johnson’s Toilet and Baby Powder”. Johnson & Johnson got into the baby powder market by accident, but continued to iterate incrementally in the direction of consumer products, which eventually grew to 44% of company revenues. Johnson & Johnson’s story illustrates the monumental impact of incremental changes. In the wake of the COVI

Exciting benefits only available on the new Workfront experience.Mark your calendars! Starting May 2021, all new functionality and updates will only be released in the new Workfront experience. If your organization is still working in our classic interface, you’re likely missing out on key features designed to make your teams’ job of finding, managing, and executing work much easier. Thousands of users have made the switch to the new experience, with the number climbing higher every day. Not only do we want you to be a part of this improved user experience, we want to ensure you don’t miss out on any of our exciting product enhancements and offerings coming in future releases. Start planning your transition today with our new Workfront experience resources.   Read on to learn about three exciting benefits—influenced directly by your feedback—that you and your users can take advantage of after the switch.1) Fewer distractions. One of the most exciting benefits of the

The holidays are right around the corner and 2021 is closer than you think. If you haven’t had a chance to do some cleanup or system maintenance, block time on your calendar and take action based on the recommendations in the blog, Tips to Tidy up Workfront. There is no better feeling than kicking off a new year with a clean slate, so send out those calendar reminders for your monthly governance meetings and wrap up the year on a high note.  As you start, or continue, planning for months ahead, make sure you have a proper communication plan in place, along with easy-to-use project templates and dynamic reports to maintain consistency and share key information. This week’s blog focuses on key elements around communication, planning, and measurement to help you draft an accurate timeline and execute on deliverables, while keeping everyone in the know.    COMMUNICATION Nothing is more important to the success of a project than effective and constant communicat