Product Communities

This 3-part series is designed to provide essential advice and actionable steps to make the challenging role of System Administrator a bit easier. As a follow up to last week’s blog on setup, this week will focus on how to best streamline your instance for maximum efficiency and productivity. ACTIVATE KEY EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS AND REMINDERS How many times do you check your email every day? Whether it’s once or every time a red bubble appears, you are trying to stay ahead and keep connected.  Workfront offers in-app notifications to keep you in the loop and to help avoid flooding your inbox, however, not all actions trigger a notification and not all users are working in Workfront every second of every day. To ensure that assigned work is not missed, updates are addressed and approvals are made, activate key global email notifications within Setup for all users.  The most popular email notifications that are inactive by default are: I’m assigned to an issueA project I’m on

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

For Workfront, and many of our customers, the last month was focused on pivoting to conducting business virtually, and ensuring that we had the right plan, tools and technology to support our efforts. We then sharpened our pencils in terms of our business strategy, priorities, deliverables, and to ensure full utilization of our resources. Data-driven, transparent conversations with our teams has been key to this process for us, and others.  For one sporting good retail customer, what normally is a time focused on creating trade show deliverables, has been refocused on other initiatives to drive online sales. Over 350 people switched overnight to working remotely, pivoted their plans, and relied on the processes built within Workfront to enable visibility into the decisions to be made and the work to be done. All teams that make up marketing and creative manage their work through Workfront - from the request queues to project and task management. “It’s the only way we keep track

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

No need to navigate away, include a webpage on your Workfront dashboard.  Are there numbers you pull from another system to include in Workfront custom forms? Do you want to make a Workfront request queue more accessible? Do your users regularly access a web-based document management system or wiki that contains needed project information? Including URLs on a dashboard allows your users to navigate quickly and easily to live websites without leaving Workfront. Before you jump into the setup, there are two conditions that must be met—the URL is encrypted (https) and the website must allow embedding as an iframe. You may be asking, what is an iframe?       “An iframe (short for inline frame) is an HTML element that allows an external webpage to be embedded in an HTML document. Unlike traditional frames, which were used to create the structure of a webpage, iframes can be inserted anywhere within a webpage layout

Training > Additional Resources > Training blog > No “hacks” needed when you have Workfront I’m constantly amused by the “life hacks” videos out there. Although they keep me entertained during late-night social media browsing, from what I've seen, none of them actually make the task at hand any easier. In fact, some of them seem pretty complicated. And let’s face it, I just don’t have the time or patience for that.  At work, I often manage multiple projects at a time, plus complete assignments from projects my teammates are managing. But I don't need “work hacks” to make my work life easier because I have Adobe Workfront!  The content development team manages ALL of its content creation through Workfront—videos, learning paths, product release updates … even this blog post. We’re big proponents of the saying, “If it’s not in Workfront, it doesn’t exist.” (Someone really needs to make T-shirts with

Workfront was built for people, with configurable capabilities for any team. It can support multiple departments on a single instance by adding group configuration elements that empowers Group Administrators to manage Workfront based on their department’s needs.  This week’s blog will focus on the 4 key elements that make Workfront the most flexible enterprise application platform, used across departments, teams, regions and countries. CONTROL YOUR OWN CONFIGURATIONS With Group Administrators, everyone in the company can share a single instance but departments can be administered separately, controlling their own settings, templates, workflows, and users at the group level. Here at Workfront, each department has its own Group Administrator to help standardize and assist with a myriad of items, including:  Be a Workfront champion and share best practices around how the department operatesProvide assistance configuring new workflowsSubmit bugs to product for improv

A responsibility assignment matrix (also known as a RACI matrix) is a common tool for communicating roles and responsibilities on a project. The intention of using a RACI matrix is to clearly communicate who is responsible, who is accountable, who should be consulted, and who should be informed throughout the life of a project.This article discusses what to consider when building a RACI matrix in Workfront as well as some of the trade-offs that come with different approaches.Where to Build Your RACI MatrixThe first consideration to make is where in Workfront should your RACI information live. I have generally seen two approaches to RACI matrices while working with Workfront clients.RACI fields added as custom data to projects. This approach makes sense for projects with shorter schedules or projects planned at a lower level of granularity. As a general rule I recommend planning projects at a milestone level when getting started in Workfront. Less project tasks means less overhead for u

Once you have decided to transition to the new Workfront experience, it’s time to begin preparing your organization and Workfront users. The good news is that there are not a lot of technical challenges to solve for - the majority of the transition is rooted in change management.  This week’s blog will provide you with the tools and techniques to help you with this change process to ensure your rollout of the new Workfront experience is a success. There are three keys to a any great change management initiative: Understanding your StakeholdersGood Project PlanningCommunicate Early and Often UNDERSTAND YOUR STAKEHOLDERS There are several stakeholders to consider when planning the transition to the new Workfront experience, including those planning and executing the change and those that will be affected by the change. Here are some roles to consider for the change management team: Transition Champion - This person is responsible for the overall socialization and coordi

If your business runs on a fiscal year calendar like ours does at Workfront, you are entering budgeting season for 2021. It’s the time of year when everyone looks at the investments they’ve made, and the returns those investments have yielded.  As the person at your organization who either owns Workfront, or is highly involved, you may have had goals this year of having complete visibility of your organization or team’s work in order to make better, data-driven decisions. Maybe you had a goal of changing the balance of work from “run work” to “strategic work.” Or to get more done with less. The list goes on.  As you near the end of the year, you want to look back with pride and share all the great value you’ve brought to the company. And as you look to the future, you want to set goals for 2021 that will propel your team to even more greatness. We want that too!  Peter Drucker, a management consultant, educator, author, and arguably one of the best business minds of

The Workfront 2019.4 product release is now live! Here are a few highlights included in the release: Do more with the mobile app Manage your work on the go. Convert tasks, issues, and requests to a project on the Android and iOS apps; keep your work moving forward with Workfront for iPad.  Workload Balancer Beta Make sure your people focus on the right work. Get clarity into your team's workloads so you can effectively plan schedules.  Review a proof without leaving Adobe CC - Available starting November 18th Don't waste time switching applications to review assets. The new Adobe CC plugin allows you to generate a Workfront proof without leaving Adobe. To get the full list of updates and learn more about the features available in the 2019.4 release, visit the Workfront Release Page on the Help site. ------------------------------ Kyna Baker Sr. Customer Content and Community Manager Workfront ------------------------------

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 

Did you know? You can set how reports display on a dashboard within the report settings. Let's walk through how this works.  Each report has four settings that affect how the report displays on a dashboard: Run this report with the Access Rights of:When the Report loads, show the:When the report loads on a dashboard, show: <number> itemsShow Prompts in Dashboards Change these settings on an existing report from Report Actions, then Edit. Once you’re in the report builder, click Report Settings in the top-right corner.  You also can establish these settings when creating a new report. The first section — Report Options — contains three of the four settings. 1. The first setting is “Run this report with the Access Rights of.” With this feature, all users — regardless of their access level or permission level on items inside the report — see the same results in the report as the user designated in this field.   For example, the repo

Did You Know? Send a proof to anyone, using just an email address. Reviewing and approving digital content can be a manual, tedious process that delays your projects and pushes back deadlines, especially if a decision needs to happen from a person outside of your organization.  Did you know that Workfront allows you to share proofs with anyone for review and approval, using just an email address? You are not limited to users with an active Workfront account or who belong to your company—you have an unlimited number of guest reviewers and approvers who can request edits or make decisions on a proof. A proof in Workfront doesn’t necessarily have to be a document, image, or PDF. Unlike other proofing tools, Workfront supports a variety of file types for proofing, all of which are listed in the article, Supported proofing file types. Depending on your Workfront plan or integrated environment, you may be able to generate a proof from a URL as a screen capture or&nbsp

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

We are pleased to announce that a long-awaited feature is now available on Workfront One. The new API developer documentation site has been over a year in the making and is now ready for open beta testing! While not a full replacement for our legacy tools yet, the new site allows you to access information about our Core API in a familiar, industry-standard, OpenAPI spec format. The new documentation site provides a greatly enhanced user experience, and also gives us a strong platform to continuously deploy improvements to the documentation as the need arises. What's new? We are so excited to bring some new amazing features to front with the new documentation site! Here are some of the major differences that you’ll notice between our legacy tools and the new documentation site:  The new site is based on the industry-standard OpenAPI spec. The inherent layout of the OpenAPI spec documentation allows you to quickly obtain relevant information about objects and endpoints that i

The holidays and the end of the year are near, making it a natural time to tidy up the toy shop. Here are three best practices you can quickly apply to improve your Workfront hygiene, to help you and your team be optimized heading into 2020. Change your password Following good password management practices is critical to keeping information secure. If you haven’t changed your password in a while, now is the best time. Workfront has a dedicated section for authentication, accessible by system administrators. You can force users to change passwords after a certain number of days, determine how strong user passwords are required to be, and select how long users will be locked out of Workfront after entering an incorrect password five times. Learn more in the article, Configuring Password Policies for Authentication.  NOTE: These settings do not apply if your organization uses single sign on (SSO).  You may want to recommend your organizat

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

Does your organization want to gain insight into the capacity of your resources? Or easily visualize the total scope of your workload?  Workfront offers feature-rich solutions to help managers focus on the visibility they need into how and when their people resources are scheduled. However, if you plan on using Workfront’s resource management solutions, you’re going to need a properly configured Workfront system. This blog will focus on the planner — the resource management tool that works top-down to show availability and how allocating resources impacts availability on lower-priority projects. To ensure a proper configuration, make sure the following four setups are in place:  MANAGER SETUP To utilize the resource planner, a user must:  Be assigned a Workfront Plan licenseBe designated as a resource manager in the project details Learn more about resource managers on the experience.workfront.com website.  USER SETUP

Greetings! My name is Heather Foeh and I lead the Customer Marketing team at Adobe Workfront. If you have ever read a success story about a fellow customer, attended a User Group, received our customer newsletter, and more, that is all the work of our team. Our goal is to shine a light on our customers’ success while also making sure you’re communicated with in a timely manner. A few weeks ago, Adobe Workfront proudly celebrated YOU, our customers, in our 11th annual Lion Awards. The Lion Awards honor customers who are achieving positive, measurable results as they transform work management within their organization. This year was a bit different, not just because we were virtual–we've done that before!–but because we held the awards in tandem with the Adobe Experience Maker Awards.  The Experience Maker Awards aim to celebrate the exceptional experiences Adobe customers are creating through Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, and we were honored to be part of the joint ce

The holidays are over and it’s time to hit the ground running. One of the first things you’ll want to do is make sure your strategic goals are set and to paint a clear picture of what winning looks like for the team. The next step involves one of the most important leadership skills–setting the team up for success.  Building a successful team can be a challenge. A team brings together a variety of personalities, experiences, opinions, and values. However, a great leader can develop teamwork by ensuring trust, commitment, and by focusing on these key concepts.  Communication Whether you work remotely or in an office, good communication is one of the most important factors to the success of your team and the work being done. Workfront provides several communication channels to help you collaborate with others—the update stream, Announcement Center, and integrations with Slack, G-Suite and Outlook. Outside of Workfront, implementing s

One of the most important aspects of successfully using software is the maintenance of it. One step further is the inevitable cleanup that must occur when the system has gone through challenging times—this is especially critical when your Workfront system administrators change and too many objects are created without reviewing what already exists with colleagues. This week’s blog focuses on how to review your Workfront instance to find old or outdated items, recommended actions to help keep the system organized, and tips for preventing clutter moving forward.  IMPORTANT AREAS FOR CLEANUP If you’re not sure where to start when it comes to cleanup, consider the major areas in Workfront that tend to be the most cluttered—custom forms, templates, projects, and users. Below are some recommendations to help with system organization in each area. Custom Forms— Custom forms are one of the most highly used features in Workfront, as organizations use these to capture specific metrics. If

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. Learn how to apply a chart to a reportIn 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 Workfro

Last month I shared the importance of setting New Year’s resolutions and goals, and gave some thoughts on a few “work resolutions.” Just like that, in a flash, we’re already a month into the new year. How did that happen?! By now you and your organization will have likely determined your annual and quarterly goals, and cascaded them down to teams and individuals. The question is, how will you know if you are on the right path to achieving your goals throughout this next year?    One of my favorite quotes is from Peter Drucker, a management consultant, educator and author, who said “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This rings true in both personal and professional goals. For example, you might have a personal goal to learn a new skill, or get a certification you've always wanted. Using the certification example, there may be some courses you want to take, or incremental learnings you need to acquire before you take the certification exam. You wouldn'

Training > Additional Resources > Training blog > Gain faster collaboration with a custom note report Tired of sifting through project updates and threads to find one you’re looking for? Sometimes that list is like an infinity scroll... it goes on...and on...and on... Here’s a handy report you can create to find what you’re looking for fast! Why you should create a note reportOn a project landing page, you can click “Updates” and see all the notes and threads added by users collaborating on the project. You can also see all “system updates,” such as status and date changes, granting of access rights, document uploads, etc.You can scroll through the list to find the update you want, but the list of updates can get very long and you may find yourself clicking on the Show More Updates button over and over. Plus, if the update you’re looking for is embedded in a thread, you’ll have