Parent/Child Projects

The data structure in Workfront can be adjusted to provide some semblance of parent child relationships using programs, but it requires creating the parent level by cross referencing two other objects to make the parent, vs. giving the parent its own object. For example, if there are 10 projects within a program, you have to use a secondary reporting object to group those 10 projects into separate buckets (Project Group, company, template ID, or custom field). But from a UI standpoint, this requires custom reports and dashboards to drive that visibility.

Additionally, using programs as the parent container is troublesome because of the ways programs work compared to projects, like choosing an existing program is done through a drop-down list which is not a type-ahead field (the list can get really long over time). Programs can't be copied Including the projects within for repeat work, or templates, and don't have a status, or other built in fields that could be helpful.

Hi Everyone,

I'm curious if any of you might be interested in explaining in more detail to Product what you need in terms of data structure in Workfront? We're trying to assess what the best solution to this issue would be and I'm interested to know whether you specifically need Parent/Child projects or if the best solution might be something different. Please let me know if you'd be interested in speaking about this!

I think my request is related to this thread. I see Christa's response below but I'm not sure I follow or if it resolves what I'm trying to solve for.

I thought I had it figured out and then discovered that the functionality I need doesn't exist.

I want to be able to add a task template to a Portfolio the same way I can add a task template to a project. I need to track milestones/tasks/deliverables at the Portfolio (campaign) level.

We start with the Portfolio (high level campaign) and design the look and feel (creative concepts). We need to track the following:

• Kick Off Meeting
• Creative Concepts Due
• VP Concept Approval
• Creative Deck Due
• Brand Approval
• Release to Creative Team

For now I added these milestones to the Custom Form. Not ideal but it's the best we can do.

When the creative concepts are approved by leadership, the channel owners submit their individual requests (email, direct mail, store signage, digital, etc.) and PM links the projects to the Portfolio.

BTW - In the creative world, does anyone else have trouble with the term Portfolio instead of Campaign?

Thanks for listening and fingers crossed!

How is this still not planned with 3760 votes!

What would be the benefit of developing this, if current functionality is sufficient for the need? Perhaps I don't understand the business case...

Anyway, Christa Francis' suggestion is a great way to handle this.

We have actually been able to do this in our organization. We create a Master project and include a similar naming feature like "campaign" for any Master project. Than we create issues within the master project and resolve them with project specific to that workstream. See gekiw

Upvoted. This is a really common request among our org as well. I've managed to get around it a bit with some reporting based on custom fields, but it's still limiting. The other use case we have in our org for this is that we have some rather large projects going on that span multiple releases and the plans can get quite hefty. Once the project reaches a certain size, it takes significantly longer for Workfront to process in-line edits, so I get requests asking for a way to break out a large (1000+ task) project plan into a similar hierarchy of sub-projects rolled up into one master project.

I feel we need to understand how this isn't functionality that exists or can be delivered, especially in light of the popularity of this request. The need for a way to manage a supervisory category of projects below the Program level is something I would think is fairly basic in a relational database like Workfront.

Said differently, I envision having a series of ideas that define a 5-year strategic road map for each program from which tactical projects could be executed as timing and resources become available.

Just jumping in on the thread to say that this is a must! We have so many projects within our campaigns (programs) that should be talking to eachother but can't. Also, the ability to save projects as templates, since many of our campaigns are duplicates and contain all the same projects within. Hope this is functionality that can be added.. as our team is currently having to use different tools to get this done!