Personal Time-off

Hi: It is currently difficult to make use of the Time Off data within WorkFront. There are no automated triggers to alert anyone when things change. The data within WorkFront is not easy to get to. It is my opinion that you’ll have to use Text Mode to make the data most usable. Search the community for more information about how to access Time Off using Text Mode. I’m looking forward to when WorkFront makes the data more accessible. Sorry that is no help, but I’m afraid there is little that can be done. I’m hoping someone jumps in and contradicts me with cool facts I don’t know (yet). Thanks! Eric

I found this string while I was trying to do some research on Time off best practices. This string has not been active in almost a year. I am curious if anyone on this string ever came up with a solution to address schedules shifting when someone adds time off to Workfront? My project managers stumbled on this issue a few weeks ago... I am trying to drive the behavior of our employees to enter time off into Workfront so we can use the "Team" area to have visibility to when folks are on vacation. Now my project managers are concerned that project schedules are going to shift without their knowledge.

My pleasure, David; thank you for saying so. Cathleen, excellent point: to avoid having dates inadvertently slip, Must Start On, Must Finish On, or Fixed Dates lock them in. We use the latter on our draggable calendar, since that way, users can easily shrink or stretch the task. Regards, Doug

Hi, So we are actually just transitioning over from using Workfront's Time Off to using a request queue for PTO. Like you, we noticed that if a task is assigned to one person and that person has taken time off, the planned completion date for the task moves AND it moves without telling the Project Owner. Now if you have more than one person on the task, there is actually a setting where you can say for multiple people to take the project's schedule not the individuals. That will stop the problem for multiple people. But you still have a problem when one person is assigned a task. We also ran into the issue where resource managers/department leads wanted to see PTO in the resource grid. With Time Off, the person's hours turn red earlier, but my RMs and Department Leads aren't fans of this approach. So we took the approach of a request queue. There is are two queue topics: PTO and OOTO. For both, the employee put in the reason for the time off (Subject), Planned hours (so the time is take up on an resource grids), Planned Start and Planned Completion. We also used the Primary Contact field for cases where an assistant or someone else was putting in time for another employee. For OOTO, the request is just created. For PTO, we have an approval process that goes to the Supervisor of the Primary Contact to approve. There is one thing that we haven't figured out, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. We need the issue to be assigned to the Primary Contact. It doesn't appear on the resource grid until the issue is assigned to the person. But we don't know how to set up routing rules that go to the Primary Contact. You can only do it to a specific person or team. Another thing with this approach is that you can't use a calendar. Unfortunately Actual Dates always trump Planned Completion currently on calendars. This is an issue when someone closes the issue early or late. The dates adjust on the calendar and don't reflect the time actually taken. So we are stuck with list views but this hasn't been a big concern for people.

Hi: I don’t know why they model PTO that way, but it is a list object, which is a construct used throughout WorkFront. It is my opinion that they have not modeled it inconsistently, rather, they have not simplified the use of that list object in reporting as they have simplified other lists. I think they COULD create another reporting object called PTO and then create a view behind it that ties it to the user declaring the PTO. That is what they do for other objects of this construct, they just haven’t done it (yet) for the PTO object. The issue isn’t how they built it, its that they haven’t simplified the use of that object in reporting as yet. There are other objects that they do not expose through the reporting system. Because the Text Mode process is based on tribal knowledge, and no documentation, it makes it exceedingly difficult for people like me of average intelligence to use Text Mode to access stuff. We are dependent on the boffins at WorkFront to make it simple, as they have done for many objects, just not the PTO object (yet). Thanks for asking! Eric

I agree on the transparency, Doug. We put in a request with our tech person to add it to the dev list - a notification when someone adds time to the time-off calendar.

Thanks for the suggestion Eric. Curious do you have any background on how they model PTO and why they model it that way?

Hi Doug, Thanks for taking the time to provide your detailed advice. That's one of the things that makes the community so valuable to me....getting real world feedback from users and experienced third party implementers/integrators such as yourself. I will trial this with a department or two and see how it works for us. Cheers, David

Hi David, Correct: for trasparency and reportability, I am proposing you NOT use PTO within Workfront, and instead use a standard project to record PTO. For best results, I also invite you to consider: - creating one such project per year (eg 2016 PTO) for everyone, ideally; or per month/business unit if you have too many people - establish procedures to have people book time as tasks on the PTO project: one task, one assignee, per PTO event (e.g. if Doug, David, Eric and Nate are golfing this Friday afternoon, that is 4 separate Tasks; and if Doug is also vacationing in Europe all of August, that is one other separate Task) - convert your current data to this PTO format - drop your PTO events (and create a PTO Exception report to highlight any that sneak back in the "old" way), to avoid double-counting and showing people as iver allocated - create a common dashboard called PTO; or "vacations", "kitchen calendar", etc. -- whatever best suits what your company calls it, for all to see within Workfront - on that dashboard, show the current year's PTO project(s) in calendar format - show people how they can easily toggle people on and off to visualize (just) what they need, or even make their own calendars (e.g. My Golf Games, My Vacation in Europe) - Bonus 1: because these are Tasks, you can add custom data, and show that custom data on the calendar - Bonus 2: this approach can be extended into a sophisticated Vacation Request solution(e.g. raise an issue to request a vacation, tie it to an approval path, then convert it to a task, etc.) - Bonus 3: AtAppStore has a just released a draggable calendar for Workfront...in case my golf game gets a rain delay Regards, Doug