Ask the Expert Reporting Workshop:Measuring Velocity

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Workfront Wednesday: Ask the Expert Reporting Workshop Example of Velocity Reporting, August 14, 2019

Intended audience: Workfront users who have taken the Report Creation course or have equivalent experience. A working understanding of creating list reports, conditional formatting, charts and custom fields is assumed.

This presentation is about one of the Work Performance Indicators that Workfront CEO Alex Shootman talks about in his book “Done Right”. Alex says that these five indicators should be applied in every organization to determine if your teams have been given the best chance to succeed.

They are:

o Mixo What are you working on?

o Capacityo How do you know you can get the work done?

o Velocityo How fast are you working?

o Qualityo Making sure you’ve done your best work

o Engagemento Is there pride in the quality of your work?

I’ve chosen Velocity for today’s presentation because it’s not only very important but it gives us an opportunity to discuss a variety of reporting tips and techniques.

The first thing we need to do is decide how we want to report velocity. The question “how long does it take to complete a piece of work” suggests another question: “How long does it take as compared to what?”

There are several ways to consider velocity. We can do it based on either tasks or projects. We may want to compare planned hours to actual hours, or we can compare planned duration to actual duration.

In these reports we want to see the duration of a completed project as compared to: 1. How long did we ultimately expect it to take, and2. How long did we promise it would take.

Let’s start with the Adjusted Velocity Status Chart. This report shows how we did at completing five projects. We calculated velocity by taking the Actual Duration of the project (which is the length of time in days that it took us to go from start to finish) and divided that by the Planned Duration for that project. The Planned duration is calculated as the number of days from when we started our project to when we “planned” to be completed. Both of these are native fields in Workfront and are calculated automatically. Now what happens if you’re moving along on your project and something doesn’t get done as soon as you expected it to? What you should do is re-plan your project. You may need to get approval from certain stakeholders to do this, but you do that and you update the plan. Sometimes when you do this it changes the planned completion date, which changes the planned duration. Still, you did the right thing and now you’re moving along with the new plan. This could happen several times in the life of a project, so by the time you’re done you ought to be finishing pretty close to your latest updated plan. That’s what happened with these five projects in our report. By the time they were finished the planned duration wasn’t too far from the actual duration. So, we have four “Excellent” and one “Not Bad”. This chart tells us that we’re getting things done pretty much on schedule after as many re-plans as it may take. That’s not too bad, right? But what does it tell us about how good we’re doing at completing projects by the planned completion date we originally promised the customer? Sure, the customer

might have approved three or four changes to the planned completion date, but they probably weren’t very excited about it. They just had to accept it was going to take longer to get what they wanted. And what about your capacity to do other things? Every time you extended the planned completion date of one project those resources were not going to be available to work on other projects as soon as you might have hoped. In fact, that was the case with these five projects. The Work-to-Commit Ratio Status Chart provides us with some additional insights. This chart calculates velocity by using the first planned duration and dividing it into the actual duration. This is called our Work-to-Commit ratio.

As you can see, we only had one “Excellent” when we measured by these standards. Our first planned duration was quite a bit different than our actual duration in many cases. So if we want to get better at meeting the expectations of our customers, and at the same time give ourselves the ability to do capacity planning with greater confidence, we need to start measuring how well we’re doing at velocity and also measuring how well our attempts to improve are working over time. So how do we find out what the first promised planned completion date was on a project?

Let me show you…

Setup>Project Preferences>Projects All you system administrators can go to Setup>Project Preferences>Projects>“Set new project's status to…” and make sure this is set to Planning. Then go down a few lines and make sure “Create baselines automatically” is checked. This will ensure that the very first time a project status is changed to Current a baseline will be recorded. In that baseline will be a copy of all the project and task fields at that point in time. These two settings are what Workfront consultants have been recommending for years, and they have been set automatically in jumpstarts. Chances are your settings are already set this way. But if they’re not I would recommend you change them to this as soon as you go through your established process to get approval for that. After setting these there’s another thing you need to do. That’s make sure you plan your projects in such a way that when you change the status to Current for the first time you realize you’re making a promise to a customer. You may not plan that way now, but, again, it’s a good practice and has the side benefit of letting you measure based on that date.

Setup>Custom Forms Ok, now that we those settings right let’s see how we can create some custom fields to use in our velocity reports. We’re going to need several calculated custom fields in a project custom form for this. The first one is: First Commit Date This is how we’re going to capture the date we promised the customer. Here is the format and calculation:

First Commit Date Format: Date Calculation: IF(ISBLANK(First Commit Date),Default Baseline.Planned Completion Date,First Commit Date)

An IF statement has three parts, each separated by a comma. It starts with a condition. If the condition is true it does the second part. If the condition is false it does the third part.

The first time this calculation executes the value of First Commit Date will be blank, so it will fill it with the Planned Completion Date of the default baseline. The next time this project is edited or the calculation otherwise recalculates this will find First Commit Date to be NOT blank so it won't replace the value, instead it will just put First Commit Date back in there. The only way to reset this to a new value is to remove the custom form from the project, then add it back again. A neat thing about the feature that automatically records a baseline when you change the status to Current is that it also sets that baseline to be the default baseline. That means you can grab this date automatically without anyone having to take manual action. However, if you are applying this custom form to old projects that may have several baselines by now, you’ll want to make sure you set the Original baseline to be the default baseline first. You can create a baseline report to make this process easier. Here is an example of a baseline report. Notice that these baselines are grouped by project. The name of the first baseline created is always “Original”. Notice how you can also use in-line edit to change a baseline to be the default if needed.

Ok, now back to our custom form. First Duration We’re capturing this to use in our “Work-to-Commit Ratio” formula. This requires a similar formula as First Commit Date. Here is the format and calculation:

First Duration Format: Text Calculation: IF(ISBLANK(First Duration),Default Baseline.Duration,First Duration)

Work-to-Commit Ratio For these reports I’ve decided to create a ratio by dividing the Actual Duration by that First Duration that we promised the customer. If the two are equal the answer will be 1, that means we did exactly what we promised. If actual is greater the answer will be more than 1. The greater the number the worse we did on meeting our commit date. In this formula I’m rounding the answer to one decimal. Here is the format and calculation:

Work-to-Commit Ratio Format:Number Calculation: ROUND(DIV(Actual Duration,First Duration),1)

Work-to-Commit Ratio Status I decided to create a status indicator to make it easier to display results in a chart. To do this I’m using a technique called a “nested IF”. It’s the same IF statement we just looked at, but if the condition is false we’re adding another IF. It looks like this:

The result of this calculation is:

• 1.1 or below is Excellent • 1.2 to 1.5 is Not Bad • 1.6 to 1.9 is Poor • 2 or greater is Terrible

I chose these statuses based on the range of results I was seeing. Feel free to invent different ranges and status names. The main goal here was to be able to create a chart to give a quick view of how we did. Here is the format and calculation:

Work-to-Commit Ratio Status Format:Text Calculation: IF({Work-to-Commit Ratio}>2,"Terrible",IF({Work-to-Commit Ratio}>1.6,"Poor",IF({Work-to-Commit Ratio}>1.2,"Not Bad","Excellent")))

Adjusted Velocity The formula for this is Actual Duration/Planned Duration (“Planned Duration” is stored in the “Duration” field in a project). Here is the format and calculation:

Adjusted Velocity Format:Number Calculation: ROUND(DIV(Actual Duration,Duration),1)

Adjusted Velocity Status This uses the same formula as the Work-to-Commit Ratio Status does, except it references the Adjusted Velocity field. Here is the format and calculation:

Adjusted Velocity Status Format:Text Calculation: IF(Adjusted Velocity>2,"Terrible",IF(Adjusted Velocity>1.6,"Poor",IF(Adjusted Velocity>1.2,"Not Bad","Excellent")))

The last report is the Velocity Status List Report. This contains each of the custom fields we just talked about and some dates of interest. It’s a good idea to create a report with all the details so you can make sure you got all your calculations right.

This represents the main concepts for the velocity reports. For additional information please view the entire webinar recording and the answers to the questions from the Q&A portion of the webinar.

Question Time Question First

Name Answer

08/14/19, 07:47 MDT

What alternate is Workfront going to provide to this “Resource Grid” view in a User report so users with Work license can see their own allocation?

LavanyaWorkfront now has a User View in the Resource Planner which has similar information to the Resource Grid. This can be shared with a URL which can be put in a dashboard and shared with any user.

08/14/19, 09:02 MDT

Hello, thanks for organizing this webinar. I have a question about Field in Workfront. In our system, we created a custom field called "State" which is a combination of Status and Condition. This State field contains lot of statues in thousand projects which is very important for our Tableau data extract. However, now we want to eliminate this field and use Conditon field, the native field instead. Do you have any idea how can I flip this field over without losing data. All I can think of doing it without losing data right now is switch it manually from project to project.

Ivy

For a situation like this you can use filtering and bulk editing to semi-automate the chore of populating the Condition field based on your State custom field.

Here are the steps: 1. Determine which State values you want to map to Condition values. For example, let’s say you have a State value of “Late” and “Very Late” that both map to a Condition value of “In Trouble” 2. Create a project report showing all projects with a State value of “Late” and “Very Late”. 3. Run the report. Make sure you are showing all projects (see options at lower right of the report) 4. Click on the checkbox in the upper left of the report in the bar with column headings. This will select all the projects in the report. 5. Click on the Edit button above the report list 6. Set the Condition Type to Manual 7. Set the Condition field to In Trouble 8. Click Save Changes

08/14/19, 09:06 MDT

Do you need to be using Resource Management to get these reports?

karen Hello, Karen! No, you don't need to be specifically using the Resource Management piece for these reports. Thx!

08/14/19, 09:08 MDT

How is Excellent, Not Bad, etc defined? Lori

This was just an example, but here’s how I set it up.

First I calculated two indexes:

Adjusted VelocityThe formula for this is Actual Duration/Planned Duration (which is stored in the Duration field in a project). Since the Planned Duration of the project can change every time the project is replanned, the Planned Duration represents the final replan.

Work-to-Commit RatioThis formula is like Adjusted Velocity except that instead of using the Planned Duration value from the final replan we want to use the Planned Duration that was first promised to the customer. We’re assuming that the Original baseline contains this information (and we’re planning from now on to ask our project managers to plan their projects in this way so that we can capture accurate data). We captured this duration value from the original baseline and called it First Duration.

By dividing Actual Duration by either Planned Duration or First Duration we end up with a number that can tell us how close we came to being on target.If the Planned Duration or First Duration are equal to the Actual Duration the index will equal 1. If Actual Duration is greater the answer will be more than 1. The greater the number the worse we did on meeting our date.

So, given all that I decided to assign a status of Excellent to either an Adjusted Velocity or a Work-to-Commit Ratio that was 1.1 or below.1.2 to 1.5 I called Not Bad.1.6 to 1.9 I called Poor.2 or greater I called Terrible.

08/14/19, 09:08 MDT

I am attempting to create a report that will display on dashboard on a task that shows related issues. The issues are related to the task by a custom field called group # (on both the task and the issue). How can I show a report that lists all of the issues with the same group number as a task. There are 5 tasks in a workflow for each group, so the issues with group 1 should show on the report for all 5 tasks.

Matt

The best way to answer your question is to meet in a workshop where you can share your screen. Please join one of the workshops next week if you can. If you can’t attend please let me know and we'll see what we can work out.

08/14/19, 09:08 MDT

what needs to be done by the worker to track the amt of time it takes to do the projects

Ravi

We're not tracking actual hours spent working on the projects here, we're just tracking and comparing duration. But if you're tracking hours, and want to use actual hours over planned hours to calculate velocity, you could do this same type of report by comparing planned hours to actual hours. You would want to capture planned hours from the Original baseline as well.

08/14/19, 09:08 MDT

Can you provide filters used for Velocity? Susan

I used two filter rules for the Velocity reports: - Categories >> ID >> Equal >> WPI Project Data (this is the custom form that contained all the calculated fields. I only want to see projects that are using this custom form) - Project >> Status >> Equal >> Complete (I only want to see completed projects because they have an Actual Duration value that represents how long it took to get everything done. Current projects would not provide an accurate Actual Duration for calculating velocity)

I also added other filtering to keep my report small enough to manage for the webinar, but in your production environment you would probably want to see all projects with the WPI custom form in a particular time period. You might want to filter on the project Actual Completion Date for that.

08/14/19, 09:09 MDT

For a given project, we use tasks and issues. I have a custom field for both the tasks and issues that I use to group the tasks and issues. We do not utilize the 'working on' and assign tasks. Can I just have a single report that lists all the tasks and all the issues for the project in a single grid, so I can see them intermingled and group by my custom field and sort by priority and entered date. Right now, I have a dashboard that has a task report and an issue report, but it is not ideal.

CrystalSorry, you can't have a report that shows both tasks and issues. Your current solution of having both a task and issue report in one dashboard is the best approach available.

08/14/19, 09:10 MDT

Is there a new ETA on when filters for dashboards will be released?

Alison Answer from Product: "That’s on the roadmap but with no ETA at this point."

08/14/19, 09:10 MDT

Is there a way you can share that Commit to Date report with us?

ThomasYou will need to create these reports in your own instance. You will first need to create the custom fields and attach the custom form to the projects you want to report on.

08/14/19, 09:11 MDT

If you copy a project does it carry the same baselines to the new project?

Emily No, the baselines are not included in the copied project

08/14/19, 09:11 MDT

For a task approval process, can you show me how to create a report that provides an audit trail by task in a project with a time/date stamp for each approver?

Melinda

Create a Task report. In the Columns (View) tab click on Add Column. In the "Show in this column:" box type "approv". This will show you the various approval fields available to report on. I would suggest you add a column for everything at first (except any IDs), then you can see what information is displayed.

Next go to the Filters tab and add a filter rule for:Task >> Is Approval >> Equal >> True. This will only show tasks that have an approval attached.Add additional filters as needed.

08/14/19, 09:13 MDT

I am looking for a easy way to get a data dump from my instance. I can do all of the calculations I need to do outside of Workfront. How do I do this?

matt

Maybe a kickstart will help, but it won't export custom field values. If you want custom data the best way would be to create a report showing all the fields you want and export it to Excel format. You can put hundreds of columns in a report. It will look crowded but all the columns will export to Excel nicely.

08/14/19, 09:15 MDT

I would like to create a proof report. A list of projects showing how many proofs they have and how many versions of that proof exist.

Jason

Create a document report.

The default view will show the version number. You’ll want to leave that there but you can change any other columns.Group the report by Project NameFilter the report by Current Version:Proof ID is not blank

This will give you a list of all the proofs in each project. It will have a row for each proof and display the version number (which will be the same as the total number of versions).

08/14/19, 09:15 MDT

(Part 1 of 2) We have a report in our organization called “My Allocation”. It’s a User Report and filtered to run for the user running the report ($$USERID). The purpose is to show each user their own allocation across projects by week. What makes this report really useful is the “Resource Grid” view – which can be accessed by WF users with Plan or Work license. With this Flash based screen to be retired the alternative WF proposed is to see allocations using the Resource Planner which is under “People”. However users with Work licenses DO NOT have access to the “People” tab.

LavanyaWorkfront now has a User View in the Resource Planner which has similar information to the Resource Grid. This can be shared with a URL which can be put in a dashboard and shared with any user.

08/14/19, 09:15 MDT

(Part 2 of 2) My question to you is this from a reporting standpoint: What alternate is Workfront going to provide to this “Resource Grid” view in a User report so users with Work license can see their own allocation?

LavanyaWorkfront now has a User View in the Resource Planner which has similar information to the Resource Grid. This can be shared with a URL which can be put in a dashboard and shared with any user.

08/14/19, 09:16 MDT

Can you use velocity at task level? Rather than project level?

karen

Yes, but you will need to copy the project custom form and create a task custom form from it. Then you will need to edit the calculation in the First Commit Date field and change the reference to "Default Baseline" to "Default Baseline Task". Do the same for First Duration. After that you can attach the task custom form to any tasks you want to measure. You will need to create task reports instead of project reports for these. However you will still need to make sure that the Original project baseline is set as the default baseline. All the task data is kept in the same baseline with the project data.

08/14/19, 09:16 MDT

Does the first commit date have to be set manually by the project owner? Or could it pull from existing fields?

PeteThe First Commit Date is captuerd from the default baseline. As long as the default baseline is the original baseline this will show the planed completion date of the project at the time it was first set to Current status.

08/14/19, 09:17 MDT

Calculated fields in custom forms still need to be periodically refreshed correct? Or will that happen automatically overnight (or at some other trigger) now?

Alison

Calculated fields are recalculated:• When a user edits the object• On bulk edit with activated Recalculate Custom expressions• Modifications to the form with selected ‘Update previous calculations’ option

08/14/19, 09:17 MDT

Can you explain the logic behind the project 'percent complete"? I noticed that when I change the projected start dates, it changes the total percentage, which should not be the case. Help!

Melinda You should call Customer Care with this question.

08/14/19, 09:18 MDT

What TYPE of Custom Form is he showing now? Lavanya Chuck was showing a Project custom form

08/14/19, 09:19 MDT

If the velocity is considering Duration, should Percent Complete in Project Preference be based on Duration.

Venkatesh

No, the Project Preferences option refers only to how Percent Complete is calculated. The duration value itself is not affected by this setting.

08/14/19, 09:20 MDT

What is the difference between first and plan duration?

Nayely

First Duration is the number of days you originally promised the customer the project would take. We get this number from the original baseline that was recorded when the project was changed from Planning to Current.

Planned Duration is the number of days from the start of your project to the Planned Completion Date. Initially these two durations are the same, but if the project was ever replanned and the Planned Completion Date changed, so did the Planned Duration.

The value of the Velocity reports comes from our being able to see how much the Planned Duration has changed from the First Duration. We can see this as far back as when we first started recording baselines as projects changed from Planning to Current.

08/14/19, 09:21 MDT

My WF dashboard doesn't look the same as the presenters. Is it possible I'm not working with the most recent version of the platform?

HelenNot likely, but if you can attend an upcoming workshop and share your screen we could see what's going on.

08/14/19, 09:22 MDT

IF the worker did not start (working on) or click done per task set - the report will not work correct?

JayGood point. Velocity reports are intended to report on completed projects (or tasks) since you won't know how long it took to finish the piece of work until it has been marked as complete.

08/14/19, 09:22 MDT

Can you have workers set by color so they are the same across all reports?

Jenny

If you group by Assigned To >> Name in a task report then you can assign a color to particular workers in the Chart tab. Just choose the Custom Colors option next to the Assignged To >> Name box in the Chart tab and add a color for each worker.

08/14/19, 09:22 MDT

I am trying to determine if it is possible to create a dashboard with one area that looks at a task level custom form to see if it is present and secondary if certain fields are not blank. Is this possible? Another question. Is there a was to create a report to look for a specific named document in the Document Library. Part of the dashboard we want to measure if certain documents exist.

Tammy

I’ll answer these two questions separately1 - is it possible to create a dashboard with one area that looks at a task level custom form to see if it is present and secondary if certain fields are not blank.

Let’s see if I understand your question. Suppose I have a task custom form called Tammy Form with a field in it named Tammy Field.

You’re wanting a task report that will show all tasks that have Tammy Form attached and where Tammy Field is has some value in it.

Yes, you can do that. You would just need a filter in your task report with two filter rules:Categories >> ID Equal Tammy FormTask >> Tammy Field Is Not Blank

2 - is there a was to create a report to look for a specific named document in the Document Library.

Yes. You need to create a Document report. It sounds like you might want to provide a specific document name each time you run the report. If that’s the case I would recommend going to Report Options and selecting Report Prompts. Add a prompt for Document >> Name.

08/14/19, 09:25 MDT

I want to be able to select the report by role, and have the resource name listed on the detail line of the report. How can that be accomplished?

Bradley

In the Resource Planner you can choose View by Role, then you can see the projects people in that role are assigned to and the people themselves under each project.

You can also create a User report and filter it to see only users with a certain job role.

Depending on what else you want to see in the report one of these options might be helpful.

08/14/19, 09:25 MDT

Can you choose a colour / hex value not listed in the chart tab but that is a new colour which is new hex value for example a new colour from my brand colours to allow me customise the reports?

Vincent

Yes, you can enter any RGB code that you might have been able to find. This is a standard code that tells the amount of Red, Green and Blue contained in the color. Workfront will accept any hex value from 000000 to FFFFFF, so if you know the code of your brand color you can use it.

08/14/19, 09:26 MDT

Can you please re-state the definition of the reports in the dashboard (provide a statement of what each report measures)?

Rafael

Adjusted Velocity Status ChartThis shows how well we did on completing projects on time when comparing the Actual Duration of the project with the Planned Duration. The Planned Duration having been adjusted as the project was replanned during its life cycle.

Work-to-Commit Ratio Status ChartThis shows how well we did on completing projects on time when comparing the Actual Duration of the project with the First Duration. The First Duration being the original time we promised the customer that the project would take to complete. The First Duration was calculated from the Duration value of the project when it was first changed from Planning to Current status. This was the Duration recorded in the Original baseline.

Velocity Status List ReportThis report contains all the calculated custom fields and the significant dates for the same projects in the charts. Its purpose is to allow us to check our calculations and get more detail information if desired.

08/14/19, 09:26 MDT

How did you add the new data to the x axis? Sam When you group by anything in a report it will allow you to create a chart. You can then set the X or Y axis in the Chart tab.

08/14/19, 09:27 MDT

Our Marketing Department wants to wants to assign the number of planned hours to a task based on a custom field titled "deliverable type". We used a calculation to say if the deliverable type is equal to a certain type then the planned hours is equal to X. The problem is there are 56 deliverable types which makes the calculation extremely long and subject to errors. Is it possible to create a table with deliverable types and associated planned hours?

Cheryl

You would need to use the API to accomplish this, or Workfront Fusion if you have it. Without one of these you can’t access table data and you can’t put hours in the Planned Hours task field.

The best you can do now would be to use project templates, but I imagine you’ve already tried that and with all those deliverable types you’re going to need a lot of templates.

I would suggest reaching out to your Workfront Account Executive to discuss options.

08/14/19, 09:27 MDT

Can you go over the difference between first duration and actual duration?

Debbie

First Duration is the number of days you originally promised the customer the project would take. We get this number from the original baseline that was recorded when the project was changed from Planning to Current.

Actual Duration is the number of days from the start of your project to the Actual Completion Date.

08/14/19, 09:28 MDT

How does the baseline project saved factor into this report?

Benetta

The Original baseline of the project contains the Planned Completion Date and the Planned Duration that existed when the project was first changed to the status of Current. If your process was to plan the project before setting it to Current then this would represent the date you committed to complete the project by.

08/14/19, 09:28 MDT

Can we combine reporting from both the Task and Project level in to one report?

Dan

Not at this point because reports are object specific so that would entail 2 different objects. Our roadmap from Product is looking at allowing reporting on more than 1 object but at this point, it would need to be 2 separate reports maybe on a dashboard...?

08/14/19, 09:28 MDT

is there a way to mass apply the new form to old projects.

David

Yes, you can select multiple projects from a list. When you do this an "Edit" option appears at the top left of your list. Clicking on Edit when multiple objects are selected puts you in what we call "bulk edit". You can add a custom form to multiple projects in this way.

A shortcut for adding custom forms to a large number of projects is to create a report that you filter to include only those projects you want. Then, instead of selecting projects individually, just click on the checkbox above the first checkbox in the list and you will select the entire list.

08/14/19, 09:28 MDT

What additional resources are available for developing reports such as this?

Stacy

We have consulting available, as well as Advanced Reporting 1-3 training sessions which can help with developing these reports. Also, we will be holding these type webinars once a month for your convenience. Great question!

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

How many columns (maximum) can be included in a report?

Ecaterina We're not sure, but at least 250. No one I know has ever hit the limit.

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

is it possible to use exits with a grouping, to remove duplicate entries from within the grouping on an assignment report, but not across groupings?

James

The best way to think about groupings in lists reports is this:

First, you control what items show up in the list using the Filter tab. There will be no duplicate entries. The filter is applied to each object. If it passes through the filter it will appear once in the list, if it doesn’t it won’t appear at all.

Next grouping is applied to the filtered list. A grouping identifies one thing about the objects in the list, like the name of the portfolio it’s in (you can’t group on a list of things, only on a single thing). Then all objects with the same value will appear in that grouping, like all projects in the same portfolio. Any projects that don’t have a portfolio selected will appear in the grouping named “No Value”.

As a result there is no way any objects can appear in more than one grouping. And whether an object appears in the list at all is entirely controlled by the filter (and if the person running the report has rights to view it).

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

How do I reference a custom field in a report of a different type (i.e referencing a custom Task field in a Project report)?

Nick

You can only reference a custom field if it is in a custom form with the same object type as your report. So project reports can only see custom fields in project custom forms. If you copy a project custom form you can save it as a task custom form. Then you can see those fields in a task report.

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

Is it possible to create a report for a project owner to review the capacity of the users assigned to all of their projects? So they can see who is overbooked, and adjust their timelines etc.

Pete

The report you're asking for is the Resource Planner. You can get to it from the People tab, then the Planning tab, then click on Resource Planner. Project owners can filter to see their own projects and can see the capacity of users assigned,

There is no capablility to create this in the Reporting area.

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

Would you recommend any other report to track Velocity? Just a high level recommendation is great because I know there's not enough time to go through in details.

Tien

As with any report, the first thing you need to do is decide what you want to know. The next step is to access that information, which in some cases means you need to start tracking it.

One reason I decided to compare Actual Duration with two kinds of Planned Duration was because I thought it provided interesting insights about velocity. The data was also already available, so I didn’t have to start tracking it. With a few calculations I could extract the data in a form I could report on it.

But you might just as well decide to track other information about tasks or projects to report on.

Workfront doesn’t have any built-in velocity reports, so I would recommend you and your team brainstorm on what you want to know to determine velocity and then see what you need to track.

08/14/19, 09:29 MDT

To share a similar report with my colleagues - is there a way to lock down the report so that it can't be changed or removed? For example with colleagues with planner licences. Thanks

Vincent

You should be able to be lock down those areas in the Sharing options through either View Only or Contribute roles but limiting the Advanced options in the dropdown area of the Sharing options. Only Sys Admins have full access to all report sharing options. There is a Help Article on Sharing options that will answer this in more granularity with screen shots. Thanks!

08/14/19, 09:30 MDT

Are you able to calculate anything at the COLUMN level? Instead of calling a calculated FIELD from a custom form?

Kali

It would have been possible to use a valueexpression in text mode to do some of these calculations. We could not have done First Duration or First Commit Date though, we needed to capture those in a place where they wouldn't change.As for Work-to-Commit Ratio Status and Adjusted Velocity Status, these needed to be custom fields so we could use them in the Chart tab. The Chart tab does not recognize text mode groupings, they need to be custom fields.And since we needed Work-to-Commit Ratio and Adjusted Velocity to calculate those statuses we needed them to be custom fields as well. So in this case they all needed to be custom fields, but it’s always good to consider both ways and choose what will work best. Thanks for the question.

08/14/19, 09:32 MDT

Our projects change often due to customer delays or changes throughout. Our report might show all as 'terrible'. what is a recommendation for tracking reasons for change? we thought of adding custom form at document level that reports reason for change (either internal or client change), but wondering what a best practice is

lisa

The best practice is to use a dropdown to track this. Put as many "reasons" as you can think of in there to start with, then add an "other" option to capture a reason that's not on the list. If that new reason looks or becomes common add it to your dropdown. You can easily report on things in a dropdown list, and you can group on this field (you can't group on checkboxes or a multi-select dropdown).

Just another comment on this. You may not want to include all projects in your Velocity reports. If you’re fixing bugs or “going where no one has gone before” you’re probably not making the same kind of a commitment to a completion date as if you’re building a house that you’ve built many times before.

So make sure you focus your velocity reporting on places where it can help you meet your goals.

08/14/19, 09:32 MDT

If I set the default baseline on a project to 'Original' and then take the project out of current and put it back in current, will it change my default baseline?

Sarah Yes. Everytime you change the status to Current you'll get a new baseline and it will be the new default.

08/14/19, 09:35 MDT

Our biggest challenge is how to account for the time the project was being worked vs the time someone was reviewing a proof. Any suggestions on breaking that time up?

Kristine

There really isn't any reporting available on how long someone was reviewing a proof. You can look at the activity history for the proof and see when someone's stage opened and when that person made a decision. But this does not roll up into a report.

08/14/19, 09:36 MDT

Often i come across custom fields that do not sit on a custom form which assume is a case that happens if a custom form is deleted leaving the custom field 'orphaned'. is this a correct hypothesis or there is another scenario that would lead to this.

AhmedThat sounds like the most likely scenario. The custom field has probably been kept for either future use OR so that the historical data associated with it can be preserved. Great question!

08/14/19, 09:38 MDT

I have a bunch of tasks that go through different statuses. The due date for each status to be done by is at the Project level (date on custom form). Can we report on tasks that are past the due date in 1 report?

karenYes, you can report on any custom field. I'd like to understand more about the way your project custom form is set up before giving you any recommendations. Please attend one of the upcoming workshops if you can.

08/14/19, 09:39 MDT

Is there a way to set-up in a report which fields are editable? Can I set restrictions for certain fields?

KlaraYou can restrict view and edit rights for fields in a custom form. You will need to include the fields in a section, and in the section settings you can choose the rights needed for users to be able to view or edit fields in the section.

08/14/19, 09:40 MDT

Can you create a report that looks for a specific named document in the document library?

Tammy

Yes. You need to create a Document report. It sounds like you might want to provide a specific document name each time you run the report. If that’s the case I would recommend going to Report Options and selecting Report Prompts. Add a prompt for Document >> Name.

08/14/19, 09:41 MDT

In reports, why are values available as column but not available for selection or grouping. For example: Issue Source.

DavidThe main reason a column might be viewable but is not available for grouping would be that it could contain a list, like a checkboxes custom field or task assignments. Grouping on a list is not allowed.

08/14/19, 09:42 MDT

We have an Agile KanBan Team. Does Workfront have plans to expand upon the out-of-the-box reporting functionality to include common Agile/Kanban specific reporting – like cumulative flow, lead & cycle time, etc., or workarounds to get this sort of report information for these types of teams. If there are some ways to get this type of reporting for KanBan teams, then a workshop like this one for KanBan reports would be great!

Terry

Here is the answer from Product on this:“We do plan to expand the functionality for the agile tools. Cumulative flow is on our roadmap, as well as other metrics and analytics. However, we are not going to have bandwidth to work on the agile tools before next year.”

08/14/19, 09:44 MDT

How can I separate in a report (by which fields) when the entry of hrs happened and when the hrs were actually performed?

Klara

The Entry Date field for the Hour object refers to the date the hours were worked. This makes Entry Date different than on other objects, where it means the date the object was created. Even though there is not a creation date for hours there is a "Last Updated Date", which is initially the creation date and then any date the hour was edited thereafter.

08/14/19, 09:45 MDT

From a reporting standpoint how can we access Baseline data? I have a project with multiple baselines. I want to see how individual tasks were planned in each baseline. Is there a way to write a report that will show the project plan for each baseline?

Lavanya

A report will show you whatever fields you want to see for the baseline that is currently set as the default, so you could change the baseline and refresh your report to see fields with the new baseline.

But if you want to see information about your tasks graphically you can do that using the Gantt chart feature. Turn Gantt on in a task list (using the Gantt icon in the upper right next to Autosave) then go to the Settings icon just below and to the right and click on it. Check the Baseline box and it will show you all the baselines. You can select these one at a time and see the changes in your tasks in the Gantt view.

08/14/19, 09:47 MDT

Is there a platform, location where I can find complex reports developed by you as examples that show the reporting capabilities of WF (especially in terms of text mode and the layout of dashboards/reports), so I get Ideas where I can improve our own reporting?

Klara

Complex reports generally involve custom fields that are used in ways that support your reporting needs. There are a lot of example reports around that can give you ideas but ultimately you will need to build them in your own instance with the custom fields you create or are already using.

If you can, please come to one of the upcoming workshops to discuss your reporting needs and see if we can suggest something helpful.

08/14/19, 09:49 MDT

When you have a project set up with "Parent/Child" tasks, how is the velocity report affected?

Erin Having "Parent/Child" tasks is a best practice and has no adverse effects on velocity reporting.

08/14/19, 09:51 MDT

that will only allow 1 change to be logged per project?

James I'm not sure what this question is referring to, but if you come to one of our workshops we can discuss it.

08/14/19, 09:54 MDT

How to create a report to find the changes in its status for a defined period for example last month.

Kundan

You might have heard of the Analytics feature Workfront is working on. It will provide a slick way for you to view historical data, including status changes.

But you can get status change information right now using a Note report. You can filter to see status changes on projects if you are tracking the Project Status field.

So first, go to Setup>Interface>Update Feeds and make sure Project Status is one of the Built-in Fields that is being tracked. If it isn’t you need to add it.

Now create a Note report and do the following:

In the Columns (View) tab: - Replace the “Note Text” column for “Audit Text”. This will display information about what the status changed from and to - Leave the “Project: Name” and the “Entry Date” columns - Click on the “Entry Date” column and then check “Sort by this column” in the Column Settings panel. If you want to see the most recent status changes on top sort it descending.

In the Groupings tab: - Group by Project: Name

In the Filters tab create the following filter rules: - Note >> Audit Type >> Equal >> Status Change - add any additional rules to filter by the Note Entry Date. You might prefer to leave this out of Filters and use a report prompt instead - Filter on project, portfolio or other data as desired.

08/14/19, 09:58 MDT

as a planner can you pull reports for other users? Andrew

A Planner can create reports and share them with any users, even with people who are not users. Gharing, then click on the gear icon in the upper right of the Report Access box. Choose the "Make this public to external users." option. You can copy the link provided and send it to anyone. They will see the report in real time in their browser.