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Adobe Workfront objects overview

Last update: Thu Jun 13 2024 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
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The information you display in Adobe Workfront is represented by objects which are stored in the Workfront database. The objects are what drives the information in Workfront.

Understanding how the objects are defined in Workfront is important so you can use the correct object for the needs necessary in your organization.

For example, when you plan a large amount of work, you need to use the Project object to define that work. To divide this work into smaller planned increments, you can use the Task object. For a smaller amount of work that is not planned, and can occur unexpectedly, you can use the Issue object. If you want to track the progress and the adherence to budget and timeline of a group of projects, you can organize them in Portfolios and Programs. To define other elements that help you resolve your work, you want to use other objects that are stored under Projects, Tasks, Issues, or Portfolios, like Documents, Updates, Hours, Users, or Job Roles.

Reports and Dashboards are another example of objects that can help you organize the amount of data you have in Workfront visually, to make it easily accessible for all users.

For a complete list of objects in Workfront, see the API Explorer.

Interdependency and hierarchy of objects

Objects are linked to one another in Workfront. For example, a task or an issue can never exist independently outside of a project. Tasks and issues are examples of objects that are stored in the project object. Tasks and issues are considered child objects to projects.

The following are some of the most commonly used objects in Workfront and their respective parent and children objects:

Object
Parent objects
Child objects
Portfolios
Programs, Projects, Documents, Notes, Users
Programs
Portfolios
Projects, Documents, Notes, Users
Projects
Portfolios, Programs
Tasks, Issues, Documents, Notes, Hours, Users
Tasks
Projects
Issues, Children Tasks, Documents, Notes, Hours, Users
Issues
Tasks, Projects
Documents, Notes, Hours, Users
Dashboards
Reports, External Pages
Reports
Dashboards
Groups
Users
Teams
Users
Users
Groups, Teams, Companies
Job Roles
Companies
Users
Documents
Tasks, Issues, Projects, Portfolios, Programs, Users
Plans*
Initiatives
Goals*
Results, Activities

For a complete list of objects in Workfront, see the API Explorer.

*Plans are the objects of the Adobe Workfront Scenario Planner. For information about the Scenario Planner, see The Scenario Planner overview.

*Goals are the objects of Adobe Workfront Goals. For information about Workfront Goals, see Adobe Workfront Goals overview.

Customize object names

As a Workfront administrator, you can customize object names in Workfront by using a Layout Template.

For more information about how to customize object names using a Layout Template, see Create and manage layout templates.

After you customize a layout template and you assign it to users, those users see the customized names for the objects. The users that have been assigned to the layout template no longer see the default names for the objects anywhere in the web application.

For example, if the larger amount of work in your organization is known as a ‘Engagement’, you can replace the name ‘Project’ with ‘Engagement’. Your Workfront interface shows ‘Engagement’ instead of ‘Project’ everywhere where the name ‘Project’ would appear.

NOTE
For the new names of the objects to be visible for your users, they must log out and log back in to Workfront after you have saved the Layout Template.
IMPORTANT
The Workfront documentation always refers to the default names of the objects. As a Workfront administrator, ensure that you notify users of the changes in object names, so they can understand how to use the Workfront documentation, as well as the areas of the applications which do not reflect the changes in the names of the objects.

Object names that can be customized using a Layout Template

As a Workfront administrator, you can customize the names of the following objects to match the terminology in your organization:

  • Portfolio

  • Program

  • Project

  • Task

  • Issue

  • Goal*

  • Result*

  • Activity*

    *Goals, results, and activities are only available if your company purchased Workfront Goals. For information about Workfront Goals, see Adobe Workfront Goals overview.

  • Initiative**

  • Scenario**

  • Plan**

    **Initiatives, scenarios, and plans are available only if your company purchased the Workfront Scenario Planner. For information about the Scenario Planner, see Get started with the Scenario Planner.

For more information about how you can customize object names using Layout Templates, see Create and manage layout templates.

You cannot customize the names of any other object in Workfront. For a complete list of objects in Workfront, see the API Explorer.

When you customize the name of an object, the new name for that object appears in most areas of the Workfront application where that object name would appear.

Areas of Workfront that reflect the customized object names

The following areas show the updated name of the objects:

  • Top Navigation
  • All sections in the left panel navigation
  • All menus
  • In-app notifications
  • Report builder and reporting elements (views, filters, and groupings)
  • Save buttons
  • Exported files
  • Emails
  • Mobile Apps

Areas of Workfront that do not reflect the customized object names

The following areas do not show the updated name of the objects:

  • Outlook Add-in

Implications of customizing object names

You should be aware of the following when customizing object names in Workfront:

  • You may encounter stylistic or grammatical errors in system displays. For example, if you rename ‘Issue’ to ‘Request’ and you see anywhere in the system the phrase ‘An request’, this is functioning as intended and should not be considered a bug.

  • Your custom names for the objects are not translatable. Only the Workfront default names can be translated in the supported languages. For more information about languages that are supported in Workfront, see Supported languages in Adobe Workfront. The custom object name fields support foreign characters so you can input terminology in any language.

  • When you customize object names using a Layout Template, we recommend that you assign your Layout Templates based on your business units (Teams or Groups).
    We recommend that you use names that are clearly understood by the users of these business units, to avoid confusion.

  • Email notifications and delivered reports always contain object names as defined by the Layout Template of the user who generates the email. Your users should be prepared to see object names in their emails that are not related to their group or team, if they receive email notifications from users in other teams and groups.
    As a Workfront administrator, advise users to notice the icons associated with each object. The icons remain consistent between various object names and consistent with the default object, as it appears in the database. For a list of all Workfront icons associated with objects, see Object icons.

    note tip
    TIP
    For common tasks in your organization, consider creating custom documentation to reflect your terminology.

Object icons

The Workfront documentation always refers to the default names of objects. If your objects have had their names customized, you can rely on the icon associated with them to understand which customized object corresponds to which Workfront default object.

For more information about which objects can have customized names in Workfront, see Object names that can be customized using a Layout Template.

The following is a list of objects and their corresponding icons in Workfront.

Object
Icon
Customizable object name
Company
,
Dashboard
,
Goal
✔
Group
,
Issue
,
✔
Job Role
job_role_icon.png , job_role_icon__1_.png , ,
Plan
,
Portfolio
,
✔
Program
,
✔
Project
,
✔
Report
,
Task
,
✔
Team
, ,
Template
,
User
, , , ,

Reference Numbers of objects

Each object created in Workfront is assigned a unique reference number. Reference numbers are useful in distinguishing between two otherwise similar objects (such as tasks with the same name). You can search for objects using their reference numbers and you can include reference numbers in reports.

For information about how to search for objects by reference number, see Use the reference number of objects.

Object-specific searches

You can search across all the objects that are searchable in Workfront, or you can select a specific object to search for in your basic and advanced searches.

Not all objects are searchable in Workfront. You can run basic and advanced searches for the following objects in Workfront:

Object
Basic Search
Advanced Search
Projects
✓
✓
Tasks
✓
✓
Issues
✓
✓
Reports
✓
✓
Users
✓
✓
Templates
✓
✓
Documents
✓
✓
Portfolios
✓
✓
Programs
✓
✓
Dashboards
✓
✓
Companies
✓
✓
Notes (or Updates)
✓

For more information about running basic and advanced searches in Workfront, see Search Adobe Workfront.

Restricted access to objects

When a user does not have access to an object, the user sees “No access” anywhere that object name displays in Workfront.

Access to objects can be restricted in the access level or in a specific object’s permissions.

This applies to all objects and child objects listed in the Interdependency and hierarchy of objects section in this article. This does not apply to Team and User objects.

Report on objects

Understanding the hierarchy and interdependency of objects is extremely important before you start building reports in Workfront. Reports are object-specific. You must select the correct object for your report before you can display the data that you want.

IMPORTANT
You can report only on the object you select and the parent objects in the same report. You cannot have information about the children objects in a parent object report. For example, you can display project information in a task report, but not task information in a project report.

You can report on all objects in the database using our open API. For a complete list of all objects in the database, see API Explorer.

NOTE
  • If you have customized the names of your objects using a layout template, the names for the object in the report builder have also been customized. Ensure you know what objects have been customized and look for the customized name in the report builder. For more information about which objects can have customized names in Workfront, see Object names that can be customized using a Layout Template in this article.
  • When using text mode in your reports, the names of the objects in text mode expressions are the standard names in Workfront, and not the customized object names. For more information about using text mode in reports, see Text Mode overview.

For more information about building a report, see Create a custom report.
For more information about our API, see API Explorer.

Objects available for reports

You can report on the following objects when using the report builder in the Workfront web application. Indented bullet points give more information about the object, and do not represent additional objects.

  • Project

  • Task

  • Hour

  • Issue

  • User

  • Access Level

  • Approval

  • Approval Process

  • Assignment

  • Baseline

  • Baseline Task

  • Billing Record

  • Budgeted Hour

    • This is the Budgeted Hours, as they appear in the in older, deprecated resource management tools.
    • The “Bud. Hours” field in the Budgeted Hour report refers to the hours budgeted for job roles in the Resource Planner. For more information, see Understand Budgeted Labor Cost and Budgeted Hours for projects.

  • Calendar Event

  • Company

  • Custom Form

  • Dashboard

  • Document

  • Document Approval

  • Document Version

    • You can view information about the version of the document, the document the version is associated with, who created the version, and the user who created the proof on the document version if one exists (Proof Creator).

  • Email Template

  • Expense

  • Expense Type

  • External Page

  • Favorite

  • Filter

  • Goal

    • You can build a report for strategic goals or you can display goal-related information in a project report when projects are associated with goals as goal activities. You can create strategic goals and connect projects them only if your organization has purchased a Workfront Goals license. For information about Workfront Goals, see Workfront Goals overview. For information about connecting projects to strategic goals, see Add projects to goals in Adobe Workfront Goals.
      *You cannot report on project goals that are associated with a Business Case. For information about project goals vs strategic goals, see Glossary of Adobe Workfront terminology.

  • Group

  • Grouping

  • Hour Type

  • Initiative

  • Initiative Job Role

  • Iteration

  • Job Role

  • Journal Entry

    • You can report on tracked system updates in the Updates area of objects like tasks, projects, issues, etc. For more information, see Report on the Updates area.

  • Layout Template

  • Milestone

  • Milestone Path

  • Note or Updates

    • You can report on comments added by individual users.

  • Parameter (or Custom Field)

  • Parameter Group (or Section Break)

  • Portfolio

  • Program

  • Project (Financial Data)

    • Financial information populates in Project (Financial Data) reports only when the data associated with it is less than 5 years old. For example, if a job role was allocated to a task in January 2015 and today is September 2021, a financial filed like the Allocation Date for the job role does not populate in the Project (Financial Data) report.
    note caution
    CAUTION
    Running a Project (Financial Data) report performs a recalculation of your financial data, which can overwrite previous financial data and may take a significant amount of time. For more information about the consequences of financial data recalculation, see Recalculate project finances.

  • Proof Approval

    • Enables you to view various information about the proof approval, including: the proof that was submitted for approval, information about the Approver, information about the Requester (if the Requester is a licensed Workfront user), version information, the proof ID, and the proof creation date.
      Proof Approval reports include only proofs that are available in users’ My Work areas where decisions have not yet been made.\
    • Proof approvals are assigned in Workfront as described Add users to a proof in Share a proof within Adobe Workfront.

  • Queue

  • Queue Topic

  • Rate (this displays job role Billing Rate information)

  • Reminder Notification

  • Report

  • Resource Pool

  • Risk

  • Risk Type

  • Schedule

  • Scorecard

  • Team

  • Template

  • Template Task

  • Time Off

    • You can report on a user’s time off as indicated by the user in their profile.

  • Timesheet

  • Timesheet Profile

  • Topic Group

  • User Approval

  • User Delegation

    • You can report on users who have been delegated to perform others’ tasks and issues while they are out of the office. This report displays the user who is out of the office as well as the user who fulfills their duties while they are out.

  • Users Decisions

    • You can report on how many decisions users have made on proofs and documents in the current month.

  • View

  • Work Item (this produces a report for tasks and issues)

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