Ask the Expert - Follow Up to Workfront Proof Best Practices

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our Workfront Wednesday Ask the Expert workshop. Before I introduce John, let’s cover a few housekeeping items. There’s no dial in. Audio is broadcast via your computer speakers. If you’re having trouble hearing us, please ensure they are not muted and that you’ve selected the proper audio output channel in your computer settings and preferences. If you’re having difficulty seeing the presentation, please ensure that Flash is enabled to be used to the right and if not, do so now and then refresh your page. We will begin with John answering questions that came in during last week’s webinar that were overflow. And then upon conclusion of going through the questions from last week, we will shift to open question and answer where you’re free to post additional questions into the Q&A or any other questions related to other topics into the Q&A. We’ll answer live on air via chat or in the chat or after the webinar via email, again, depending on the complexity of the questions. And then any that we’re unable to answer live will be addressed after the webinar and posted along with the recording of today’s session to the download resources link for this workshop in the workshop recordings page within the Workfront Experience training site and we will post that link for you shortly. And finally, any other questions can be posted into the Q&A at any time. And then just a note that the Q&A is just a note. The questions that we’re referencing today are attached to the resource list in the workshop lobby. So if you’d like to take a look and be able to read alongside John’s progression, feel free to do that. So with that, John, I think you’re free to take it away. All right. Well, thank you very much. And hello, everyone. Glad to be back for a follow-up session from last week’s Ask the Expert proofing session. Today, what we are really going to focus on through the overflow of questions that came in in last week’s session, I found that there were really kind of three main topics or areas that kept coming up. One was kind of around why should I use automated workflow templates? What are automated workflow templates for proofing? And then we get into a lot of questions were around how do we create templates? What is the process of creating one of these automated workflow templates? So we’ll cover that today. Take a look at stage settings and some of the automation options there. I’ll throw in some tips and tricks as we go through that. And then another area that we had a lot of questions on had to do with privacy in proofs. For instance, how can we make sure that our proof recipients are really only seeing the comments that we want them to see or that they should see and also the versions of proofs that they should see. So we’ll cover that as well. And again, we’ll probably spend about 30-35 minutes going through the content and then we’ll open it up to Q&A as you heard there. So as questions come up, definitely throw them in the chat and we’ll hit upon those. So I’m going to go ahead and start to share my screen here. Take me one moment.

So you should be able to see my screen now. I’m inside of my Workfront account and the first thing that we’re going to talk about is really why you should use automated workflow templates and really what an automated workflow template is. So I’m going to go ahead and from this project here that I have called Test Project A. I’m going to click into this project, go to the Documents tab and this is as you know where you can upload documents and share documents. You can create proofs from here. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to go over to the Add New button over here in the upper left and I’m going to choose the Proof option. So a proof as you’re probably aware is any kind of document or file that you want to route around for people to review and ultimately approve. Essentially give you feedback, make markups, request edits and then let you know is this document or file approved or does it require changes? And we have a proof viewer tool that really enables the collaborative review and approval and we’ll be taking a look at that through our session today as well and you’re probably already very familiar with that tool. But what I’m going to do is I’m going to go ahead and just create a proof here on this new proof page. I’m just going to make an interactive web proof. There we go. Now over here in the workflow section we’ve got a couple of different options that you’ll see. Basic and automated. The two different types of workflow options really enable you to do a couple of different things. Basic workflow is really used if you just need to say I’m creating this proof. I just need to route it to one or two or five or 10 people kind of all at the same time in a collaborative review. So you can come here and say I’m going to add Joe Schmo to this proof. I’m going to make him a reviewer and approver. I’m going to send that proof off to him to review. So it’s kind of basic workflow is really used for ad hoc situations. You know I’ve just got to create this proof send it off to this guy that person you know whoever I need to send it to I can do that. Then we have an option called automated. Now automated before we even get into templates what it allows you to do is set up a sequential and automated workflow for your proof and it’s done through the use of what are called workflow stages. Right now right when I select automated I have a stage called stage one and Joe was brought over from my basic you know when I added him he’s brought over but I can add multiple stages of review so I can add stage two you’ll see it’s connected in this diagram to stage one and I can add any anyone that I need to to stage two make them a reviewer and approver and the way that this can be set is instead of Joe and Annie receiving this proof at exactly the same time and reviewing it at the same time I can use automated workflow to both kind of manage a sequential routing of the proof making sure that it first goes to Joe and upon Joe’s approval or we can utilize other settings or I should say workflow trigger options that we’ll take a look at a little later we can have the proof automatically move forward to Annie for her review so we can have it move both in a sequential order and automated. So you’ve got the power to do that both in an ad hoc fashion with basic workflow you can just kind of say okay I’m going to just send the proof off to Bob with automated workflow you can say I’m going to send the proof off to Bob and then after Bob’s reviewing I want it to automatically move over to Jean that sort of thing. Now where templates come into play is they really allow you to do two really great things they allow you to standardize your processes so that you don’t have to when you’re creating a proof go hey who do I need to send this to did I get everybody I need to send this to you know on the proof so it allows you to standardize your processes which is great also allows you again to automate your processes so here you’ll see right below when I select automated a drop down menu opens up where I can select automated workflow templates. Now these are just pre-created predefined templates that I can apply to a proof and I’ll go ahead and I’m going to just grab this one called example sequential workflow. What it does is it just loads up all of your different stages so stages can have specific names they can have specific deadlines already set up specific reviewers and approvers already added to them and of course the automation is there. So when I go to create the proof I don’t have to spend the time every time I create a proof designing out a workflow I can just pull in the workflow template that I need to use and it will route and utilize automation and to see what this looks like in action so this particular template has three stages marketing team review marketing executive review and executive leadership review and we’re going in a sequential order. I’m just going to go ahead and click this create proof button here in the lower left we’re just going to launch this proof. So the great thing again I should also say not only are you standardizing your processes you’re automating your processes you’re really speeding up the process as well you know so that’s all going to really help you get your work completed quicker and again with that review process more accuracy increasing your speed to market which is going to be very important. So I’ve created this proof and from this proof if I click on the proof details link here what will happen is a window will open up and I’ll be able to see the workflow on the proof and essentially how far along into the workflow we are. We’ve got our workflow diagram up here across the top of this window. Our current open stage is in black. Stages that have not yet opened marketing executive review and executive leadership review are grayed out. These have not yet started and once marketing team review has been approved those stages will automatically open. If the way that I have this particular template set up if the proof requires changes let’s say Amanda or Annie in this first stage of review identify some changes they’d like to have made if they make the decision of changes required the proof does not automatically move forward to marketing executive review. In the case of this workflow I only want marketing executive review to open if everything is approved in the previous stage. So to see how this operates I’m going to go ahead and make decisions on behalf of some of our reviewers in these stages. So as the owner of the proof I have the power to do this and note if you make a decision on behalf of someone else it will be logged as such in the activity history. So it’ll always say like in this case I make a decision on behalf of Amanda it will be logged as John Schuler made a decision on behalf of Amanda. But let’s say Amanda and Annie have both received the proof. Annie goes in and says everything looks great I’m going to say the proof is approved but Amanda says well I found some changes I’m going to mark a decision of changes required. She can make a decision of changes required. The proof does not automatically progress to marketing executive review. At this point myself as the owner of that proof I’m going to be notified of those decisions being made by way of my email alert that’s going to say all right time to go in look at the comments start to create a new version and when I create a new version of the proof we essentially start back over at the beginning of the workflow. So you know essentially version two just starts back over right here at marketing team review and if they again say not good yet version three starts at marketing team review. Once both Amanda and Annie both say that this proof is approved then automatically Patty and Pete in the marketing executive review stage are notified by email that they have a proof to review. Same kind of thing can happen here if they say that changes are required we can have the proof stop in its tracks we don’t move forward to executive leader ship review but if they say it’s approved it can move forward. We can work through as many versions as we need to and again constantly going through this same workflow and when we go to create a new version if we don’t need to go back through marketing team review we can always when we create that new version just start it at marketing executive review and then on to executive leadership review. So you’ll have that functionality and power with your workflow templates. Looks like for marketing executive review I only required one decision that decision was approved and now executive leadership review is approval is open. We’ll say that Joe has approved it and now our proof is approved. So again the key things about these automated workflow templates it’s going to standardize your processes and automate your processes and again save time for the people creating and routing these proofs where they don’t have to go hey did I get everybody added at the go through the manual process of adding each and every person or setting up each of these stages every time you go to create a proof. So let’s take a look now that we have an understanding of what an automated workflow template is how it’s applied. Let’s take a look at how to create an automated workflow template. Now as you see here when I go to create a new proof inside of Workfront and I choose the automated option and I go to select a workflow template I’ve got all kinds of what are called workflow template groups we talked a little bit about those in last week’s session and each of those groups has their own workflow templates. So that allows you the workflow template groups really allow you to organize your templates so that proof creators can quickly and easily get to the workflow template that they need to use. So let’s go ahead and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna Hey Don really quick before you go on I’m just gonna ask a quick question that came in before we move too far off of it if Joe has changes does Annie get the update that there’s a new proof? Ah that will so let me let me go back to let me go back to that particular proof so if and that some of that will depend on how you manage the workflow. So if I open up the proof details here if so so Annie is in stage one Joe is in stage three now by default when you go to create a new version let’s say Joe says there’s changes required. He doesn’t say that it’s approved and we go to create a new version of that proof we can when we create that new version we could route it back to Annie and Amanda in marketing team review and if that’s the case they will be notified that there’s a new version of approved to review if however we decide that well we don’t need to go through marketing team review we don’t need to go through marketing executive review we’re just gonna go right to executive leadership review in that case Amanda and Annie Patty and Pete in these other stages would not be notified. So the default is when you go to create a new version of the proof it just adopts the workflow used on the previous version well great question. Okay thanks Tom. All right you bet. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna click to to access the area that that we can create workflow templates in you do need to be a system administrator for work front and in the upper right of your account you’ll see the button here with a checkmark icon and the highlight or the little hover says phq login you’ll go ahead and click on that and that’s going to take you into the proofing software that’s integrated with your working with your work front account. This is kind of the engine under the hood for proofing now within your proof account the quickest way to get to your workflows area is over here in the left navigation bar you’ll see a link that says workflows we can click on that and this will take us to our workflow tab within account settings. It’s another way that you can get here is you can click on account settings in the upper right and then click on your workflow tab and here we’ve got our list of workflow templates here in the middle of the screen and then our workflow template groups over here on the left and to just kind of see what that workflow template looks like that we were just working with it’s in my example template group it’s called example sequential workflow we can click into this and this is the template itself this is what we applied to that proof this template can be updated if needed it can be changed out so if annie leaves the company we need to replace her with somebody else in here we can always do that but let’s first before we get too deep into things let’s take a look at just how to create a template and some tips and tricks around that so the first thing that you can do anytime you want to create a template you can also create a template group groups again just allow you to organize your templates in a logical structure to create a template group you just simply click on the new button and you can create a new template group we actually looked at this in our last session i’m just going to create one right now and we’re just going to call this our let’s see print let’s say print workflow or i’ll say print template group there we go all right click out of that field there is our group the next thing i’m going to do is i’m actually going to create a template so i’m going to click on new and i’m going to choose new template this is going to take us to the template creation page now the template creation page when you come here it’s really made up of three sections i’m going to minimize each of these real quick just to speak to them we’ve got details stages and then share template with or basically our sharing functionality details this first section is going to allow us to name the template i’m going to call this let’s say print shop review something like that template owner the next field this does not really serve any functional purpose it’s not going to work like like owners inside of work front like if you were a project owner or something like that this just allows you to basically indicate who’s who’s in charge of this template if i have a question about that template i want to delete it i want to make changes who do i talk to that sort of thing then we can choose our template group the template group i’m going to choose is our print template group and then we’ve got some options here where it says allow add a stage change stage names change stage deadlines change stage settings all of these pieces of functionality that we can either allow people to do when they create a proof and use this template or we can limit them from being able to do for instance the option of add a stage if we have this enabled if somebody applies this template to a proof they have the ability at the proof level to say i’m going to add an additional stage of review because for this particular proof i needed to you know go to even another person or we can say i don’t want them to be able to deviate from the original plan and do that we could deselect that and they will not be able to add a stage you’ve got all kinds of options here i generally recommend when you’re first getting used to work front and using automated workflow templates i’m a big fan of just leaving all of these enabled because it’s going to give you the flexibility to really work with those but if you do have a standardized process that you cannot deviate from you don’t want for instance this option of remove people from stages to be enabled because you need to make sure that person is always on those proofs you could always deselect any of these but keep in mind you do have that functionality available to limit or allow people to do certain things with that template when they apply it to a proof the next section we have is stages and this is where we create our stages of review we get them all set up all kinds of good stuff now your workflow template could just be set up with one stage and that’s perfectly fine if you’ve got a template you want to create for really a group review everybody reviews it at the same time automated workflow templates are still a great tool that you can use because again you’re standardizing the process making it very easy for people to just say all right i’m going to route this i’m going to choose this template off it goes we can name our first stage and i could call this maybe a print maybe i’ll call this layout review that’s a good name for that stage over to the right we can set up a deadline now the deadline we could set this with no deadline and that’s fine if there’s no deadline that you want to add you can do that but i do recommend at setting a deadline now the deadline again uh this is a template which means just like with your project templates and workflow it’s a general guide it doesn’t mean you have to stick to that every time but i’m going to go ahead and say i’ve got a deadline for layout review of two business days and i want them to complete that by 4 pm now when you do go to create the proof you can always adjust this as long as it’s allowed and again that will tie in with this little checkbox here of change stage deadlines if you deselect that they won’t be able to update those deadlines when they create a proof next thing we have is activate stage this really determines what activates this stage of review now for your first stage of review or if you’re working with a one stage template i always leave that set as on proof creation when we come to our second stage i’ll let you i’ll show you the other options that we have of what can activate the stage deadline calculated from for your very first stage of review or if this is a one stage template i recommend leaving this set to proof creation this is what this two business days at 4 pm is going to be calculated from lock stage now what this particular setting does and by default a stage when it activates when it’s open is unlocked and an unlocked stage means anyone within that stage can make comment well depending on their proof role if they have the rights to make comments they’ll be able to make comments they could make markups if they have the rights to make a decision they can make decisions even after their stage is complete if it will by default be unlocked moves on to the next stage people in that first stage can still make comments and reply to comments and so forth but you do have some options if you would like to lock the stage for instance if i want layout review to lock when the second stage starts i’ve got some options here the first option is manual this just means the stage is unlocked unless an owner of the proof or somebody with edit rights on the proof manually locks the stage pushes a button and says it’s locked you don’t get to make any more comments or make any more decisions never means that the option to lock a stage is not even available for that stage when the next stage starts means that when the next stage in this workflow begins this stage locks when all decisions are made means that once all the decisions are made in this stage this stage will lock now uh i generally my favorite option here is to go with the manual option uh however if you do have a workflow where you really do determine hey once layout review is complete i don’t want those people making any more comments uh locking is a great feature that you can use we’re going to come back and look at primary decision maker oh yeah go ahead yeah go for it yeah i’m going to ask just a quick question when a three-stage workflow is failed at stage two is it possible for the workflow not to repeat stage one i.e. if stage one is just uploading uh and the start of the flow task only um how do you control what repeats it won’t do that in an automated fashion uh but you do have the option again when you go to create uh the next version of the proof uh you have the option to delete the stage unless there’s a little setting here that says do not allow this stage to be deleted if that’s selected then you always have to go through that first stage so your options there are you delete this the first stage when you go to create that new version or you could even have an alternate template that you use uh that just has your your second two stages and maybe one that just has the third stage and at the time of creating a new version you can always change templates really good question but uh the default is yep go ahead one more to tag onto it when an automated workflow template is applied to your proof will the recipients in the later stage be notified upon proof creation or only when their stage is activated um great question customers been having issues of later stages being notified that they have a proof already but since their stage is inactive the proof appears locked uh yes so uh the time that you get notified uh through through the proof notification email is when your stage begins now uh something that could happen and probably this is what’s happening in in this case if somebody is using the at mentions feature within a comment and mentioning somebody in a later stage like for instance uh I could be in stage one and bob is in stage three and I make a comment and I say at bob hey I need you to take a look at this bob gets that notification immediately even if his stage hasn’t been activated if his stage hasn’t been activated he goes into the proof it appears locked because his stage is not yet activated uh most likely that is the scenario going on there uh if it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s going on there I would reach out to our support team because that would mean something is a foul thanks so much you bet so um next thing that we can do at the bottom of the stage and again we’ll come back and look at some of these other options here like primary decision maker uh we’ve got uh an option here called proof creator this is really just the placeholder for the person creating the proof you’ll see that they’re also it lists them as the owner by default your proof creator will be the owner of the proof however we can always change that owner to someone else within the template uh we’re going to set our proof role you’ll see that we have the options of default for each of these I’m not a fan of using either of those uh I really like to set the proof role within the template itself that way I have great control over that because otherwise we’re pulling from that user’s default settings which may not match exactly what you want in that workflow so I’m going to set the proof creators role to reviewer that ties into what we were talking about last week uh around proof roles and we’re going to set the email alert to decisions this again will allow the proof creator to make comments and reply to comments and be notified when decisions are made on the proof uh not require a uh a decision from the proof creator and also not bombard them with too many emails the next thing we can do is we can start to add our reviewers so I’m going to add Joe Schmo and I’m going to add Annie I know that those are a couple of people that we have in there and I’m going to go ahead and set their proof roles and again the proof roles that I recommend for everybody else that you set up on a proof is reviewer and approver you don’t necessarily have to make everybody a reviewer and approver but again it allows them not only to indicate they’re complete with their review but summarize their overall feedback and that can also help drive your workflow you always want to make sure with any of your stages of review that you have at least one reviewer and approver in there I’m going to set their email alerts I’m going to set those to disabled that is a little misleading uh because that might make you think they’re not going to get any emails but these are the email alerts around activity that happens on the proof essentially people making comments replying to comments people making decisions uh if you have this set to disabled those users are are still going to be notified they have a lot of people that are going to be able to are still going to be notified they have a proof to review a new version of a proof if they’re late and if somebody mentions them in a comment so now by default if I’ve got two people in this stage I’ve got joe and annie they’re uh they have equal say on this proof if they say the proof is if they both say the proof is approved the proof is approved if joe says it’s approved but annie says it’s change is required the overall decision is change is required we have some options that we can work with though if that is not uh appropriate for this particular workflow one thing we can do is we can designate a primary decision maker and that is uh this drop down here I could designate annie as our primary decision maker and now what’s going to happen is whatever annie says as a decision goes for this stage if joe says the proof is is uh change is required but annie says it’s approved the proof is approved annie overrides joe’s decision if annie gets to the proof before joe and makes a decision joe no longer needs to make a decision because he wouldn’t outweigh annie’s decision anyway so you have the option of designating a primary decision maker within each of your review stages we also have an option called only one decision required oh yeah go for it yeah I’m gonna stop you really quick do these um assignments do they need to be job role or can they be job roles or do they have to be specific named individuals great questions so at this time uh with work front uh the uh they they do have to be named individuals uh we do not have the functionality built in yet uh though it is on the roadmap I don’t have an eta uh to add job roles as well as teams uh so so right now you wouldn’t be able to put in a job role or a team uh but that will be available in the future it’s definitely on our our vision thank you you bet uh the next uh so so with only one decision required what we could do now is we could say hey either joe or annie you need to make the decision we don’t care which one of you makes it whoever gets there first you make the decision we’re good to go another setting we have here and this ties in with the uh functionality around privacy is called private stage so a question that came up quite a lot in our q and a uh kind of the offline q and a in our last session session was how do I make sure people uh proof recipients really only see the comments that I want them to see and uh that is done through this tool here called private stage the way that private stages work uh if I click private stage you’ll see a little key icon shows up here for layout review um what this would mean is that uh for any one in uh a stage outside of layout review and there are going to be some caveats here I’ll cover those with you uh but anyone outside of layout review stage is really not going to see anything to do with the layout review stage now um they’re not going to know that that stage exists they’re not going to see the comments in the stage they’re not going to see the decisions made uh it is invisible basically when you make that stage private now people that could be in another stage that would be able to see into the private stage uh would be uh work front users set with a proofing license of supervisor or administrator if you’re a work front user set with a proofing license of supervisor or administrator you can see everything that’s the that’s the caveat here is uh you know those would be the only people but where this is mostly used is when you’re working with clients you don’t want like let’s say you you route a proof to a client you want to make sure that client only sees the comments that they should see and I’ll show you an example of this right now um I’ve got a proof opened right here and uh this proof is called client proof and it’s version two and uh this proof has a comment made by Joe Schmo and I’m actually accessing this as John Schuler right now if I come in here and add a comment and say this is a comment I am in a private stage yeah I can go ahead and post that if we look over here on the workflow in the far left if I click on workflow we can see internal review stage I listed it as private here just for visual purposes but this has John and Joe and then we’ve got a client review stage with Bob Jones now I’ve got this same proof opened in another tab here and uh I am in this proof as Bob uh now now Bob you see if I go to add a comment says Bob Jones client I can make a comment this is my comment I have whoops oh boy if I could type I have no idea that there is a private stage on this proof it is secret I can go ahead and post that and if Bob comes over and looks at the workflow he just sees a client review stage he does not know that that other stage exists now if I go back over to the proof again as somebody in that private stage cancel out of this I can see that comment that Bob Jones just made a few seconds ago so private stages are what is going to allow uh you to make sure that your clients are not seeing comments that they should not see uh now you should still obviously practice good judgment in your comments uh you know just in case somebody forgives to mark a stage as private or something like that or you think a private state a stage is private but it’s not uh but but this is a great way uh to make sure that that you keep those those uh comments hidden is is using that private stage option so we can make a stage private or we can leave it open if you leave it open anyone on that version of the proof in those other stages can see into that stage then we also have this option of do not allow stage to be deleted if we check this then when we apply this workflow template we do not have the ability to delete it or skip it we have to go through it and again when anytime you create a proof and you apply a template if that’s not selected you can go ahead and skip that stage say up we don’t need layout review for this version or this proof we’re going to go ahead and start at this other stage that’s perfectly legal so we’ve got our first stage setup layout oh yeah go for it john before you move on who can set stages to private is that an admin responsibility or can other set stages to private oh great question so for creating the templates uh that is an admin responsibility so creating the template setting this at the template level that’s the admin responsibility but if you’re just creating a proof if you have a proofing license you have the ability when you’re using automated workflow uh as long as you have the ability to uh create the proof you have the ability to make this stage private so you don’t have to be an administrator to do that you could just be a proof creator so the next thing i’m going to do is oh yeah absolutely i’m going to go ahead and create a new stage and you can do this for as many stages as you need some things to note when we talk about stages of review or stages inside of our workflow templates these are always going to be stages of review you’re not going to create a stage that says create version two you’re not going to have a stage that says create version three you’re not going to have a stage that says make changes you know those are going to be actions that happen but those are not stages of review those might be tasks inside of your project but those won’t be stages inside of a template so you won’t have a template that really references three different versions all the way through a bunch of stages you just reapply that template every time you create a new version or when you create a new version again you can apply a different template if you need so i’m going to go ahead and create a new stage i’m going to say new stage and this stage we’ll go ahead and we’ll call this print shop review and then we’ll set a deadline just like we did before let’s say we need it four business days by 12 but now what we’re going to look at are some of the options we have here around activating the stage so for our first stage i always again set that as on proof creation we could do that for this stage as well and as you’ll see here in the diagram what this would mean is that these stages would run in parallel kind of side by side at the same time they could be separate stages which you know you may need a scenario like that because one should be private the other not you know that sort of thing but in this scenario i want this proof or this stage to be activated differently than just on proof creation and the options that we have are after previous deadline is reached if we select that option what we’re saying is when the in the case of this template when the layout review when the deadline hits the print shop review opens regardless of what decisions were made or if any decisions were made at all it’s purely deadline activated on a specific date and time now it is very very rare that i’ve ever seen this used i think i’ve seen it used once in the last like six or seven years what this allows you to do is specify if i say on a specific date and time i could say you know maybe three business days after the proof is created at 5 pm that’s when i want this to be created or activated again very rare that this comes up but that’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of people using this i don’t touch every single customer out there i just rarely see it the options that i see most often used are going to be the next three ones three options these are based upon decisions that are made we have an option called all decisions are approved or approved with changes on parent stage if we select this and we select our parent stages layout review what we’re basically saying is is as long as joe and annie the overall decision is approved or approved with changes then the print shop review stage will open if the decision is changes required the print shop review stage does not open the next one we have is a little more strict it’s all decisions are approved on parent stage now what this will mean is joe and annie have to say it’s approved for print shop review stage to open if they say it’s changes required or they say it’s approved with changes then the print shop review stage does not automatically open and then we have one called all decisions are made this one it doesn’t this one is just basically saying hey joe annie you just need to get in there make a decision it could be changes required it could be approved whatever that decision is we move forward to the next stage those are really the three that i see most often used i’m a big fan of all decisions are approved on parent stage because that’s pretty clear cut you know it has to you have to say it’s approved before it moves on but you know all workflows different you know processes are different so use what you think is appropriate and then finally we have an option called manually now manually as you’ll see here when i select that we don’t have a parent stage we basically just have another stage that will only activate if the proof owner or someone with edit rights on that proof pushes a button that says activate that stage it removes the automation portion of this but can be appropriate for some workflow templates i’m going to go ahead and choose all decisions are approved on parent stage i’m going to select my parent stage layout review note that you can if i had another stage here called maybe something like executive review i could say that all decisions are approved on parent stage and i have the option of choosing either layout review or print shop review if i choose layout review we’re basically branching this workflow out we’re running executive review and print review at the same time if i say print shop review then we would be running in a sequential order so you have some additional options that you can use there so with these stages again you can add people to them you could also leave the stages blank you know maybe for the print shop review stage we don’t have named people we’re not sure who should be in there or maybe it’s a client review stage and every proof the client might be different you could leave that stage empty and at the time of creating the proof you add the client so again this is just a template to basically standardize your process and automate your process the last area is this one called share template with we talked about this in our last session this allows you to control who has access to this template when they go to create a proof by default it will be just everyone in your account that has a proofing license that can work in in a lot of cases but if you’ve got something like 100 workflow templates that could become unwieldy for the people that are creating proofs with that if you just wanted to share it with a specific person over to the right you’ll see we have the option of remove person we can say i’m going to remove that share and i’m just going to share this template with joe schmo and i’m going to share it with uh annie anderson those will be the two users that have access to this template when they are selecting a template to apply to a proof now once you’re complete with your details your stages your sharing go ahead and click create and that template is now created we’re taken to the template management page and on this page we have options that we can use to make changes we can adjust the details a lot of this is just inline editable we can adjust any of our allow options we can add people to stages we can create new stages we can update our deadlines that’s inline editable the name of the stage is inline editable we can adjust reviewer roles we can do any kind of editing that we need to from here another thing that’s really good to know about is you have a copy button up here at the top allowing you to copy your templates so keep that in mind if you don’t want to recreate the wheel every time but you want to create something similar somebody brought up a question of hey what if i don’t want to go back through that first stage i could always make a variation of this i could say this is print shop review three stages in the name i could copy this make a copy and i’m going to call this copy print shop review two stages remove that layout review stage have everything start at print shop review have that stage start on proof creation and now off we go print shop review executive review i have an alternate template that i can use if i just want to quickly and easily skip stage one when i create a new version of that proof now one other thing i wanted to cover has to do with privacy so we talked about the private stages i want to talk about one other thing around privacy and this is a really important setting that you should know about and that is within the account settings up here in the upper right if we click on that and then we click into the settings tab within that we scroll down to an area called sharing you’re going to see a setting there called recipients can view all versions now by default this setting is going to be enabled and you can enable it or disable it just using the link here on the right by default within your account this is going to be set as enabled and what that means is if we create a proof and we route it to let’s say bob and joe on version one and then we create version two and now on version two we route it to bob and joe but we also add jim to version two jim wasn’t on version one but we add him to version two if recipients can view all versions is enabled jim is going to be able to look at version one even though he wasn’t on it he’ll be able to compare version two with version one he’ll be able to see version one if we do not want jim to be able to see version one we only wanted to see version two which is the version that we explicitly added him to then we would set this to disabled recipients can view all versions disabled what would now happen is that when we first recreate version one we route it to bob and joe bob and joe see version one we create version two we add jim to version two jim can only see version two he does not have the ability to see version one so keep that in mind if you want to exercise version control now an exception around that rule just like with our private stages is if the person is a work front user and has a proofing license of supervisor or administrator they’ll be able to see all versions regardless of what this particular setting is set to where this can often come into play is when you’re working with clients on a proof versions one and two maybe work for internal review version three you say okay now’s the time to add the client if we have this disabled the client’s going to be able to see version three but they’re not going to be able to see versions one and two an example of that is this proof here that we were looking at earlier with the private stages versions one and two have john and joe on them i can go back and look at version one and if we look at our workflow just john and joe are on this version for client for this proof over here where we’re accessing his bob jones he was added only to version two he was not added to version one he has no access to version one he only can see version two so that covers went a little bit longer than i was expecting to but i just wanted to make sure i got all that covered and there were some really great questions that came in as we were going through those i just want to open things up now to q a any questions about anything that we talked about today or maybe didn’t talk about that people have yep so we’re going to go back uh first to private stage um area or private stage discussion we have quite a few questions on that so i’m going to give you the high level so you can hit through those and then we’ll go to the next topic so uh people are just wanting more confirmation around in private stages can you control which comments are shared externally like if you do want clients to see certain comments how do you do that um also confirmation that the private stage would by default mark the comments and the document private um and then as well if someone internal from a private stage comments on a non-private stage client will the client see the internal comment so kind of just going back to just the nuances of private settings yeah those those are really great questions yeah those are really great questions and do dig in deeper around the private stages so uh first question was around um let’s say in that internal review stage um and we can actually just go right into a proof here uh and we can kind of go back and forth so uh right now let me go back to the current version because that one is unlocked uh so right now i’m in this proof in a private stage as john um now because i’m in a private stage uh any comments i make in that private stage are within that private stage and will be completely hidden from bob in uh the non-private stage or outside of the private stage there is not going to be away at this time uh although this i think uh i would definitely encourage you to add this to the idea exchange because it’s something i’ve been wanting for a while is a way to take a comment that has been made in a private stage and make that comment public basically say i want bob to be able to see this comment that i’ve made right now there’s not a way to do that one thing that you could do although i might i mean this one i don’t know if i’d recommend it or not recommend a kind of case you know specific uh but you could always as the owner of that proof i could go in here and say okay uh joe made a comment and you know he’s saying all this stuff and i don’t want the client to see i made a comment i don’t mind the client seeing that you could go through and delete comments if you were the owner of the proof you could delete comments made by other people in that private stage delete out any comments you don’t want the client to see and then change that stage to public that would then you know just leave the comments you want to show again i would test that out a bit you know get comfortable with it before you start doing that because again you probably you want to really make sure that you don’t miss a comment that really you do not want that client to see you know whether it’s something like oh my gosh this client is driving me crazy with these requests of versions or you know anything like that you want it to always be your best foot forward so but that is something you could do again i would i would recommend adding that to our id exchange i think it would be great if you could take comments made in a private stage and say i’m going to go ahead and mark this comment even though it was made in a private stage as not private another question that came up was around whether that comment is really marked as being private so within the comment itself if i look at this comment there’s nothing here that that indicates to me that this comment is made in a private stage if i go to the print summary let’s just take a look at this here the print summary let’s see so we’ve got our internal review stage i added this word private so that’s not a system setting or anything like that i’m not seeing anything here either that shows that this stage is private i’m not seeing that key icon if i look at the comments here there’s nothing there to indicate that it’s private either so i would say that this would be something that would be good to add if it’s a feature that you would like to have you know the ability to see at the proof level or within the print summary that you know those that specific comment was made in a private stage or this specific document that this proof was created from is using private stages really the only area that you’re going to see that within is if i go to the the proof here if i go to the proof settings that one is called client proof if i go to the proof details here i’ll be able to see that the stage is private with that key icon let me look at the activity history here nothing in the activity history is indicating that again that word private in all caps is mine it’s not system generated i would if you need that kind of functionality i would add that to the id exchange as well really good question and the third question that came in had to do with what if i reply to what if i’m part of a private stage like i am here and i see this comment that joe made i can come in and reply to that as you can see i could say hey bob can you see this comment and i’m almost certain that he will not be able to again because i’m in a private stage but we’re going to test this out i’m going to go ahead and click reply hey bob can you see this comment let’s take a look at this proof as bob well even do maybe a refresh here just to really force the the issue and i believe that he will not well actually look at this he would be able to see that comment that’s good that’s how i would like it to work but that is also something that you would need to be aware of these are good questions today you’re pushing you’re pushing me to to the the edge of my knowledge i love this but so so that would be something that you would want to make sure that you note that if you are in a private stage and you reply to a comment that’s in a public stage then that comment will be seen so you don’t want to come in here thinking that bob can’t see the reply and say man bob is really a stinker stinker stinker with all of his changes you know we don’t want to say that because bob is going to see that and then bob’s going to get mad so so keep that in mind if you if you reply to if you’re in a private stage you reply to a comment made in a stage other than your own that reply could be seen these are great questions any any other questions yep we’re going to go into decisioning for a minute so a few questions i’m going to group together around decisioning so first of all if you make a decision on behalf of a reviewer will that person receive a notification even if notifications are set to disabled and then can a person be marked as the primary decision maker for any and all proofs whether they are added through a workflow template or just individually well i’ll i’ll answer this and then again oh go ahead yeah one other third is there a difference between stage ends versus the decision made or is there any other way that a stage would end oh great okay yeah these are great questions okay so the first first question was around the decisions if you make a decision on behalf of someone else will they get an email notification that will depend on their their the email alert that they have set if they are set as with disabled as their email alert they are not going to get an email letting them know you made a decision on their behalf if they are set for all activity they would receive that email if they were set to daily summary hourly summary or decisions they would get that email but otherwise they would not be notified it would however fall their work list in in home or my updates because the decision would no longer be required from them on that proof the next question was around if somebody could may be made just like a primary decision maker almost like a global setting at your account level any proof that that person’s added to they’re just automatically a primary decision maker there’s not a way to set that at this time that would be a really cool feature again i would add that to the idea exchange i i would love to see functionality like that because you might have somebody in your organization where you say hey anytime our ceo is added to a proof that person is a primary decision maker we want that decision to override everyone else right now that that would only be set within templates within the workflow that sort of thing and then the third question let’s see if i can remember it i can’t remember it can you give me the third question again sir just a recap of is there any other way other than a decision being made that a stage would end okay yeah great question so um so for when we’re talking about a stage moving forward from uh you know or a stage activating from you know what might end a previous stage uh when it comes to the the workflow templates themselves or using automated workflow really those are going to be your options previous deadline is reached that’s just saying again that’s deadline based uh or all decisions are you know whichever decision options are made uh could put an end to that stage now you can always lock a stage and you can lock a stage manually uh that in essence kind of ends that stage because it ends anybody being able to do activity in it but that’s not going to necessarily trigger another stage to open but you could always go into the proof details and and uh let me uh let me go into this one this has got more than one stage or is this that’s just got one stage let me go to this one here uh we could do something like uh if i tings this back to pending um i could always come in here and uh although this stage has already been activated uh but you could manually lock a stage you’ve got this little lock button and and manually lock the stage again that effectively ends it and then you could if the stage wasn’t opened yet you’d have a button over here that would say activate stage that you could click on and then you can manually activate the stage um but really even if a dead like like if like let’s say this executive leadership stage this is our last stage on the proof um really that stage ends when uh the the activity ends you know you could again manage that by locking the stage and saying no more activity can happen here the decision has been made of approved you know it’s over you know uh and you know no further activity is going to happen but if that stage is unlocked uh in this and it was made approved there’s not really anything that’s going to stop joe from coming in a week later and making another comment uh which means that really that stage is still kind of out there it’s you know it’s active so if you want your stage to end be done finito uh that that’s where you’ll you’ll you know lock the stage and that effectively is kind of the end-all be-all no more activity can happen there all right well i see we’re at the top of the hour so i’ll let you take back over thanks john so there are some additional questions that are still in the chat and we apologize that we weren’t able to get to them today there are some more detailed process questions so we will be coming back and answering those and posting the full question and answer transcript to the resources as soon as we have it processed so we appreciate everyone’s time and attendance today and for coming back on short notice for a second round thank you all for your uh your uh interest in this program thanks everyone have a great rest of your day you betcha okay all right bye you you