10 More Text Mode Tips in Adobe Workfront

Transcript

So welcome to today’s Text Mode Workshop. It’s 10 more Text Mode tips. If you guys missed the first session in April, so we’ll be kind of going through 10 more tips that you can use and take advantage of today around Text Mode and Workfront. If this is your first customer success workshop, welcome. I’ll go over a couple of housekeeping items in just a second. So if you haven’t met me before, my name is Nicole Vargas. I am a customer success manager here at Adobe Workfront. I’ve been with Workfront coming up on seven years next week. And I actually started with Workfront in customer support and my job was troubleshooting Text Mode. So I kind of learned it a little bit backwards, but I figured I would just share some of the things that I’ve learned throughout the years with everyone here on the call. So that’s a little bit about me. I am joined here by my colleague, Cynthia, former customer, been with Adobe Workfront now for almost five years.

And then Leslie is our third team member, but she’s out on leave until March. So that’s just us. We’re the scale customer success team. If you have any questions, you’re always more than welcome to reach out to us at csatscaleatadobe.com or attend any of our 75 maybe free events that we host on a yearly basis. So agenda for today is I’m just gonna really quickly run through some Text Mode introductions of, you know, what is it, what the API Explorer is. I’ll just highlight what we talked about in the April session in case you missed it. And then we’ll really spend most of our time today on 10 more tips where I’m hoping to be able to not only show you in from a PowerPoint presentation, but also jump into a live, you know, instance and actually walk through actually how to build it.

I put it in open Q&A. I promise you that we’ll probably not have 10 minutes at the end, but if you have questions throughout the presentation, throughout the demo, just raise your hand, come off mute. I’m happy to answer any questions, especially as I’m on that specific tip. But if we do have time at the end, awesome. I would love to answer any questions you guys have and then we’ll be done within the hour. So I’m hoping to get through every single tip question. I know this is a lot to cover, but you guys will get a copy of the presentation, which has all of your sort of instructions in there. You’re also going to get a copy of the recording. So keep an eye out for a follow-up email later today. I’m also hoping to publish this to Experience League so that if people want to share additional text mode, I’m also going to be sharing a code block on that post. So sort of keep an eye out for those three resources later today with everything that you need from today’s call.

Okay, text mode. You know, like I said, if this is your first session, if you’re like, hey, I’m kind of new to Workfront, this one’s really going to be focused on text mode. So text mode is your way to manipulate filters, views, groupings, kind of create different calculations through the use of basically coding, which anything you can’t do in the standard report builder is what you’re going to use text mode for. So typically, if you want to add additional groupings to your report, or if there’s a column that you notice, I can only see project fields and I want to pull in portfolio information. Like anything that goes beyond what is available in the API Explorer is what you’re going to need text mode for if you’re going to want to write any sort of calculations, expressions, whatever that might be. And text mode is always going to be written in camel case. So it’s always that first word is going to be an all lower case, there’s going to be no spaces, and then every sequential word thereafter is going to be capitalized, the first letter is going to be capitalized. So you can see kind of two examples of what that would look like. The API Explorer. So the API Explorer is accessed through Workfront1. And again, you guys will have access if there’s additional links you guys want to know, just reach out and we’ll post those in the chat. This is going to be the most critical reference source used in learning of how to write text mode statements. So it’s going to give you that proper camel case for the fields that are in your database. It’s going to show you which fields can be found on what object, whether that’s like a project, a task, an issue, and then we’ll list, unless what fields can be referenced on each object. So I know it’s kind of confusing, but the tables in the API Explorer, so you can see fields, references, collections, search actions, those are going to give you that relationship specifications that you can use when inputting your filter criteria. So everything is displayed in the table. We’re kind of really going to focus on fields, references, collections, fields are going to be the fields that are specifically available in the standard report builder. You’re not going to need text mode to pull in anything on the fields table. If you want to get to that references tab, those are your one-to-one relationships. So that’s if you are on a task report and you want to pull in project information, because a task can only be associated with one project, where collections are your one-to-many relationship. That’s if you’re on, say, a project report, and you’re like, I want to pull in task information. Think of it as there’s many tasks within one project.

That’s kind of the basics of the API Explorer. I’m just going to kind of go through it really fast around fields versus references, just so that you guys have an understanding. So the field section is going to identify the fields or columns available for each object as defined in the database. So if you filter for projects, the field section will list all available fields that can be referenced in the view, filter, or grouping. So your field name is going to be on your left-hand side, that sort of bold lettering, and that’s how they’re going to be listed in the standard report builder. Their camel case is written in italics on the right side, and that’s how you reference fields when you’re using text mode. So that’s kind of a little bit from a navigation standpoint, and then your references section displays your links to other objects or other tables that the object is related to. So those are going to be, like I said, your one-to-one relationships. So if a project can only have a single owner, and when you click on maybe like the owner table, you notice you can get to other fields within that object. So it’s going to allow you to sort of cross object search, and then when you’re pulling in things on your references table, you’re going to reference, what’s it called? You’re going to use a colon to separate your field name. So if you wanted to look at project owner, there’d be project colon owner or owner colon name. So those are just kind of the way that you write your text mode statements before we even jump into kind of examples that you can just copy and paste. And so if you’re using a value expression, you’re going to put things in curly braces separated by a period. So it’s going to come with a lot of time and practice, but I promise if you just kind of spend enough time doing it, it’ll eventually just become second nature to you. And then your collections. This is something that we’re going to share some examples with today. Collections, like I said, are going to be your one to many relationships. So there are some limitations with collections in that you’re not going to be able to display the order in which they’re going to be sorted. You cannot apply conditional formatting, which is those column rules, that highlighting, the flags, the bold, whatever that is. And you actually can’t make anything a collection a clickable link. So there are some pros and cons of using collections. Yes, you can pull in information to a project report on specific tasks, but no, you’re not going to be able to actually manipulate that data in terms of clicking it.

You can kind of display how it’s, or choose how you want it displayed using expressions. But for the most part, collections are sort of a static, you sort of list of all of the objects that meet the criteria. So this up here in your top left-hand corner is, top right-hand corner is going to be your basis for how you write text mode collections. You’re looking at columns, like if you want to add something to your view. So you’re always going to have, what is it? One, two, three, four, seven line items. And then the things in red are going to be the ones that you’re going to need to replace based on what it is you’re looking for. So if you want to look at tasks on the project report, you would search for projects in your API Explorer, go to your collections tab, and then you would see tasks. And then it would be your object in your list method, and then your value field, if say you wanted to just pull in all tasks names, just for a simplicity standpoint, you would just put value field equals name. If you want to make it a little bit more complex, like, okay, if the task name contains design, only show me the task name. So there are different ways that you can use your value fields and value formats.

But again, it’s really just, you start with this sort of framework and then you manipulate it based on what it is you actually need. So these are the essential text mode components for column. You’re going to need either you’re just, you’re going to need a display name, which is the name of your column. You’re going to need a value field or a value expression, one or the other, not both. If you’re looking for like if statements or concat statements or date diffs, you’re always going to use an expression, or if you’re simply just referencing a field, you can always just use your value field and then your value format. Typically it’s always going to be an HTML, but there are different formats that you can use like SS percent at date. So that was kind of a really fast rundown of your text mode. And I promise that there’s actually a really good text mode introduction to text mode reporting and a workshop that one of our former consultants used to do. And I want to say someone actually put it in the chat here. Okay, great.

So if you are interested in learning like the ins and outs of text mode before you even just can learn to copy and paste, that’s a really great session for you to watch on demand. So the last text mode tips workshop that we did in April was sort of an introduction. So you’re going to see things that we talked about were like how to change ID to name, how to compare two fields in the filter, how to merge or share columns, additional report, renaming your report groupings, what else is in here? Removing hyperlinks. So those are all of the things that we covered in the text mode tips workshop in April. I will say that just based on some limitations from a security standpoint, we can only keep recordings for one year. So that recording will expire in April, but I did like it here.

And I will put that link in the chat as well. So if you are interested in watching that first session, and you can even download a copy of the slide deck, which has all of the examples. So that is a really fast rundown. I tried to make that as fast as possible. Does anyone have any questions before we get started? All right.

I will do my best to run through these as fast as possible, but to give you as much information as possible, because I’m also hoping to actually pull these up into an instance and show you how they work. So fingers crossed, it all goes as smooth as possible. But like I said, if you have any questions as I’m going, just raise your hand or just come off mute and say like, hey, could you pause for a second? And we will get you taken care of. So with that, first one, how to reference collections in a filter. So we talked about using collections in a column, like how to display certain fields within your view. If you want to filter your report for collections, you can do that through sort of this really simple, I would call it an expression, just the way that this is formatted. So it’s your collections object. So for this example, it’s tasks, and then which is the field that we’re actually looking for on the collection, on that object, and so name. So for this one, we’re saying, if I’m on a project report, show me all the projects that have a task within called kickoff.

And so this is your example. So you can kind of manipulate this based on whatever collection you need. So this is, like I said, it’s just your collection object, that it’s your colon, that it’s your sort of field, and then you just enter your value, and you’re always going to have that underscore mod as your second line, that’s your modifier. And there’s different modifiers you can choose, like not equal, contains, doesn’t contain. I always recommend trying to build things out in the standard builder first, just to understand what some of them look like. There’s probably even some documentation that give you an understanding of what all of the different modifiers are for a filter.

But I will just show you, oh, show you this one in action here. So you can see, if I am going to, I tried to label all of these so it’s very clean. So I am on a project report, and I’m just going to show you so that you know.

If you were to go to your filters tab and click add a filter rule, the first object in your line is going to be whatever object that you just created that report for. So I’m on a project report, and if I want to filter for projects that only have the word, or tasks that have the word kickoff in them, then I would just go to my filters.

Okay, of course that happened. See, I said this wasn’t, everything was going to go really smooth today.

Let me just, if it doesn’t work, then I will build a new one. Here we go. So we’re just going to paste in that text mode that I shared in the slide deck. So we’re just saying if the task, if there’s a task within called kickoff, display that project.

And then these are all, these are the three projects that I have.

And you can see here, here’s one called kickoff.

So this is just a really different way of filtering your reports. Keep in mind, if you are wanting to add additional filters to your project report, build those out in the standard report builder first. Like if you only want to pull in, you know, active projects, projects with a specific owner, put those in using your standard report builder, then switch to text mode and add your collections. So always recommend going that route first so you’re not having to build everything in text mode after the fact.

Any questions on this first one? Okay. Next one. Custom prompts. This is something that I feel like it took me a minute to learn, honestly. When I joined Workfront, I had no idea that you could even do this. And I know it probably looks like a lot happening on the screen, but I’ll kind of walk you through. So when you add prompts to your report, like say you only, you know, you can let people kind of pick and choose basically what they want their report to display without having sort of a hard coded filter in there. That’s what a prompt is. It’s basically a filter, but you’re allowing people to pick and choose their, you know, what they actually want in that filter. So when you create a custom prompt, so for example, the example I’m going to use is maybe like every month, every quarter, every year, you have to share, you know, how many, what did I use in here? How many requests have been completed? And so you can add, rather than building three different reports or changing the filter every time, you can just create three different custom prompts so that you run the same report, but you just choose a specific timeframe. And that way you don’t have to, like I said, build a lot of different reports and have them all named separately. So the trick with custom prompts is starting in your standard report builder. So for example, if we’re going to create one for say this month, what you would do is you would go into your standard report builder. If we’re looking for issues completed, we’re going to say, okay, we’re going to create a filter. We’re not necessarily going to hard code it in, but this is just our starting point. Then you can choose your value.

Actual completion date equals this month. That’s one of those dropdowns. And I’m going to walk you guys through this in just a second. And then what you do is you actually just add an ampersand after the line of code on all of the lines, except for the last one. And then you’re going to delete all the spaces so that all of your lines appear on one single line. And then you’re going to cut and paste, and we’re going to put that into a custom prompt. So I’m going to show you here really fast how this works.

I tried to label all of these so that’s…

Okay, custom prompt.

So you can see here, I built out three different prompts, this month, this quarter, and this year. So I’m just going to show you how we did this.

So first and foremost, custom prompts are going to be found in here.

I obviously added a custom prompt.

So if you didn’t have one, you choose add prompt.

I’m just going to click down and cancel so that I don’t lose everything that I just had in there.

So like I said, we’re going to create a custom prompt here just so I can show you.

If your screen does not look like mine, this actually, I have two different instances and one looks similar and one doesn’t. So it’s really just dependent on your release. This one’s on the fast release. I can tell you when she’s on it’s on fast release.

Yes, if yours looks like the old one, don’t worry. It’s okay, you’re still going to have the option for our custom prompt. So for example, like I said, if we wanted to create a custom prompt and we wanted to create three different values, again, start in your standard report builder. So for this one, if we wanted to have one value for actual completion date this month, you would kind of just choose your thing in your standard builder. Then you just switch to text mode and you add an and symbol on all lines except for the last one. And then you delete all the spaces so that everything appears on a single line. So then you have to remember, you have to cut and paste, not copy paste, because you actually don’t want a hard coded filter. So we’re going to cut.

And then when we go into our report prompts, I will just show you, let me just, I’ll just add another one just that you guys can walk me through. So this is the, when you were looking at field name, this is actually what’s going to be displayed as your prompt when you open your report. It’s going to say, okay, what do you actually want people to choose? So basically your dropdown title. And then these would be your dropdown item selections. So if you wanted to say this month, I’m just going to say example, just so that, and then this is where you would paste it in. So that’s where you can add your custom prompts and then you can create different values. So like I said, if you want to do this quarter, create it in your standard builder, paste it in here. And that way you don’t have to worry about manipulating your filters or building out different reports every single time.

Anyone have a question? Yeah, we got a question in the chat on this one. Is there a way, like an easy way to allow multiple choices on custom prompts? Or is it just like the one choice? It’s not going to be the same way. Like if you have a multi-select, you’re going to have to create different prompts, one for each value. Yeah, that’s what Monique said. Yes. Like if I was hoping there was an easier way, but yeah. So the answer is yes, but you just have to create multiple, all the different iterations of what you’d want to combine. So, okay. Yes. Yep. So it’s similar to a filter in that you can have specific selections, but also in the same or in a different way and people choose, okay, I only want to see a report with this custom field selection but then the next time I run a report, I want to look at it for option B. So I guess there’s plus and minuses of using custom prompts, but if depending on the way that you use them, they can be beneficial so you’re not having to recreate every time. So for the person who asked for like a date range, yeah, you’re going to have to create different date range as your different custom prompt options so that people can select. Like we created this month, this quarter, this year. If you want to create last week, now from the next two weeks, those would all be different options to pick from.

Any other questions? Not a question, but if you’re doing extended date ranges like this month and last month, you might want to use a traditional prompt and not a custom prompt because then you could have, like if it’s planned completion date, you could just have that as like a regular prompt and then you can put different dates in there.

Right.

I mean, and you can use, when you’re creating custom prompts, I would say the nice part is that you can add different filters in. So like I added actual completion date is, I think what I do last month, you can add multiple values in here and I’m just going to choose something.

And then when you go into your text mode, you would just, again, add your ampersand. So you can add multiple sort of filter criteria, but it’s really, yeah, I guess it really just depends.

All right.

Next one here.

Using custom fields to count characters. I’m sure this is an idea that’s on the idea exchange or that people are like, why don’t we even have this as an option? So I’ll kind of give you a way to kind of manipulate this using custom fields. And I know that we just released, you know, the option to have a field counter on your custom forums and paragraph text fields have even the character count on a paragraph form. But if you want to kind of look at it from a perspective of reporting, like, okay, yes, people have to fill a requirement of maybe a hundred characters or less, but if I need to have that in a view and I need to actually identify, okay, these meet the criteria, these don’t, without having to go into each field and make sure that people actually, you know, followed your instructions, this is kind of a unique way of doing it. And so what you can do is you can create, like I said, either a single line text or a paragraph. Paragraph is actually going to give people that character count as they’re typing. You just have to basically trust that they’re not going to go over the limit that you specified, but they still can. And so, like I said, create sort of a, maybe a single line text builder or paragraph text field, and then you’re going to create a second calculated custom field that’s going to reference your original custom field, but you’re going to use the expression len, which is length.

And what we want to do is just count the number of characters in this custom field by just using len and then insert your custom field using curly braces. And then what you can do is once you have that value in your calculated field, number one thing is make sure you set it as a number format.

That’s going to be huge when it comes to reporting. So set it as a number format. And then when you go and add that column to your report, you can actually flag it or add conditional formatting to say like, okay, did this person actually follow the instructions? And you can add instructions to your custom field. You can, oh, I clearly spelled characters wrong in my instructions, but I’ll kind of just show you how you can do something like this. Like I said, it’s kind of a workaround for setting requirements on custom forums, but if you are needing to flag it for any sort of creative or design work, this is an interesting way of doing it. And so I’ll show you here.

So for this example, I wanted every, all of my, you know, social media caption to be a hundred characters or less. So you can see here that in my report, I added my custom field, then my calculated custom field, and then I flagged the ones that were over that limit. And so if I just go into my custom forums here, and hopefully I remember which, or did I want to say I put on this one? So you can see here, like this person could even see the amount of characters. They can choose up to 2000 characters.

We’re going to set it as a text field. We’re going to make it required. We’re going to add those instructions so that when people hover over it, it’s going to say, please enter no more than a hundred characters, but despite everyone, you know, maybe following your instructions, then if you add a secondary calculated expression, like I said, it’s just using lane and then your expression, which is exactly the name of your custom field. And make sure you’re setting this to a format number. That’s kind of how you can pull it into your report. Like I just showed up, okay, we’re going to have people enter those values in. And then if you’re not sure how to apply conditional formatting, what you can do is you just open your calculated custom field. You’re going to go to your advanced options.

And I will just show you here. You would just add a rule. So we’re going to say if the calculated expression, a hundred characters or less is, you know, greater than 100, we’re going to give it, you know, a red background, and then just click save. And that way when you, oh, lovely.

Did I not save it? Okay.

We’ll try this again.

100 characters or less is greater than 100.

Give it a red background.

Okay. Lovely.

Like I said, hoping everything went smooth today. It clearly did not. That might be something I have to bring up to customer support at the end of this call. So if you are running into issues, I will take care of this, but know that this should be working as expected.

And you should see highlights over this value and this value here. So like I showed you on the first time, it should be there, but if it doesn’t, then that’s okay. I will address this and we’ll get that taken care of. So I should have maybe not redid my rule, but that’s what happens on live demos.

All right. Any questions on this one, other than the fact that it’s not working as intended? I think everything was answered in the chat, but if anyone needs to come off mute, Monique, thank you for that text mode. I’ve copied it.

Yeah. Also, you know what I say, y’all, when they start doing changes and the releases, watch out for bugs.

Any other questions that anybody wants to ask before we go to the next tip? Okay. All right, great. We have 30 minutes to get through seven more.

So this one, we’re going to be looking at collections. So this one, I feel like is one of those that a lot of people will take advantage of, but you can kind of customize this based on what it is you actually want to pull into your report. So if you have a project report and you want to, you know, quickly see which tasks are, I’m going to say ready to be worked on, even though that’s not technically the verbiage, they can start. Ready refers to like agile functionality, can start refers to like predecessor relationships. But if you really want to know which tasks are ready to be worked on based on predecessors being complete, you can pull that information into your project report and pull in, you know, maybe you want to pull in the task name, maybe you want to pull it, who’s it’s assigned to. You want to pull in the planned completion date, whatever it might be, you can pull that in using text mode collections. And so, like I mentioned before, there’s sort of that specific template that you’re always going to use for your collections. It’ll always be your seven lines. So it’d be your display name, your list delimiter, your list method, your type, your value field or value expression, and then your value format. So hopefully that was six or seven.

And so the only thing you just kind of have to keep in mind is like, you know, when you’re pulling in collection information into your report, then some of these limitations are going to be impacted. So if you’re pulling in task information to your project report, the only fields are available on your task object are going to be assigned to versus assignments. So you’re not going to be able to see all assignments. You’re only going to be able to see the primary assignee. So depending on what it is you want to pull into your report, just know that there might be some only limitations in terms of what fields are available to you. So back to our report builder.

And we’ll just… So for this one, I want to pull in the next task, who it’s assigned to and the due date. So for this one, we’re going to add a project report. If we’re looking at all of our projects, this is going to be our text mode that we’re going to add in there. So like I said, your display name is going to be the name of your column. Your list delimiter is how it should be kind of outlined in your view. So when you add a caret with a B, it’s just like different, what I call a paragraph, just everything on a different line. This list method right here, so this is what we’re going to place our object with. So when we’re looking at the API Explorer and we’re searching for projects, this is the collection object is going to be tasks. Our value format, like I said, for the most part is always going to be HTML. And then you can either choose your value format or your value expression. For this one, I’m going to pull in a value expression because I want to specifically sort of filter my task list for the information that I’m looking for. And so for this one, I’m saying, if the task can start equals true, which means, okay, the predecessors have been completed.

And so that’s this first part here. If the task can start equals true and the status is not equal to complete and the number of children is zero, which is child tasks.

We want it, so that’s sort of our filter expression. And then this second piece is, okay, how do you actually want the information to be displayed? So we want to concat, which is how do we combine, we’re going to combine the task name with the assigned to and the do one using these sort of three fields here. So when I hit done, you can see here that this next task that’s ready to be worked on is going to be this kickoff meeting and ad marketing com tasks. It’s going to be assigned to Lily and it’s going to be due on March 9th. So when I open this project here, you can see you first have to have predecessors associated. So you can see here that this one is ready to be worked on.

And so that’s why it’s going to display in our report right here.

So if you have multiple tasks that are ready to be worked on, they will all display and they’ll all give you the assigned to name and the plan completion date.

But that’s kind of how you can pull this information into your project report.

Any questions? I’m trying to catch up in the chat here. Yes.

Is there a way, sorry, I was too busy finding the Care Bears, Jeff, you’re welcome. Is there a way to include tasks in the task report assigned to both an individual user and a job role? So if you’re looking at a task report that you’re not necessarily going to need any sort of text mode, if you’re looking for just task assignments. And so if you go to your report area, so this is if you’re on a task report, like I said, so there’s sort of three different, if you can assign, you can assign a task to an individual, a job role or a team. So if it’s assigned to a user, you would look for, if you’re simply just looking for like blank assignments, I mean, assigned to ID will only pull in the primary, assignments, users is going to pull in plural.

So you can kind of look and say, okay, if the task, if it’s not assigned to a user, it’s not assigned to a job role and team ID is blank. If you were to run this report, this will pull in tasks that basically have no assignments in general, like no, there’s no user, there’s no job role or no team assigned. So that’s how I would look for sort of those blank tasks in your projects that are requiring some type of assignment to be put on.

And Denise is asking, and I may have missed it cause I was in the chat. Did you show how to exclude the parent task and display can start child tasks? Let me read through that again, hold on. Yeah, sorry.

Yes, so, okay, yes, so here’s the blank column. So when you’re talking about child tasks, I used number of children in my value expression, I use number of children equals zero so that this part right here is where we’re filtering specifically for child tasks where parent tasks you would say, you know, greater than zero All right, I’m gonna keep moving on cause we still have a lot to cover. I was gonna say, do you wanna, if we don’t get to 10, the tips are in the deck. I think I can get there. Okay, I’m gonna stop talking.

I think I can do it. So this one’s very similar. It really all depends on the way that you guys structure your project. So if maybe you wanna look for active tasks, but maybe you wanna look for active milestones. So if you’re using milestones on your project, you can sort of filter for that same criteria in your project report to only see, okay, what’s the current milestone that this project is in? So very similar to one that we just looked at with our collections, we’re simply looking for tasks that have a milestone associated that are incomplete and have, what is this? So this is if the milestone ID is not blank and if the actual completion date is blank and if can start is true. So just keep in mind that if you are using any of these collections that I’m going to share with you, they are all taking into consideration predecessor relationships. So that can start is really based on, do you have predecessors associated? And so for this one, it looks like I said, very similar to the one that we just looked at. And that’s just because of the way we structured our project. So we have three projects here. You can see these are the milestone phases that our project is in based on the, it not being complete, it can start equals true and it has a milestone path associated. So for example, we open this first one here, we can see that our first, well, what was it? Where are we? Project initiation planning. Well, this was our first milestone based on what we have associated with our project. So if you aren’t sure how to add milestones, you can always go into your project and add a milestone in here. Oh gosh.

So this is the standard milestone path that I associated and I have it associated with all of my parent tasks within my project. So very similar to active tasks, but this one we’re just looking for milestones.

Okay, this is one that I came across in an internal section and I thought it’d be good to share it. So if you are attaching multiple project templates and multiple custom forms to your project, odds are when you run a report and you want to look at all of the templates associated, you’re only able to find template name.

And same thing with custom forms. So they’re going to be able to find what they called category in the API is going to be your primary custom form, your primary template. And so if you want to pull in all of the templates, all of the custom forms associated with your object, these are the two different text modes that you’re going to be using within your report. So there is one limitation when it comes to the templates in that if you are attaching a template that’s blank, like it has no tasks, it’s not going to appear as a result. Like if you’re using it for a request queue or just for specific settings, and what happens is that this will only pull in templates where you attach a template to a project and the first task within that template is to put in that project. So I haven’t quite figured out a way to look for all templates, but if I do, I’ll happy to share that back with everyone. But these are going to be our two different collections that we are going to look at or add to our view in our project report that we can actually understand, okay, what does this project have associated with it? So I added sort of four columns here. The first one is going to be our main template, and that’s just template name. Then this is our collection column that we had. This one is going to be that sort of one from your standard report builder, which is category name, and I’ll kind of just show you here.

So for this one, you can see here, it’s just template name. I just renamed it using this create column label, just so that I could specify. But like I said, this is going to be our text mode that we’re going to add in. And what we’re just saying is if the template task, task number one, if there is one, then just display the template name. So very similar to our custom form. So we’re just pulling in object categories. Categories in the API translates to custom form. So if you’re like, I only see the word category, that’s because that’s what we call custom forms. So for this one, we’re just calling it category name. So basically just pull in all of the custom forms associated with object and just give me that name.

Anyone have any questions on this one? I think we’re good. Okay.

We’re all egging you on. Okay, we’ll close. Okay, then the other thing that I wanted to highlight with project templates is I think in the first workshop, we talked about custom form cleanup, custom field cleanup. This is a way for you to audit and clean up your project templates. So this is a filter and I’m going to say this loud and clear. I did not write this text mode. I came across this. I am no expert when it comes to exist statements. The only thing that I can probably manipulate is the date range.

So this one, like I said, is going to be look, you can filter your template report. So this is going to be a template report that you’re going to add this filter to, to show all project templates that haven’t been used to create a project in the past year. And so this third line here, this exists a entry date today minus one year and entry date range underscore today, that’s going to be your date range. So if you’re like, hey, I want to change this to two years or six months, those are going to be the lines that you’re going to want to manipulate.

So for this one, project template cleanup, let me find that.

Like I said, for this one, we’re using a template report.

Not a project report, a template report.

So when we go into report actions edit, you’re going to add it to your filters area.

And this is what’s going to show you templates that haven’t been used to create a project in the past year.

Any questions on this one? This one’s more just from an audit cleanup perspective. There’s not really any sort of trick to this one other than copy paste.

I don’t think we have questions on this one, unless y’all can come off mute. Okay, good, let’s go.

All right, this is the one that I actually pulled from a comment on the last text mode workshop. And so Mark, I don’t know if you’re on this call, but I’m going to reshare some text mode that you shared that I manipulated just a little.

And so we talked about merging and sharing columns in the first workshop, like how to combine username and job role into a column. This is a really awesome text mode that was shared on the Experiancy community that I wanted to pull and make sure that everyone has seen and can use. And so what it does is it pulls in the user’s title, manager, primary job role, access level, what else? Into a single column, into your user view.

It just kind of gives you this really quick summary in one single column without having you add 27 different columns to your view.

I added all job roles, all groups, all teams to the screenshot just so that you guys have an idea. And I put the text mode in so that you guys have access to that. Those are all just your collections.

I put this in highlighted here the text mode is so long that there isn’t a way for me to share it. So I’m going to create a follow-up post on the Experiancy community with a slot, with a link to the slide deck, a copy over the recording. And then I will paste the text mode in a code block as a comment, just so that you guys can easily copy and paste and not have to worry about any sort of formatting. And so what the trick is, is that the way that the text mode is formatted, it’s formatted to be your third column. So you do need to make sure that when you are building your user report, that you only keep two columns in your report, like keep the photo and the name. Those are the two ones that appear in your user report first and second, and then delete everything else. And then when you add your third column and paste in the text mode, then it’ll all format. Then you can add your additional columns as needed. And so I will just show you here how it works.

And I’m just going to copy this text mode, just so that hopefully this works as expected.

Okay, fingers crossed everyone. Okay.

Like I said, delete all of your columns. I’m on a user report. Delete all columns, except for the first two. We’re going to add a column, switch to text mode, and then paste in, and hopefully this all works as expected.

Great. Okay, there’s our user information. So like I said, it has to be your third column. If you want to add in the other pieces of information, like all job roles, all groups, all teams, these are the things that you can paste in.

Like I said, you can always add them as your fourth column after the fact. Just make sure that whatever you use is going to be that third column. So I’m just going to save this, and there we go.

So this is how you can kind of pull this information into your report, all into a single column, and you don’t have to worry about scrolling left and right to view a lot of user information.

Any questions? I know, Cynthia, this is our test instance. Cynthia is president and CEO. Always a professional. I don’t see anything in the chat, but if you guys want to come off mute, we got what, nine and 10 left to do, right? I have just nine and 10, and then I’m hopeful that we’ll have like five minutes.

Okay, another one that I pulled from either a community or an internal Slack channel was, okay, how to filter out done with my part tasks. So for some people, they like using task reports, and that’s perfectly fine. You can filter out your assignment reports where you can specifically filter that out using the standard report builder. If you like using your task reports, but you simply just want to know, okay, what are the tasks that I still need to work on that are incomplete that I’m assigned to, basically, you can add this filter to your task report, and it’ll filter out the tasks that you’ve clicked done with my part. So if there are multiple assignees on it, and you have done your part, you’ve clicked that button, you can filter those out using this expression here in our filters. So kind of just show you, like I said, we’ll just really fast show you what this looks like in a task report.

Done with my part.

So for example, here’s our filters task report. This is the filter that we are going to, I’m just going to run this so that you guys can actually see. If I were to just run this for my tasks, and I don’t filter anything out, hopefully this will go fast.

Okay, so let’s look at this one here, for example, like re-pull QBR data. I’m assigned to it, Nicole, I’ve already clicked done this test workers. So I don’t even want this to show in my task report. So there’s not going to be anything in the standard builder that you can use to filter those out. So this is going to be what that’s going to look like. And I chose, so now you can see here, re-pull QBR data does not exist. And I even, I’m just looking for assignments that were the done, which is this DN is all set. So that is a trick to a task report, if that’s what your users like to work off of. One more tip, and then I will promise to open it up for questions. This one is something that I came across on the community that I wanted to just expand on. And so a lot of times people are asking about how to create custom job IDs, job reference numbers, whatever you want to call them. You can use calculated custom fields. And I know that’s not necessarily text mode, but it’s a very similar, the way that you write calculated custom fields and learn the way that you write text mode expressions. And so I wanted to just keep this, kind of give you different examples. So for example, if you want to pull in, the name of your client, like these, some of these are going to be custom fields that I have in my own instance. So name of client is a custom field. Reference number is a standard field in existing, all of Workfront and then two digit year, maybe I’m looking at the entry date or the plan completion date. So you can create different custom job IDs, using calculated expressions based on custom fields that you have associated with that object, native fields that are available in the standard builder. And so I’m just going to show you what that could even look like in a report so that you can just kind of understand. And then I’ll kind of give you some tips.

So for this one, like I just kind of pulled in a lot of different information here. So like I have a custom field called brand, region, business unit tactic, name of client. I even have the group in here. I have the entry date or plan completion date. And so you can see here, like some of these, this one’s probably the first four letters of the group. So we’re using that same expression or what did we use before? Oh, we use link before.

So you can kind of pull in a certain number of characters within a string. So maybe you only want the last two dates of your year or the first four letters of your groups. You can create different sort of job numbers for your projects using different fields.

And that way you can sort of have an easy way of referencing them later down the line based on client, brand, region, whatever that might be. So this is a lot of me talking and I swear that’s really all I have for you guys today. I’m gonna really fast run through and then I’ll open it up for five minutes of Q&A. I have some resources around text mode if you are interested in learning more. If you would like to participate in an end of year customer interview, Cynthia and I are looking for about 10 more volunteers. We would love to just interview you to understand what do you like about our events? What do you wanna see added to our events in 2025? Are there different topics that you’d like to see added? Are there different formatting styles, presentation styles? Maybe you want more people on product to be there. So if you are interested in doing an interview, please send us an email at csatscaleatadobe.com and we’ll schedule a 30 minute informal session with you.

The community forum, like I said, I pulled two of these examples from the community forum. So I know that there’s a lot in there and oftentimes you have to sift through it, but take advantage of your peers. So much great experience using text mode and reporting that they can help you. And I’m even working with a customer right now on a potentially like a text mode Thursday tip that maybe we’ll just share out every week. And so just make sure that you’re using that. Cynthia just put a link to the survey in the chat. So if you do wanna share feedback on today’s session, please do so, it’s totally anonymous. I would love to hear how today’s session went. I know it was a bit rushed. There’s a new perspectives, which is a guide out there that talks about, translating your work front why into measurable results. That’s a really great new guide if you haven’t taken a look at it. More events are happening later this month and into December, check out the events page.

And then last but not least Adobe summit, you can save $300 in a full conference pass. I don’t know that Cynthia and I will be there this year, we’re working on it, but if you’re able to register before that December 13th to get a discount, I highly encourage you to do so. And with that, I have four minutes. Does anyone have any questions, comments, anything that you would like to ask while I have you? So this is Sue. And I had asked the question.

I asked the question in the chat too. Is it character limit, does that work with rich text format? It’s a field that has rich text. I think you broke up a little, so can you just repeat that? Sure. So I have description of issue is a rich text field. That’s what it uses not HTML. And I’m trying to limit the characters that show on my report, but I can’t seem to get it to work when I use the length to fill them. I have a gut feeling that you cannot use rich text fields in a calculated expression.

But I will double check on that too. My gut says, no, you’re not gonna be able to pull rich text into a calculated field, because if you’re not able to do it right now, then I’m gonna say no, but I will always just get some clarification on that honestly. And I can probably even just try right now. So like you’re talking about like, I’m not a descriptive text.

Like text with formatting? It’s actually just, it’s just the description of the issue is what I’m trying to do. So I’m trying to run an issue report. It has the description of the issue and that’s a rich text field, but able to get it to show in the report limited.

I don’t think we are, but I just thought I’d ask. Yeah, I don’t, my gut says, no, you’re not gonna be able to pull anything into a calculated custom field or into text mode. So it’s sort of, I feel like it’s like type ahead fields where they’re helpful, but when it comes to reporting, they’re limited. And so I’m always hesitant to use those type of fields transparently.

I haven’t used it, so that’s my problem. I’m trying to figure out how to fix it now. Thank you, I appreciate it. You bet.

All right.

Any other questions? I don’t see any, just lots of good comments.

So everything that we shared in the chat and then Nicole’s got a bunch of stuff in the slides, y’all will get them today. So you’re gonna get all the links.

Yes, for sure. Keep an eye out for a follow-up email. I’m gonna do my very best to get it out within the next like two hours because I’ve got a jam-packed afternoon. So keep an eye out for that. If you have any follow-up questions, reply back to the email. I’m gonna post on the community forum as well with a link. So if you guys have other ideas, examples to share, feel free to do so. Otherwise, have a great rest of your Tuesday, guys. Hopefully we’ll see you at end of your reporting tomorrow or some of our sessions in December. Otherwise, have a great week and thanks so much for coming.

Thank you.