Confessions of a Workfront Team of One

Transcript

Welcome to Confessions of a Workfront Team of One. I’m part of the Workfront Customer Success Team.

Let me, just a reminder, we are recording the session. So just as a note to you, you will get an email with a copy of the slides and this recording probably later today. So keep an eye out for that.

Let me show you real quick, this is our team. If you are new, I did notice there were quite a few names on the registration list. So I just wanted to take a quick moment. My name is Leslie Spear. I’m based in Denver. My two teammates are also on today. Cynthia, she’s based in Fort Worth, and Nicole, who’s based in Salt Lake City. There’s a bunch of ways to connect with us in the community, LinkedIn. We have our inbox, csatscaleatadobe.com. We’re happy to point you towards resources, but we are here for you. So just wanted to give a quick intro there.

Because we have so many new folks that I noticed in the registration, I did want to mention we did a survey in the fall. So you might have filled it out, but if you did not, because maybe you’re new, we would love to learn more about you and how we can support you on your work front journey. So I’m going to drop a link, I think, to that in the chat. Would love for you to fill that out. I’ll also include that in the follow-up email because I know you want to pay attention to Kat’s awesome story, but I just wanted to mention it real quick. Feel free to open that link, save it for later, or look for it in the follow-up email, but we would love to learn more about you and how we can have programming to help you out. So with that, I’m going to hand it over to Kat to share her wonderful expertise. Her and I have been talking for the last couple months about all the cool stuff that she does. And I know you guys are really excited to hear how she does it all. So Kat, I’m going to stop sharing. You can share your screen.

I think we’re going to have some, I see Kim mentioned she’s another team of one. So I think we’re going to have quite a few of those today. So I’m excited.

You’ve got your tribe here, Kat.

Okay, so can everyone see that? Yeah.

Great. Thanks everyone for being here. I’m going to warn you right ahead. I did a script because otherwise I’m not going to be able to remember anything I’m supposed to tell you. So if it sounds like I’m reading something, I am.

I’m excited to share what it really looks like to run Workfront when you’re a team of one. The good, the chaotic and the unexpectedly creative parts of building systems that scale.

And yes, I do want to say, I know my operation is small potatoes compared to many of you. Some of you are running Workfront like it’s a superstore. I’m about to show you a little bit more of a mom and pop operation, but constraints force creativity. And that’s where Workfront becomes powerful.

Today, we’re going to look at how a single administrator can support an entire department and its every project and still build systems that go far beyond traditional project management. My goal is to show you what’s possible when you treat Workfront, not just as a project tool, but as an operational engine. I’ll walk you through the real examples of financial requests, strategic planning and institutional reporting, room rentals and payment tracking, all built inside Workfront and all running at scale for ourselves.

By the end of this session, my hope is that you walk away with practical strategies, configuration ideas, and a few, I didn’t know Workfront could do that moments that you can take back to your own teams no matter how big or small. So let’s dive in.

Before we get into Workfront magic, let me tell you a little bit about myself and how I ended up where I am. I’ve been married for 28 years to my husband, Mike. He’s also my fellow Walt Disney World lover. We have two amazing sons, Justin and Evan, and a puppy named Dalton, who’s the true CEO of our household. I’ve been at Penn State for over 22 years and I spent the last three with the Office of Entrepreneurship and Commercialization. Before that, I worked in the Office of Annual Giving, which is actually where my Workfront journey began.

Back in 2016, when Penn State development onboarded Workfront, I was volun-told into the role of project manager, not because I had formal training, but because I was the most organized and extremely task-oriented person in the room.

Everything I know about project management, system design, and operational workflows has been learned on the job, one challenge at a time. Outside of work, I have a completely different life. I choreographed musicals for high schools and theater companies, about 40 productions so far. Every now and again, you can find me performing on stage as well. So that’s the human behind Workfront.

Now, let me give you a quick sense of the world I support. The Office of Entrepreneurship and Commercialization, or the OEC, is part of Invent Penn State, a university statewide initiative to drive development, innovation, and student entrepreneurship.

Did somebody need to say something? Okay. Our office supports programs like Startup Week, Global Entrepreneurship Week, the Startup Leadership Network, Orange Ode Labs, Happy Valley Launch Box, the Small Business Development Center, Veterans Business Outreach Center, the Angels, and the entire Innovation Hub that work across the Commonwealth.

In short, they supply a lot of people doing a lot of high impact work. And as the central project manager, I’m responsible for helping all of those programs stay aligned, organized, and moving forward. That’s the boring backdrop for what it means to be a team of one, and why Workfront has become such a powerful engine for us.

Now, let’s talk honestly about the challenge of being a team of one in this environment. I support over 50 people across multiple programs, all with different priorities, different expectations, and very different levels of comfort with structured project management.

While many of our systems run beautifully in Workfront, there have also been a lot of resistance over the years, resistance to adopting new workflows, resistance to updating tasks, and resistance to shifting away from the informal ad hoc processes people are used to. On top of that, our budget constraints have forced us to significantly reduce the number of paid Workfront licenses. That means many staff members who should be updating their own tasks simply can’t. And because Workfront is still our system of record, those updates still have to happen. So that responsibility falls to me. Every task, every update, every status change. When you add it all up, that’s roughly 2,400 additional task updates every year that I’m responsible for, simply because people doing the work don’t have access to the system. So the challenge isn’t just managing everybody’s projects, it’s doing that while absorbing the workload of dozens of non-licensed users, maintaining system integrity, and navigating ongoing resistance to process adoption. All while keeping the entire operational ecosystem running smoothly. This is the reality that pushed me to rethink Workfront, not as a traditional project management tool, but as a multi-purpose operational engine. Because when you’re alone in the universe, the system has to scale, even when the staffing and licensing change.

The evolution of Workfront in our department didn’t come from a sudden realization, it came from necessity and expectation. I was consistently asked to think outside the box, to solve problems creatively, and to show that Workfront paired with my ability to design systems could be relevant for almost any situation we faced. When you’re flying solo, supporting over 50 people with limited license, resistance to structure workflows, and a constant stream of operational needs, the system can’t just be a project tracker. It has to be flexible, scalable, and capable of handling whatever the department throws at it. In our world, operational needs show up in lots of different ways. Our centralized financial request system and Workfront supports departmental needs across the OEC, even though not every individual program uses Workfront directly. Our room reservation and payment tracking workflows are used by our facilities manager, to manage the meeting and conference spaces in our building. And wherever it makes sense, whether for intake tracking or reporting, I was asked to find a way to make Workfront fit the need. So instead of treating Workfront as a traditional project management tool, I started treating it as a platform, a workflow engine, a data collection system, a financial tracking tool, and even a reservation and scheduling system. What I want to show you, that’s our three of the most impactful ways we’ve transformed Workfront into a multi-purpose operational powerhouse. Financial requests, strategic planning, data collection, and near to near reporting, room rentals and payment tracking. These aren’t hypothetical examples, these are real systems we use every day to keep our department running. And each one was built with this mindset. It has to be sustainable and designed to reduce manual effort, not add to it. So let’s take a look at what Workfront can really do when you’re asked to make it work for everything.

The first major case, major use case, I want to walk you through is our centralized financial request system. This is one of the most impactful ways we’ve used Workfront to streamline operations across the OEC.

Even though not every program uses Workfront directly, all of our department financial needs flow through this system.

We start with the custom form. This is where all the required information is captured upfront, the funding source, the amount, the justification, the program it supports and any supporting documentation. Because the form is structured and required, we don’t lose time chasing missing details or clarifying information.

Once the request is submitted, it comes directly to me. From there, I add the task to the correct project. I build out project structure based on the type of financial request and the specific team budget the request will either draw from or credit. Every request becomes a task and I gave the task the same name as the request or issue. So everything stays aligned and easy to track. I’ve also created a dedicated document folder for each task. That’s where we store every receipt, invoice, contract, purchase order, anything tied to that request. Everything lives in one place and nothing gets lost in email or buried in shared drives.

Once the task is set up, I assign it to one of the people in our office who handle processing finances with the university’s central financial assistant. From that point forward, all details, questions, clarifications and corrections are tracked in the tasks updates. That means we have complete transparency. Every step, every decision, every adjustment is documented automatically. We also built the exact same workflow for contract approvals and signatures since the same team is responsible for that process. Because the structure and requirements were so similar, I merged both systems into this single program. Now financial requests and contract approvals follow the same clean, consistent, fully documented path.

And then there’s the dashboard. This is used every single day by our administrative director. She relies on it to see the status of expenses, what’s pending, what’s complete and what documentation has been uploaded.

During expense audit, this dashboard has been invaluable. The ability to search by request or date, funding source or even keywords allows us to instantly pull up the exact requests and all associated documents. This workflow has transformed a previously scattered manual process into a clean, centralized, fully documented system, one that supports our department’s needs and remains sustainable for a team of one. Moving on.

The second use case involves two major institutional systems, internal strategic planning and external Princeton review reporting. They’re separate processes, but operationally, they rely on the same backbone, structure, accuracy and continuity.

Every year, our program completes reviews of the previous fiscal year, set new goals, build strategic plans to achieve those goals and presents them to the leadership. Workfront manages the entire life cycle, templates, meetings, uploads, briefing and archiving. And because everything is stored year to year, we never lose institutional memory.

This is a multi-month, multi-team workflow. Workfront handles meeting coordination, documentation uploads, version control, presentation creation and final archiving. And I build next year’s projects, so the cycle never breaks.

Now let’s talk about the Princeton Review Survey. One of the most complex and high stakes reporting processes we run each year. The Princeton Review publishes a national ranking of undergraduate entrepreneurship programs. It’s one of the few rankings that evaluates not just academic offerings, but the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem. It focuses faculty, student engagement, startup activity, competitions, funding, mentorship and community support. For an office like Penn State’s OEC, this survey matters. It shapes national perception, influences student recruitment, affects donor and partner interest and determines how our entrepreneurship ecosystem is represented on a national stage. Because Penn State is a multi-campus system with dozens of entrepreneurship touched funds, the survey becomes a massive coordination effort. It touches almost every part of the ecosystem.

Academic units, launch boxes, commercialization teams, alumni entrepreneurs, competition, scholarships and faculty publications. Collecting and validating all of that requires an eight month cycle and multiple contacts across the university. Workfront is the only way to keep that level of complexity organized, consistent and repeatable year after year.

The process runs in four phases, contact verification, data collection, survey completion and review and submission. Every year, an intern and I, pair the new survey to previous years, fill in reporting fields, integrate new data, dedupe startup lists and complete narrative sections. Then leadership reviews it, we submit it and I archive everything for the next cycle.

These two systems look very different on the surface. One is internal strategic planning, the other is external national reporting, but operationally, they rely on the exact same backbone. And this is where Workfront becomes essential. We rely heavily on custom forms and structured reporting to track the data that we collect each year, compare it to previous submissions and identify trends or gaps.

The same tools are what make our strategic planning process work. Previous fiscal year reviews, fiscal year goals and program metrics all live in custom forms. And I know that you’ve all heard me or seen me comment on how much I love custom forms. These custom forms feed into dashboards and yearly reporting. In both systems, custom forms give us consistency and Workfront reporting gives us continuity. That’s how we maintain accuracy, tell a clear story of progress and avoid starting from scratch every year. Workfront is the only way to keep this level of complexity organized, consistent and reputable.

Custom forms capture everything we need for each section of the Princeton Review Survey.

Introductions, academics and requirements, students and faculty, activities outside the classroom and competitions, alumni entrepreneurship ventures, school narrative and submitter information.

Strategic planning templates give us consistent structure across programs and across years. And the task groups walk everyone through this the repeatable sequence, previous fiscal year review, goal setting, fiscal year planning and the present solution.

The real magic is the year to year continuity. By cloning the project and reusing the same forms and structure, we never start from scratch. Workfront becomes a system of record, the place where institutional memory lives.

Here’s the reality. Without Workfront, both strategic planning and Princeton Review would collapse into a mess of spreadsheets, emails and guesswork. There would be no consistent way to collect data, no way to compare year to year progress and no institutional memory. Every cycle would start from scratch and that simply isn’t sustainable. Workfront gives us structure, governance and continuity. It turns two extremely complex systems into repeatable and reliable processes and it protects the organization from risk, turnover and data loss.

The third major use case I want to highlight is our room reservation and peanut tracking system. This workflow supports our events and facilities manager who manages all meetings and conferences spaces, conference spaces in our building. And because those spaces are rented by student boards, other departments across the university and business and organizations in the community, accuracy and documentation are pro-climbing.

Here’s a summary of the process. Room reservations move into Workfront once confirmed. Each reservation becomes a structured parent task with the standardized sub task, a dedicated document folder and detailed custom form and a detailed custom form capturing all operation needs. Projects are organized by room and month, cancellations are tracked separately and a color coded calendar and on-demand reports support scheduling, payment tracking and revenue analysis. This system turns a five volume heavy detail workflow into a consistent searchable fully documented process that supports the events and facilities teams, operational and financial needs.

Once an event is confirmed, the events and facilities manager submits the reservation into Workfront and that’s where the internal workflow begins.

Each reservation becomes a parent task inside a project. Projects are organized by room and by month, which keeps five volume scheduling clean and easy to navigate. Under each parent task, a set of templatized tasks must be completed for every reservation to reduce workload on the events and facilities manager. All of these sub-tacts scroll up under a single parent task due two Fridays before the event. So she only needs to verify completion months.

Every reservation has its own document folder where contracts, insurance certificates, catering details, run of show documents and other event specific materials are stored. Nothing gets lost and everything is accessible from the tablet while the team is walking the building or prepping rooms. Operational details are captured directly in the custom form. This gives the events and facilities team a complete centralized view of every reservation, structured, searchable and consistent. If an event is canceled, the entire parent task is moved into a canceled reservations project also organized by room and month. This makes it easy to track patterns, lost hours and revenue impact.

To support planning and scheduling, I built a color coded reservation calendar coded by both room and payment status. This gives the entire team an out of plans view of what’s happening in the building, what’s confirmed, once pending payment and where conflicts or opportunities may exist.

Because the events and facilities team is self-supporting, income tracking is essential. I created on demand reports showing total hours reserved or canceled for each room as well as revenue. These reports help the events and facilities manager monitor trends, forecasting from and making informed decisions about staffing and resource allocation.

This system transforms a complex high volume operational process into a clean organized fully documented workload. One that supports financial sustainability and gives the team complete visibility to ensure their space usage.

Across all of our work front operations, three elements show up again and again, custom forms, dashboard and reporting and templates. These are the backbone of how I keep our work structured, consistent and sustainable. Everything starts with a custom form, whether it’s a financial request, a contract signature, a vendor registration, a training request, a facilities need or any of the other categories we support, the form captures the information we need right from the start. I rely heavily on logic in the form builder so people only see the fields that apply to their request. That keeps the forms clean, reduces confusion and dramatically cuts down on errors or missing information. From there reports and dashboards tell the story. They give leadership and staff real time visibility into what’s active, what’s pending, what’s complete and what needs attention. Dashboards and reports eliminate the need for status tracing and make it easy to see patterns, bottlenecks and progress across all of our programs. They become essential tools for decision making and workload management. And then there are the templates.

This keeps everything consistent.

Templates allow us to standardize repeatable work while still giving us the flexibility to customize when needed. One of the best examples of how we evolved our user templates is the event management system our events manager and I built together.

We created modular parent and child task groups that covered 21 different categories of work that might be needed for an event. Instead of building a full project from scratch or using uploaded template, the events manager simply tells me which categories these needs for a specific event. I build a project using only those task groups, nothing extra, nothing irrelevant, nothing that needs to be skipped or marked complete even though it wasn’t actually done.

This approach gives us clean customized projects every time without wasted effort. And it’s the same philosophy I use across all for front work select the right information, visualize it clearly and build structures that are flexible, scalable and sustainable.

Together custom forms, reports and dashboards and templates allow us to manage a huge volume of diverse work with clarity and consistency. And they make it possible for one person to support an entire department.

Before I end, I just wanted to let you know about some of the lessons I’ve learned and what I would do differently.

If I were starting from scratch, I would spend far more time upfront defining the structure, the programs, the naming conventions, the intake categories and the boundaries around what truly belongs in work plan. Early structure saves years of cleanup. I would also push harder for full adoption from the beginning. Even with leadership support, other tools like notion teams and Google sheets were never shut down. They were available then and they’re still available now with budget constraints and limited licenses. I’ve had to meet people in the middle which means I often end up doing double work, creating projects and work front and adding tasks to someone’s notion page or teams channel just to get the updates I need. If I could go back, I’d advocate more strongly for shutting down the alternative so work that can truly be the sole system of effort.

What I wish I knew for sooner. I wish I had known sooner just how powerful work custom forms dashboards and templates can be when used intentionally. Logic driven forms keep people focused on what’s relevant. Dashboards eliminate status chasing, templates create consistency without agility. I also wish I had known how transformative the team’s integration would be. It reduces noise, helps people understand what needs their attention and it keeps work moving without overwhelming anyone. Part of that, pair that with the smart email filters and suddenly the stress drops and the important things rise to the top. And I wish I had known how much manual work I’d be doing without communication. So many things that could be automated simply aren’t which means I’ve had to build systems that compensate for that reality.

But the truth is because of my years in manual given, I came into this role with my eyes already open. I had already lived through the consequences of unclear processes and consistent documentation and siloed communication. That experience prepared me for a lot of what I encountered here.

What I didn’t know was just how much I need to adapt those lessons to a department this spread out, this creative and this decentralized.

How to scale without, as the solo project manager, I’ve learned that I can’t rely on heroics or manual efforts. I have to build systems that reduce repetition, eliminate guesswork and make work predictable. Structure isn’t optional, it’s survival.

It’s survival. I created a new word, survival. I’ve also learned that I can’t put every single program into work fund. When I started, that was my goal. But with the sheer number of programs we run, that isn’t sustainable. So we’ve begun identifying what truly needs to be archived on structure. And what doesn’t require my involvement.

That list changes weekly, which is hard for someone who plays consistency, but necessary for long-term sustainability.

How to set boundaries as a team of one.

Not every request is open. Not every idea becomes a workflow and not every exception becomes a role. Clear intake, clear processes and clear expectations protect both the system and the person running it. I’ve learned to say, this belongs in work fund. This does not.

This is a future enhancement.

This is not sustainable. I’ve also learned to accept that I will always be seen as big brother to some degree. This staff operated without transparency for a long time. It really was the wild west before we came on board. So stepping into a role that introduces structure and accountability means I’m sometimes the bad guy. But over time I’ve become a trusted colleague, a valued partner and a friend to most of the people I support.

This is a biggie, rely on your fellow system admins. One of the most important lessons is that you can’t do this alone. Other system admins across the university and the broader community have faced the same challenges. They’ve solved problems I haven’t encountered yet and they’ve helped me avoid reinventing the wheel.

This community has been invaluable. It’s where I learn, where I troubleshoot and where I’m reminded that the challenges I face aren’t unique, they’re universal.

As I wrap up, I want to leave you with this. Everything you see today, the forms, the reports and dashboards, the templates, the workflows, the lessons learned reflects years of building, refining and adapting our systems to support the way this department works. Workfront isn’t perfect and neither are we, but together we’ve created an ecosystem that brings clarity to chaos, structure to creativity and sustainability to a workload that can easily overwhelm a small team. We’ve learned how to meet people where they are, how to evolve our processes as our programs grow and how to stay flexible in a department that changes every single week. And we’ve done it while strengthening trust, improving transparency and building a culture where information is shared, not siloed. I’m proud of how far we’ve come and I’m even more excited about where we’re going. As we prepare for future systems, new integrations and new ways of working, the foundation we’ve built here will continue to support us.

Thank you for your time, your partnership, your patience and your willingness to grow with me. I’m grateful to be part of this community. I am happy to take any questions now and if something comes to you later, please feel free to reach out to me anytime.

And with that, I’m done. That was so great. You shared so much and it’s so cool to see how far you’ve come. I know I have a couple of questions, but folks, if you wanna throw something in the chat, raise your hand.

If you have questions, we’d love to take them.

One question that came to mind is how do you balance keeping communications and work front when you have people with those varying skill levels and adoption? I think that was something folks really agreed with in the chat is, it’s all over the map. So how do you handle that? Well, I have to say both my amazing boss who’s on here, so that’s not, I mean, if I’m joking, she really is amazing. And I have really enforced the communication in updates. Like I don’t reach out to people any other way. So I will try, like, yes, I built the things in the other and we’ll go and look at them, but I’m gonna tell you, people that are adverse to updating things in work front are also adverse to updating things even in their own project management, like for whatever they use.

So I will continue to nag them the updates. And then if I don’t get anywhere there, the smartest thing I do is tag their directors because they see that name. And I guess that’s where I get the big brother’s info. But if they see that name, then they’re like, oh, okay, I better do something. I better ignore her anymore. So, you know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s the reality. I know I had to do very similar things and the comment you made about being the bad guy for a while but also becoming that trusted partner. I think that’s an important, if you’re not there yet, if you’re on this call and you’re not there yet and you’re feeling like the bad guy, hang in there. Cause I do feel like over time you can get that trusted partner because you’re holding everyone accountable. It’s not, I’m singling you out. It’s no, we need this in the system because that’s how we keep things organized. That’s how we keep everyone on the same page. I don’t wanna dig through email and teams and Slack and wherever else. Like it’s all in here. It’s our one source of truth. So I thought that was a really great thought. You know, it’ll ebb and flow. It’ll be like one day I’m somebody’s bestie. And then the next day I’m the devil. So it really does. You just almost have to have this kind of not taking it serious, you know, not taking it, not serious, not taking it personally kind of mindset, which is hard. Yeah. It’s hard to always be like, oh, this person’s not speaking to me today. And the thing that blows my mind too is, we’re adults, like, why are you not, why are you this upset or something like this? We can manage it.

So that’s, you know, that’s what you also have to be aware of that. It’s not, it’s not, once you hit that mark, yeah, you’ll be trusted, but you’re still gonna be looked at sometimes as the bad guy or the, you know, whatever. So yeah. You’re right. It ebbs and flows, but hopefully, hopefully it trends more positive over time, right? I see Tammy put a question in the chat. She said that her leadership has changed, changed over in her organization and they aren’t necessarily valuing that operational work front piece, especially at a department level. Do you have any tips on, do you see that happen where you’re at, where folks are changing over and how do you get that buy-in? I’m finding that as newer people come in, it’s easier for me to get their buy-in because I have the show and tell right there for them. You know, as much as I hate it, when somebody departs, it really, I get happy because A, we’re already established in the tool. Most of the people that I work with acknowledge that that is the tool of record. Actually, all of the people acknowledge that it’s the tool of record. They don’t necessarily use it, but you know what I mean? So it’s been established. So that’s the one thing, use that. It’s established there already. And then you have to do the show and tell. We sponsor every 18 months. Our office runs the venture and IP conference, which is a huge conference. We work with an outside team to help us with. And it’s where all venture capitalists and investors and startups all come together, right? The RABP actually is in charge of it. But over the years, he has become so dependent on Workfront that I am now the hidden person that’s in charge of it. So it’s because I was able to show that this is valuable. That’s the best way that you can get that buy-in from. You have to do the show and tell. Yeah, absolutely.

Another question, how did you learn Workfront? Are you self-taught? Did you take classes? Like a little bit of everything? The number one most valuable thing, and Cynthia, Leslie, and Nicole can back this up, is since I got a license, I have been attending these community sessions. I am one of the regulars. I don’t go on camera very often because typically if I’m at home, I don’t care what I look like. So I don’t want you to be subjected to that.

But I do comment a lot inside.

These actually, I’ll call them webinars or whatever, have been the way I’ve learned the most. I also did all the tutorials. Every tutorial you can possibly get, I’ve done, like 100%. And I did a lot of trial and error. So when Nicole, my boss came to me and said, we need to put this entire financial system into Workfront.

I literally built maybe five or six different types of things before we got something that made everybody happy. So it was a lot of trial and error. It was a lot of, if I do this, what happens? It’s a lot of, oops, I lost that. I have lost things like you wouldn’t believe because I’ve made mistakes. And it’s just, those three things I think are really important. The tutorials and just trying it out. The sandbox is a great tool. I forget to use it most of the time, which is why I lose things. And then additionally, oh yeah, researching and experience league is a great thing.

And most importantly, this community, hands down, most important.

I love that. I know there’s so many folks to learn from here that it’s great connections and great inspiration a lot of the time. I didn’t know you could do that. Like your calendar thing, I was like, that’s so great. Have it color coded by status. I was like, that’s amazing.

One thing I was thinking about is how do you handle, obviously you probably take some time off. We were talking about potential upcoming trip. Like how do you handle when you’re out? If you’re the team of one, we’ve got other teams of one here. Do you have to do a lot of prepping before you’re out or what do you do there? Yeah, so fun story over June this past summer, I got a new name. And if anybody knows what it’s like to have a total name replacement, it takes out for a little bit.

But I knew it was coming. And I made sure that I had people ready to back me up and spent a lot of time training people to be bare bones backup for me.

I also pre-built things. I really looked far ahead. And just tried to get all my depths in a row. I’ll be going away again this July. It seems like July all the time, but this July I’ll be going away and I’ll do the same thing. Now I’m not gonna say that it wasn’t easy. When I came back, I had a lot of mistakes that I needed to fix. So you always need to be prepared for that.

We have tried to get me some sort of a backup in case I peace out at some point. But a lot of that is just the bandwidth of people and my control issues. I’ll be upfront. I feel like nobody else can do what I do and that’s awful. I shouldn’t feel that way, but I feel that way.

So it’s that kind of stuff. But I definitely prepared way far in advance. I trained multiple people as much as I could. So not one person wasn’t taking everything on. And I made sure that anything I could build way out, I built way out. I did a lot of extra hours beforehand and that kind of is the reality.

I’m salary. So if I need to work extra hours, I work extra hours. Now I haven’t, like I said, my boss Nicole is wonderful and she will always be like, oh, take it easy, don’t, or whatever. She’s a hypocrite because she works 80 hours a week. So you just gotta have that forethought.

Yeah, I’ll do the planning ahead.

Someone was asking, do you use proofing in your process? I use proofing. I’m struggling to get our marketing team to use it.

One of our podcaster uses it.

But I use it for any of the stuff like the Princeton review. I upload that whole thing and have it reviewed. All the strategic planning documents, the directors all review it before we even have the presentation meetings. So anything that I am directly involved with, I enforce the use of the work front proofing tool. You’re the one kind of moving it along in the process then? Yeah.

I feel like there was another part to that question.

Yeah, okay, we answered that. Okay, very good.

I know I loved proof. I used it as a customer so much and I came here and my boss at the time, I was like, oh, just mark it up in proof and send it to you. She was like, oh, okay.

It’ll be fine, you’ll be good.

I saw somebody saying, oh my God, why would marketing use it? I don’t know.

The million dollar question, right? They probably just need a little time and gosh, I loved having everything in one place, especially having to send things to legal. I was often mitigating or moderating discussions between business units and legal. And I was like, could you guys just talk to each other? And proof was that piece that I was like, good, work it out and let me know when you’re done and let me know when you put the language in. Like, oh, that’s so great.

Any other questions to call Cynthia? How am I doing? Do you use work balancer? Sorry, what? I love the bulk assignments.

That is one of my favorite tools. I’m in that almost every day. Okay, very cool.

I love hearing that. Sorry, Nicole, I cut you off. How are we doing? You’re doing great. I was gonna ask the question around capacity management. Like, yeah, do you use the workload balancer? And it sounds like you’re using in there for like bulk assignments. Do you do anything, Kat, from like a resource management or do you have to, again, you’re kind of a team of one. So I feel like that’s a bit hard, but for at least for the users that you work with or manage, are they logging time? Like how are you, or is it kind of just like you’re just assigned work and you just get it done? One of the things we say about our office is that we can’t say no.

So if there’s something and it’s a task in there, it’s because we were told we have to do this.

Typically there’s only one or two people that are capable of doing whatever the task is and they are assigned specific teams. So I really don’t get to use the resourcing or what the capacity is for people. I do look at it so I can apologize in advance to people if I know that they’re getting super loaded.

So that I’m not able to do.

But for me, what I have tried to sell to people is if they log their hours and stuff like that, there’s been a lot of people that have mentioned that their teams are being overutilized, that you don’t have the bandwidth for all the things that are being asked for them. My argument has consistently been log the hours and you’ll be able to make a case for expanding your team. Right now, just saying that you are isn’t giving anybody any data or any proof. I think it’s been three years that I’ve been trying to fight that fight. We do have a couple of people that use the timesheet option in here. So that’s been beneficial for them, especially we have one person who actually splits her time between two departments. So being able to document what time she’s spending with this team and what time she’s spending with this team and what she’s doing in either one has really helped her a lot because one of the departments can be pretty demanding.

Yeah, I think that was definitely our, that was my first experience being the bad guy was we implemented timesheets and that was from above. I had a little more support and so we had some continuity, but it was one of those things that over time, we were able to see like, oh, we need a little help. Can we get a contractor? Do we need to think about another head count? And once we got to that stage, people were like, oh, that’s why we’re putting into, I get it now. You’re not just policing my day to day. I’m like, no, I really don’t care about your day to day. I really- I’m gonna say what all the time. I don’t wanna see 40 hours on your time card because I know there are little things that aren’t in work front that don’t like, so we had to have a lot of those conversations, but it was one of those bad guy to trusted partner situations that you talked about. It’s our licensing that’s reduced the people who can access the timesheets. So what I did to accommodate that is I created a request form where they can submit their time via request form and we can report off of that. So we’re still getting the same information, but since they have the contributor license, they can still do the request and that way we’re not losing that information.

Oh, that’s fabulous. See, custom forms, like Cynthia says, they’re just the best. The best. Felipe, I know you’ve had your hand up. What do you have? Yes, hi. I had a question regarding the start of your process. So Kat, do you, before you build something in work front, do you document kind of what that process flow is or do you speak to stakeholders and like, is it a visual? That’s kind of where I’m feeling a little challenged is there’s an ask, but I don’t fully understand the full process end to end. So what’s your process like to kind of get a full understanding of it? So typically I’ll get an email or a team specialist saying, hey Kat, can you do this, da da da da da da? I will sit down and talk to them next just to really understand what they’re asking me for and if it’s possible for me to do it. If I feel like it’s possible, then I say, this is what I need you to do for me. I need you to brain dump every single thing that is involved in this. Just sit down and just type up every single thing that is involved in this. I’m a very visual person. So they then send me that dump and that’s how I kind of work through not just the project but also the custom forms and things like that. They send me examples if they have them then I will show them what I built. We edit as we go along. I actually, with the strategic planning, we’ve actually edited multiple years. We’ve streamlined it as we’ve moved along because there were some things that we don’t really need to do or we don’t really need to document as a task. So the big thing for me is having that conversation first and getting that brain dump. And I always upload the brain dump to the template. So I have the original intent of what this request was.

Thank you, that’s helpful.

And I know something Cynthia has talked about too is like if they’re using a current system, a tool, a spreadsheet, whatever, getting a hold of that and just getting a good look at that can help you kind of get some insight into what they’re thinking, what they’re doing, what they’re tracking, and you might be able to get some insight in how to translate that into Workfront. Yeah, that makes a big deal. Yeah.

You mentioned that you use the Teams integration. Is there anything else that you’re integrated with? Do you have Fusion, anything like that? Don’t have Fusion, can’t, like the budget won’t allow it, which is why I always get frustrated when we focus on Fusion because I’m like, I can’t use it. Yeah.

But the Teams integration has been invaluable. We did have the Outlook integration when it was available and Outlook kind of said, we don’t wanna be a part of this. That was huge. We were able to just take emails and submit requests from there. That really was a big deal. People loved that what we were able to do, updates everything right from your email.

We do have Salesforce. So the integration there, we did make the integration. We’re still getting on board with Salesforce. So I made sure when I came, this is awful, when I came over from annual giving, I still had my SysAdmin license for Salesforce. So I real quickly made an integration happen before I lost that access. So I was able to kind of cheat it that way.

But those are really the only things right now. I mean, we do SharePoint, like any of the documentation ones we use, but Teams is really the big deal for us. And again, we’re, again, I’ll say it, we’re very mom and pop compared to like these bigger orgs. So we don’t necessarily need as many integrations.

Yeah, no, that’s entirely fair. And everyone starts somewhere. Everyone starts as mom and pop and gets bigger over time or just optimizes what they have. So that’s fair. Someone was asking, what do you use the Teams integration for? Are you sending communications, notifications? How do you use it? This is how I explained it to my team. When I give them that integration, because I will set it up for them, I will say, you can now filter out any emails from Workfront.

Emails from Workfront tend to just be, there’s a lot. I mean, you feel like you’re getting spammed.

What Teams is able to do is it takes anything that is something you need to pay attention to. Do you have a new request? Do you have an update you need to look at? Is there something important that you really need to pay attention to? Somehow Teams will just put that in the chat for you. So my team, Teams team, my teams will just focus on the notifications they get from Workfront. And that keeps them on top of things that they have to answer a question. So for updates, we use it. For requests, we use it. Mostly for updates, but that really helps me get people’s attention. So when I am doing those updates and trying to get information from somebody, it’s gonna pop up in their Teams as well.

Yeah, absolutely. I haven’t used the Teams integration in a minute. I need to plug that back in. Every day, every day. That’s awesome. All right, I’m gonna run through a couple last updates. Thank you so much, Kat. That was so, so, so, so helpful and so interesting. I love getting a peek, and I know others do too, like under the hood of what other folks are doing. So thank you for that. Let me get my screen share. Thanks.

All right. Last couple updates for you guys before we wrap up. One of my colleagues is gonna throw in the chat a survey. Just let us know what you thought of today’s event. It is anonymous. We would love your feedback. We’ll share that feedback with Kat.

So if you would take a moment and fill that out, that would be fabulous.

And then I know April was kind of quiet. We had summit, so our team didn’t have as many events, but man, May is action packed between our team. There’s some Workfront user groups, and I think the Workfront Marketing Team, Adoption Marketing Team has a couple of things as well. There is a lot going on. So like I mentioned, there’s a couple of WUG things. There’s a Champions panel, like Real World Advice. I think that’s gonna be really awesome. They’re also gonna have kind of a summit after party, spill the tea, what was good, and then Reimagining Work with AI. So I think those are all gonna be great.

We’ve got a couple of sessions about mastering business rules and advanced logic. I know there’s a session on the new Advanced Enterprise Operations. That’s on May 18th. So if you saw some of that in the release webinar and wanna learn more, that is gonna be a great opportunity. And I know there’s gonna be a couple of sessions because we’re gonna dive deep on those. So be sure to check that out. And then Jen, I know was on today. She’s gonna be leading a session on Inside the Workfront Admin Role, lessons from her first two years. That is gonna be fabulous. So if you wanna hear another customer story, that’s a good one to check out. And then if you are in Atlanta, we would love, love, love for you to join us. We’re trying to do some more in-person sessions. And our next one is in Atlanta on June 3rd. So it is in-person only. Sorry, we’re gonna try and make it to more places when we can, but this is the next one. So if you are in that area, it’s gonna be in Midtown Atlanta at our Adobe office there. So it’s gonna be a lunch and learn. We’re gonna have some games, a speaker.

And yeah, just a great opportunity to connect with some other system admins.

And then one more thing I wanted to call out, we do have a Workfront Job Board on the community. So if you have openings, I know a lot of you were saying you’re a team of one, but if you do have job openings, please make sure you post them there. We’re trying to make sure they end up there because we do send people there when they reach out to us and ask if we know of anything that’s open. So please, please, please share there if you have anything. We would love that. That is it for today. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Kat, for sharing your expertise. That was so, so, so cool to see everything that you do and how you do it on your own.

Again, fill out the survey. I will include the survey I mentioned at the top of the meeting in the follow-up email as well. We’ll include the slides, recording, in the follow-up email later today. But thank you for your time and everybody have a great day.