Create and manage object statuses

Transcript

How to Set Up a Status Statuses are a key component of work management in Workfront, and they do two major things. They let users know what step in the workflow they’re on, and tells the system when to send out notifications. Many of the core Workfront features leverage the status field to make work management easier. For example, steps in an approval process are triggered by a change in status. The timing of notifications sent to assignees is generated by a change in status. Even something as simple as knowing when your team members complete a task is determined by a change in status. That’s why making sure statuses are set up the way you need them is crucial. Now, because not every group or business unit in your organization follows the same workflows, administrators can customize status names and assign statuses to specific groups. Through this type of customization, you can make sure everyone is using Workfront to its fullest. Statuses are created in the Setup area under Project Preferences. In the Statuses area, there are several tabs that represent the different objects you can create statuses for, and you can easily switch between tabs to see what statuses have been created for each object. Each set of statuses is a combination of hardcoded Workfront statuses and those custom-built for your organization. They represent basic workflow and process steps. The statuses initially shown are system-wide. That means anyone from any team, group, or company can see and use them. You know that because of this. If you want to see the statuses being used by specific groups, enter the name of the group, select it so it shows in the box, and then go through the various tabs to see each set of statuses. Before creating any new statuses, we recommend going through what’s currently there to see if they fit your needs. If so, you don’t have to create any new statuses. However, if you find that several of them don’t fit your needs, it’s recommended that before creating a brand new status, you edit the ones that are there. Let’s say your organization doesn’t use the term current for projects. Instead, you use the term live. To change that system-wide in Workfront, hover your mouse over the status, click edit to the right, and the screen refreshes and allows you to edit four things for that status. Status name, color, description, and lock for all groups. Status name. This is the important piece. This is what users see when they go to state what part of the process their work is in. So, this is where we make the biggest change by taking out current and putting in live. Color. This comes into play with reports and icons used throughout Workfront. Description. This is only seen by admins, and used to help determine if the status is still applicable or not. Lock for all groups. By default, statuses are initially locked, meaning group administrators cannot customize it for their groups. This is useful if you want to keep things consistent throughout the entire organization, or have a center of excellence approve status and workflow updates before changes are made in Workfront. However, when unlocked, a group administrator can, for their group, go in and change the terminology specific to their group. The equates with and key boxes are grayed out, which means they cannot be changed. We’ll get to those during the creation of a new status. When everything is updated, click save. This is now the status for everyone system-wide. Creating a status, whether system-wide or for a specific group, is pretty much the same. The only thing you’ll need to do differently in creating a status for a group is change where it says System Statuses in the upper right corner to the group name. Note, if you’re going to create a status for one group, use this method. However, if you plan on creating a status to be used by several groups, but not all, there is a better way to do that, which we’ll show later. To create a status, determine if it’s system-wide or for a group. Select the object you want to create the status for, click Add a New Status button, name the status, select a color for icon and reporting purposes, give it a description, and determine if it should be locked or not. The two other important fields to consider are equates with and key. This is a list of hardcoded statuses that tell Workfront how your status should function in the system. For example, let’s say we want a status that says Cancelled, which will be used for projects that are not going to be completed due to a change in scope or change in priority. Either way, they’ll no longer be worked on. The hardcoded status to equate this to is Dead. In this instance, the reason to equate it with Dead instead of Complete is that Complete will force you to go through and mark all tasks as done, even though they aren’t. Every new status created must equate to one of the options listed in the dropdown. This is an abbreviation or code for the status used for reporting purposes and the back end of Workfront. If nothing is entered here, Workfront will enter something for you. Please note that once the status has been saved, neither of these fields can be changed. Once everything has been filled in, click Save and the status appears in the list ready to be used. If the status was created for a specific group, it would only appear for that group. Let’s say there are two groups that include a Kickoff status in their workflow in addition to the ones listed. To create the status for these two groups, start by creating a System-wide status. Once saved, go ahead and click Edit next to the status just created, and uncheck the box next to Lock for all groups. This then allows group administrators to either delete or hide the status if they don’t use it for their workflows.