Build the bridge: connecting strategic intent to projects

Learn how to create a strategic thread between your high-level plans in Adobe Workfront Planning and your daily execution in Workfront. You can build a bridge between strategy and execution using connections.

This guide is intended for Workfront administrators and workspace managers who are implementing Workfront Planning.

Overview of aligning strategy to execution

Connecting your strategy to your daily work turns vision into reality. When high-level plans are in sync with execution, you create a strategic thread that ensures every project and task moves the business forward.

Achieving this alignment requires a set of technical links and process guardrails that connect efforts in Workfront with strategic records in Workfront Planning.

By bridging the gap between planning and action, you ensure that your team’s energy is always focused on your highest-priority goals.

Establish the foundation by creating a connection

Before you can bridge planning and execution, as a workspace manager you must define which record types are eligible for a connection.

Overview of the connection field

The bridge begins with creating a connection field.

A connection field serves as a the technical handshake between record types.

This field type is the engine behind all relationships in Workfront Planning. It is an expression of intent, in that it establishes that a specific record type (like a Channel Tactic) is allowed to be linked to other object types, whether they live in Planning or Workfront.

For information, see Connected record types overview.

Define when to create a connection

Ideally, you must decide whether you need to create connections before any work is created.

By adding a connection field, you are architecting your environment to support a strategic thread, regardless of how the individual records are eventually created.

Set strategy and execution in sync

To keep your strategic layer focused, we recommend focusing your planning records on high-level intent while using Workfront for tactical execution.

This approach uses the unique strengths of both modules in the following ways:

Go from intent to action by activating the bridge

After the connection is configured, you must decide how to activate the link between a specific strategic record and an execution project.

Use a table-led path

Strategists and power users often use the table view as their workbench to refine plans over time.

Creating a record in a table does not establish a link to Workfront, by default.

The connection to an execution project is established when a user decides to activate the link.

This can be done in the following ways:

Build automated activations

For organizations with high-volume requests or advanced automation needs, the bridge can be activated automatically based on specific events or based on field values configured in a request form.

You will need a license for Adobe Workfront Fusion for this approach.

For more information see Set up and manage Workfront Fusion: article index.

Add lookup fields to surface visibility

Once a project is linked, you can surface real-time data from Workfront directly within the Planning record by adding lookup fields from the project.

As a workspace manager, you can set up lookup fields to pull any system or custom field from the linked project (such as Actual Completion Date or Creative Lead) into the Planning record type. Once captured, this data can be rolled up through multiple levels of your strategic hierarchy, all the way up to the campaign level. This provides powerful aggregate reporting for stakeholders across the entire marketing lifecycle, keeping them informed without needing to leave the planning environment.

Achieve visibility by connecting strategy to action

The ultimate value of the bridge is real-time visibility.

By connecting intent to action, you can answer critical business questions at a glance. The following are examples of these questions:

Best practices and tips

Dos:

Don’ts: