Replacement of Flash-based tools in Adobe Workfront

Legacy Resource Pools

Legacy Resource Pools were groups or collections of job roles needed at the same time for the completion of a project. Legacy Resource Pools had a number of shortcomings:

• You could associate a user with one Legacy Resource Pool but it was only used for reporting purposes. Since Legacy Resource Pools were operating with abstract job role entities, none of the users' schedule exceptions and time off were taken into account, resulting in inaccurate data about resource availability.

• You could specify only one Legacy Resource Pool per project, which resulted in multiple Legacy Resource Pools supporting only the flow of separate groups working independently of each other and never sharing resources. In all other cases, it was recommended to keep one Legacy Resource Pool that included all resources in the system, which led to performance problems with large amounts of projects and data.

Resource Pool

New Resource Pools are a collection of users that are needed at the same time for the completion of the project. Workfront also realizes that there are cases when specialized users need to have work allocated to them separately. For this reason, you can now budget users instead of job roles.

Advantages of the Resource Pool over the Legacy Resource Pools include the following:

• Because Resource Pools are based on the users, their time off and schedule exceptions are already taken into account for the user and role availability calculations. This results in precise and up-to-date data, allowing for correct budgeting decisions and minimizing the likelihood of changes when the project is in flight.
• Because there is now more control over the availability of resources and accuracy of data, Workfront allows you to associate multiple Resource Pools with a project. One user can also belong to more than one Resource Pool, in case they have multiple skills that could be used in multiple projects at the same time.

With such control over the data, it is no longer necessary to have one Resource Pool that includes all resources for distributing the available budget. In fact, we do not recommend this. Instead, we recommend diversifying your Resource Pools and only associating relevant Resource Pools with projects.

For more information about Resource Pools, see Resource pools overview

Resource Budget Manager

You could use the Resource Budget Manager to specify the availability of job role resources across multiple Resource Pools. However, due to the shortcomings of the Legacy Resource Pool, this functionality was rarely used. When it was used, it forced users to manually input availability of job roles to make budgeting more accurate. The schedule exceptions and the users' time off were not taken into account.

With the automatic calculation of availability based on the users in the Resource Pools, the Resource Budget Manager is no longer needed. The tool has been eliminated, along with all the manual work for calculating availability.

Resource Estimates

The Resource Estimates tab under each Legacy Resource Pool served the same purpose as the Resource Budget Manager, only in the context of one Legacy Resource Pool. This tool presented the same limitations as the Resource Budget Manager and the Legacy Resource Pools: inaccurate data and manual input of availability.

Capacity Planner

The Capacity Planner was a Workfront tool for budgeting resources and prioritizing projects inside a Legacy Resource Pool, according to the availability of the resources. Given the incompleteness of data from Resource Estimates and the Resource Budget Manager which provided the information for the Capacity Planner, project prioritization had to be double-checked against the availability of the users.

Using a single Legacy Resource Pool that included all the job roles in the system was the most common scenario, which led to performance problems with the Capacity Planner trying to load a large number of projects.

The Project View of the Resource Planner

In the Project-based view of the Resource Planner, you can budget resources and prioritize projects similarly to how you used to do it in the Legacy Capacity Planner. Unlike the legacy tool, more data is now supported, with the available information being more precise by taking into account both the users' time off and schedule exceptions.

Available, Planned, and Budgeted information is visible at a glance so that Resource Managers can see both whether there are enough people to do the work and whether the project plans exceed initial budget estimations.

For information about using the Project View in the Resource Planner, see Resource Planner overview

The Scenario Planner

For long-term capacity planning, what-if scenario modeling and prioritization, we have also introduced the Workfront Scenario Planner .

The Scenario Planner is available only in the new Adobe Workfront experience and requires an additional license. For information about the Workfront Scenario Planner, see The Scenario Planner overview.

Legacy Resource Estimates (Business Case)

You could use the Legacy Resource Estimates area of the Business Case to budget a certain amount of labor hours and costs as part of the project planning and request for resources. This view didn't provide any visibility into the availability of resources, which resulted in approximate requests for resources and an increased chance for rejected project work.

Resource Budgeting (Business Case)

The Resource Budgeting section under the Business Case brings Resource Planner capabilities to the Business Case, providing visibility into user and role availability, as well as the ability to budget at the user level.

For information about the Resource Budgeting area of the Business Case, see Overview of the Areas of the Business Case.

Resource Estimate Reports

When using the legacy tools for Resource Management, you could report on Budgeted and Planned hours from the Business Case. This allowed you to build matrix reports showing the total Budgeted and Planned work for each job role in a specific time frame. This report was not editable, and you could not make any changes in the budgeting of your resources based on the report findings.

Utilization Report

The built-in Utilization report displays Planned, Budgeted, and Actual Hours, Cost, and Revenue side-by-side.

For information about using the Utilization report, see View resource utilization information.

Reportable Budgeted Hours

Create a report for Budgeted Hours to review hours budgeted in the Resource Planner in a report form.

For information about Budgeted Hours, see Glossary of Adobe Workfront terminology.

For information about creating a report, see Create a custom report.

The Role View of the Resource Planner

The budgeted and planned hours from the Business case in the Legacy Resource Management tools are now available in a new native view - the Role-based view of the Resource Planner. This view provides Available, Planned, and Budgeted Hours information at a glance and allows you to control and change budgeting all in the same place. This ensures better decision making during high-level job role planning.

For information about budgeting resources in the Role View of the Resource Planner, see the Use the Project and Role Views to budget resourcessection in Resource Planner overview

Resource Grid

The Resource Grid gave you visibility into the allocation of specific users as a project progressed towards completion.

For example, you could easily see when someone on your project team got their work done early, and when someone fell behind, as well as whether they were overallocated or underallocated for a specific time frame.

Unfortunately, you were not able to act upon the information in the same view. To rectify overallocation problems you had to go to the projects and manually adjust the information there without any visibility into the result of your actions.

The Resource Grid has been replaced by two new tools. You can use the following tools, depending on which phase of resource planning you find yourself in:

• For the Analytical Phase:

  • The Workload Balancer: Use the Workload Balancer to view the users' workload at a more granular level. When you use the Workload Balancer, you can view which users have availability in their workload to complete the task on time. This includes their time off and schedule exceptions details.

    For information about the Workload Balancer, see Workload Balancer overview.

  • The User View of the Resource Planner: When trying to understand on a higher level what projects your users are allocated to, use the User View of the Resource Planner. This allows you to see what users are working on as well as their over- and underallocation for a specific time frame. The Resource Planner also provides visualization of the overall allocation of users as a whole, as well as visibility into the Actual Hours logged, which is helpful in analyzing progress of the work done.

    For information about using the User View in the Resource Planner, see the Use the User View to view Available, Planned, and Actual Hours or FTEsection in Resource Planner overview

• For the Tactical Phase:

  • The Workload Balancer You can do the following using the Workload Balancer:

    • Assign work to users.
    • Manage users' allocations to work items.
    • Share the Workload Balancer with other users who may not have visibility into the People area. Use the Shareable link functionality to share a link to the Workload Balancer and embed it in custom dashboards. Any users with access to View users are able to view these dashboards when you share them.

    The Workload Balancer is available in the People area.

    For information about the Workload Balancer, see Workload Balancer overview.

Legacy Gantt Chart, Task List

The Legacy Gantt chart on the task list provided users with the ability to visually see the timeline of the project and perform what-if scenario planning without committing changes to the database. The Legacy Gantt chart was based on Flash technology, which presented security risks.

Gantt Chart, Task List

The new HTML-based Gantt Chart is serving the same purpose as the Legacy Gantt. Users can visualize the timeline of the project and perform what-if scenario planning without committing changes to the database by changing to the Manual Save option from the task list toolbar.

The new Gantt Chart is interactive when using the Autosave option which you can use when you want to automatically save your changes as they happen.

The new Task List Gantt Chart is built on the newest technology and is reliable. This new Gantt chart is located directly on the task list and is easily accessed while working on the task list without switching tabs or changing the view.

Although the new Gantt chart offers the same functionality as the previous chart, there are some differences in features by comparison with the Legacy Gantt.

The Legacy Gantt subtab in a list of Template Tasks on a Template, the Legacy Gantt view in the Subtasks tab of a Template Task, and the Legacy Gantt chart in a Template Task report have been replaced with the HTML-based Gantt chart as well.

If you use the Legacy Gantt Chart mostly for the simple view and quick edits and don't use the actual chart, the new Timeline Planning option allows you to make quick changes to key planning fields. You can select Timeline Planning instead of Autosave from the task list toolbar.

For more information about saving a task list using the Timeline Planning option, see the section "Save changes in a task list manually when you select the Timeline Planning option" in the article Edit tasks in a list.

Legacy Gantt Chart for a Project List

The Legacy Gantt chart on the project list provided users with the ability to see projects and their tasks in one view. Without leaving the context of the project list, users could see details about the tasks in a project as well as the dependencies between the projects. The Legacy Gantt chart on the project list was based on Flash technology, which presented security risks.

Gantt Chart, Project List

The HTML-based Gantt chart serves the same purpose as the Legacy Gantt chart. Users can view projects and their tasks in one view to visually identify dependencies between projects as well as tasks. The Project List Gantt chart is located directly on the project list. The new Gantt chart has a modern interface and is built on the newest technology.

For information about the project list Gantt chart, see View information in the Gantt Chart.

Sharing Dialog Boxes for Reports, Calendars, and Documents

When sharing reports, calendars, and documents, the dialog boxes that were used were based on Flash technology.

The experience when sharing reports, calendars, and documents in Workfront has not changed. However, the experience no longer relies on Flash.

For more information about sharing these items, see Overview of sharing permissions on objects.

Legacy proofing viewer

The Legacy proofing viewer was a web-based proofing viewer that provided proofing capabilities for static, video, and interactive proofs.

Web Proofing Viewer and Desktop Proofing Viewer

The Web Proofing Viewer provides proofing capabilities for static and video proofs.

The Desktop Proofing Viewer provides proofing capabilities for interactive proofs, in addition to providing full support for static and video proofs.

The SWF file format is no longer supported by any of the major providers and has been replaced with HTML5 banners for proofing.

For more detailed information about the differences between the available proofing viewers, see Differences between the Web Proofing Viewer and the Desktop Proofing Viewer overview.