WorkfrontReviews of workfront.com

I am working with Workfront since 2017 till now. My expectation is learning with this team.

The system is pretty complex and if you don't have someone dedicated within your company to manage it, then it will fall by the wayside. But using it from a user perspective is pretty intuitive if you are fairly tech savvy. Some of the older folks have a difficult time using the system. It seems to be set up better as a ticketing system for troubleshooting/technology issues. We use it for creative projects and it seems a bit limiting in that regard. The proofing could be better for more interactive prototyping. Overall, the system works for what we need to at a surface level, we just do not have the dedicated resources to use it properly, therefore we do not feel like the expense is worth it for what we are getting out of it.

On the one hand, I have not experienced a better electronic proofing solution. On the other, still much more time-consuming and prone to error than old-fashioned printed paper proofs. There are many great features, you know about those, here is the not-so-great: The worst problem is extreme latency which occurs far too often, many times a week, and when it happens, it often recurs for hours at a time. I click on something, then it freezes for minutes sometimes ten minutes, before I can do anything, even continue scrolling. Second worse is the the lack of control when navigating multiple corrections marked on many different pages in one comment—we call them "spiderwebs". We often mark the same correction on dozens of pages as our files have multiple versions of the same letter. The interface ALWAYS zooms out to show ALL the "spider links" on every page, causing us to need to zoom back in on one in order to read anything or even to identify the page it points to. This feature is important but needs great improvement. 1. The ability to disable the Zoom-out and have the interface just take us to the first occurrence at a 100% zoom. 2. The ability to quickly jump to the next occurrence without having to zoom out and then back in. 3. The ability to use the multiple-selection "spiderwebs" with TEXT corrections, not just boxes and highlights—most of our text corrections occur on multiple pages and so editors cannot use the text tool or "replace with" text features when they need to mark multiple pages, which is most of the time. ADDING MARKUP TO EXISTING COMMENTS—very frustrating and limiting that one cannot use any of the commenting tools to ADD to an existing comment-to say "no, do not change THAT text that was marked, instead change THIS text on the next page" and be able to point to the instance. We have to crate a NEW comment to do that, which is very confusing as we will now have multiple, conflicting comments. IN PROOFHQ (WORKFRONT PROOF), THE LACK OF BASIC STYLING (rich text) in the comments makes it so inconvenient to mark bold and italic etc. in text corrections that none of our editors even attempt to indicate correct text styling anymore. This often results in additional correction rounds to mark up bold and italic in body text. Please add rich text to comments. So annoying that in the the html5 version of ProofHQ one cannot MAKE A COMMENT AND MARK IT DONE IN ONE WINDOW—this worked FINE in the Flash version, but now I have to first make the comment, then post, which closes it, then find the new comment in the comment list and reopen it just to mark it done. I ALWAYS need to make a comment, execute the correction myself and mark it done all at one time. PLEASE restore the “Done button” (and the other actions) to the NEW COMMENT window and don’t make us POST the comment and then reopen it before marking it done. TAGGING OTHER USERS who are not scheduled to access the proof yet—I often need to leave a comment for a reviewer who will not have access to the proof until it is their turn, which will be several days after my turn… If I try to tag them they are not available in Proof HQ for tagging. If I add them to the stage to be able to tag them, then they are tempted (and able) to access the proof out-of-turn and disrupt our workflow. NEED TO BE ABLE TO TAG ANYONE AT ANY TIME and a way to CHOOSE BETWEEN REQUIRING AN IMMEDIATE ANSWER FROM THEM (as it is now) OR TO DEFER THEIR NOTIFICATION and ability to access the proof until it is their turn (stage). REQUIRES THE SAME MANUAL CHANGES TO SETTINGS EVERY TIME I UPLOAD A NEW VERSION. So absurd that for every upload of a proof in ProofHQ (Workfront Proof) I need to make the same redundant changes to the settings — this is automation??? 1. Name of proof version. We do need to change the name of the proof as it moves to a different MAJOR stage, but we do not want the proof to be named with the PSFs’s name. We want it to retain the SAME NAME for a proof during the whole stage. But it defaults to the PDF name (we never want that) so I have to change the proof name on every upload. 2. Workflow—we always use the same workflow for a particular job, but Workfront ALWAYS defaults to “-with parent version changes”—that is a setting we NEVER use. So for EVERY upload, I need to change the Workflow each time. OMG. 3. Idiotic stage diagram — what the heck is this for—it is of absolutely no use to us, yet the stage diagram floats over the upload window, obscuring important info and requiring me to hide the stage diagram each time (which today I cannot even do—it won’t hide today) 4. Recipients - I have to change the Proof role of the recipients every time I upload a new version—why doesn’t it know/remember what role people are supposed to have?They each have the same role every time but it never defaults to the correct role. Two years of waiting and still Workfront and ProofHQ are not integrated at our company and show different deadlines in each for the same stage of the same job. Apparently Workfront’s inability to accommodate our company’s workflows prevents full integration. Still have to mark tasks complete in BOTH places, doing double work. Neither is linked to our time-entry system Webvantage so triple work really as I have to enter time in a different system. Frustrating that there are no links in ProofHQ (Workfront Proof) and Workfront to access the same job, I have to search for things in Workfront or ProofHQ even though I have the job open in the other application.

For the most part, Workfront is pretty easy to use. It works well for waterfall projects. Customization is highly flexible (almost TOO customizable)! The reason I gave it 3 stars vs higher marks is due to the limited agile functionality. We are having trouble adapting teams who are used to JIRA to now use Workfront. It's a constant challenge as JIRA users want some of the same function in WF and it's just not there yet. Overall though, Workfront has aided our move from a manual proofing process (sending big PDFs through email) and has helped streamline our intake greatly. Their support & help services are stellar. Lots of training available--be ready to become an SME if you adopt!

UI is a struggle for new users. The tool is designed for project managers, people who understand or who have had formal training in project management. The deal is, the majority of users aren't. They need a simplified version way to manage work, build out timelines, quickly update add remove tasks without have to thing about predecessors or task dependencies, etc.

It's not an all in one for project. The fact I cannot upload a live link to documents area is a disconnect to my projects.

Workfront is a very powerful tool that can do a lot but its not a tool you can easily adopt and then customize without additional resources, expertise, consulting, etc. It can become a very expensive solution if you are not going to leverage it as your only / primary tool. They have come up with great solutions around API with the fusion integration but to charge $20K a year for it is steep when we could make one time investments at half the cost that carry over into new years. Fusion includes 3 interfaces, and thats great but what if I need only 1? why not tier by connection? Support teams at WF are very helpful and want to provide solutions. They are responsive and extremely friendly and helpful however much of what I have asked about results in needing consultants and special additional costs. Some for very simple things. For example tracking when people were notified about an approval request and how long it was until that person approved it. Right now I can only see start and end of approvals, not time of stages....with multi staged approvals this seems really odd.

Workfront was our Top Choice when investigating which software and company to go with for Project Management. It has a lot of valuable tools within it, many we use, and many we don't, and yet others we want to, but haven't yet figured out how to implement properly yet. I consider myself a fan of Workfront, however I admit it has some very serious flaws that mean I cannot in good faith give it more than 3/5 stars until they fix them. The biggest failure is its slowness (possibly because they dont have the server resources to support an Internet-Based Tool during peak hours). It can get very frustrating when things wont update, costing us a lot of money in wasted time. 2nd big problem is that there is no undo feature. 1 Mistake, dragging an item can completely destroy the schedule, causing hundreds of lines to need dozens manual adjustments per line to get it back the way it was. They must add a history and undo and redo feature like found in all reputable modern software products. The 3rd weak point is their Reports, Dashboards, Views, and Filters. The logic available is very limited and to this day, while I have spent months trying to do specific normal things, the views and reports I need are still not able to work properly. I love that it allows custom fields, and many choices for views, Gantts, workflow, and reports, but the limits are frustrating. I hope the company will consider putting more effort into development to fix these and other issues the tool has. I will continue to try to figure out workarounds but unfortunately, Workfront has been downgraded to only be used by a few people for schedules, and other things like document control, Meeting Notes, and other internal and external communications are determined best outside Workfront. (Im not positive, but I believe some of this failure, has to do with the way Workfront handles licenses, and the prohibitive nature of the costs when using the tool fully, but there are technical reasons besides the costs as well.) I'm generally happy with the features that work, which we are using. And I would recommend this tool above most others. For the next few months, I intend to try out their community forums and see if that raises the value of the tool, or if it can help us find workarounds to the Workfront problems. I've tried to be fair in this review. I have faith that they will eventually improve and fix the tool, so for now we will stay a customer of Workfront and hopefully enjoy the ride of improvements coming soon. Thanks for reading my thoughts.