Marketers tackling the turbulent water of annual planning often feel like they’re lost at sea – without the visibility, tools, or support to stay the course.
But hope is on the horizon! Adobe’s new Workfront Planning module, paired with EMMsphere’s expert team, will help you confidently navigate towards your chartered destination.
Hear from EMMsphere as we share our initial impressions.
- What is Workfront Planning?
- What We Love
- Potential Pitfalls
Adobe delivers their new Workfront Planning module just in time for the launch of your 2025 planning journey. The Workfront community has been eagerly anticipating this release since it was first teased in 2022. Adobe granted EMMsphere early access to the new planning module to gather our feedback and now we are excited to share our assessment and recommendations with you!
Our overall impressions are very positive as it appears Adobe hit the intended mark. However, there were some surprises as we got deeper in our tests. Here are our top takeaways…
What is Workfront Planning?
The Planning module is a flexible set of Workspaces – made up of Operational Record Types (objects) – that are designed to enable the orchestration of work beginning in its earliest stages. Marketing strategy, ideation, and annual planning all come together in an easy-to-use tool to give Marketers a holistic view of what’s ahead. It helps ensure that marketing goals and strategies are aligned with company goals and that you have the data-driven tools to measure marketing performance and attribution. The Planning module naturally complements the execution work that Workfront does so well today. Before we get into it let’s define some of basic terms and boundaries:
- Workspaces are centralized locations for teams to plan work. They are made up of a collection of Record Types (objects) that require definition. So, unlike Workfront where the object hierarchy is pre-defined, Workfront Planning is completely customizable. This means that several Workspaces can be uniquely configured to support various lines of business. Access must be provisioned for users to view and collaborate within Workspaces.
- Record Types (objects) are the building blocks of the Planning Workspace. Record Types are completely flexible and come in two primary flavors: Operational Records and Taxonomies. The main technical difference between these two are dates. Operational Records include a start and end date (of any sort) that can be used in Timeline and Calendar views. For example, Marketing Strategy, Campaign, Tactic, or Opportunity may fall in this category. Taxonomies, on the other hand, are more static attributes that can relate to Operational Records. These may include Product, Audience, Region, Competition.
- Templates are predefined Workspaces that are designed to give clients a head start and/or an example of how to configure a Workspace. Templates contain a fair amount of data that can be customized. However, we found that building workspaces from scratch generally proved more efficient.
- Connected Records can be enabled within the planning module (e.g. Record Type to Taxonomy Object), with Workfront objects (e.g. Portfolio, Program, Project), and AEM Assets.
- Linked Fields (lookup fields) can be established once Records are connected. For example, a Campaign Record may have ties to a Planning Product object, a Workfront Project, and AEM Assets. Fields on the connected Records (e.g. Product, Project, Asset) can be referenced on the source Record (Campaign).
- Views on Records currently include Table, Timeline, Calendar, and Brief:
- Table is your tabular view where you establish the fields and connections. All records start with and must retain at least one Table view.
- Timeline views can be added IF the record includes two date fields. These are needed to establish the begin and end date of the view. Filters and groupings can be used to achieve refined timeline views. This works well for Annual, Quarterly, and Monthly views.
- Calendar views can be added IF the record includes two date fields. This is the most granular view and is most helpful for events that are generally contained within a given month.
- The Brief view focuses on the individual Record and is available from all views when a record is opened. If permissions allow it, data can be editable.
- Technical Limits are relatively generous. For example, a client can have up to 1,000 Workspaces each with up to 1,000 Record Types. More reasonable limits include file size of 1MB that can be pasted in a record type table and up to 1.5 MB size files that can be imported through the API for a Record Type.
What We Love
- Flexibility – This is not a prescriptive, one size fits all module. This is a major strength! Record Types can be defined and configured to support a wide spectrum of use cases – in and outside of marketing. However, this flexibility puts the responsibility on the business to design and govern usage. Spend the time to plan and define your critical success factors BEFORE you begin configuring the Planning module.
- Visibility – When thoughtfully configured, the Timeline view has the ability to provide the right view for the several audiences. It’s a clean, easy to use function that can be tailored to meet the needs of operational personnel, managers, and leadership.
- Alignment to Corporate Goals – How do marketing strategies and campaigns align with and support corporate objectives? Workfront Planning can help organizations define, forecast, and track marketing financial performance against corporate objectives, marketing objectives, marketing strategies, and campaigns/tactics.
- Compatibility with Workfront – Why not plan the work in the tool that enables it? What a novel idea! These two functions are naturally linked so it only makes sense that these two modules work together within a single interface. Add Fusion to the mix and you can automatically trigger work to be done based on the dates and status of campaigns!
- Non-Marketing applications – Workfront is geared towards marketers. But that doesn’t mean other parts of the organization can’t benefit from planning and tracking work in Workfront. The Planning module provides ultimate flexibility and should make Workfront that much more attractive to non-marketers.
Potential Pitfalls
- Flexibility – Without a clearly defined vision, support from leadership, and a governance model that can measure adherence the advantages that come with flexibility can backfire. Similar to Workfront, the Planning module is flexible and is designed for personalized user experiences and easy administration – even by those that aren’t equipped to do so. To get the most out of this tool it’s wise to define its purpose – what shall we use it for and what is out of bounds? Determine who is authorized to create and maintain Workspaces. Establish a governance structure that can adapt to change, is aligned with corporate objectives, and can be sustained over the long-haul. In short, invest the time and PLAN before you begin using the Planning module.
- Security – Contribute access on the Workspace allows for record deletion. This is quite easy to do if users are not careful! Establish the necessary security policies that align the appropriate users/groups to the various share options and deliver the necessary training activities for those that have Contribute and Manage access.
- Fusion must be used to create Workfront projects from the Planning object. If you don’t have Fusion, connections can be manually established. However, if you want to squeeze the most out of Workfront AND the Planning module, Fusion will be the key ingredient to pull it all together.
- Linked Fields – The following field types are unavailable as lookup fields: People, Created by, Last modified by, and Workfront typeahead fields.
Bottom-line this is a very exciting addition to Workfront and it’s just the beginning! We’ll continue to share our perspectives as they evolve on this topic and as Adobe introduces updates.
Contact us if you’d like to chat directly on this or anything Workfront related.
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