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Task Management Survey

System

Hello all,

I am one of the Interwoven engineers who attended the Workflow focus group at GearUp. While we received lots of feedback about Job and Task Management, we didn't get to fully discuss it at the session due to time constraints. I'm interested in delving deeper into this topic with you. To get the discussion started, I'm attaching an informal "survey" containing some known customer pain points. Please identify or respond to each point, or add your own.

Thanks!
Michelle Neuringer

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Migrateduser

I don't really understand what you expect us to do with this. Do you want us to mark it up and email it back to you? Mark it up and post it here? What are you looking for?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Great question, Dave!

If you can identify with any or all of the points in the file and have *additional feedback* that you'd like to share with the group, I encourage you to post your response directly to the forum.

Otherwise, please mark it up and email it back to me. My email address is mneuring@interwoven.com.

Sorry about the confusion,
Michelle

Migrateduser

Identify with the following pain points, respond and/or add your own.

1) End users can’t understand where in the overall workflow process their individual task resides. They need a visual status of where their task is within a job.

This should be done without a doubt, if for no other reason than to keep this product up-to-date technology-wise.

2) Administrators need a better UI to monitor all jobs. They need a visual status of where jobs are and with whom.

How is this different than #1?

3) It’s hard to find task-related information

It's just hard to read the ToDo list in general. There's too much information displayed all at once. Would be better if you could allow the developers to customize the UI to show as much or as little info as we need up front. Then provide the ability for users to drill down to get the details.

4) TeamSite needs to report more information in the task list
4a) What information is missing?

More information? How about less information. Everyone wants the ability to customize what information their users will see. Allowing us to do that will make everyone happy. As it is now, the Job Details and Task Option pulldowns offer too many options. 98% of the time the only thing the user needs to see in the Task Options pulldown is the stuff way down at the bottom - the successor options.

5) I want to define custom task types for my workflow and display tasks by type in the UI

I don't know what this means - please be more specific.

6) I want to customize the display of information in the task list
6a) Display certain job/task variables
6b) Add/remove/order options in task dropdown menu
6c) Color-code tasks
6d) Progressively disclose information to users based on role
6e) What else?

Again, this all points to allowing the workflow developers to customize the ToDo UI. These are all good points. Allow us to also customize all the pulldowns as I described above.

7) I want to create my own task list from scratch

I don't get this one either - please elaborate

8) I need better filtering capabilities.
8a) What kinds of filters are relevant to your business process?

Filtering for what? I don't get this one either.

9) Individual tasks and task types don’t make sense to my users. All I want to know is what state my content’s in, such as "Pending Approval"

More customization.

10) TeamSite workflow terminology doesn’t make sense for my business process. I need to customize workflow terminology ("Workflow", "Job", "Task").

More customization.

11) Provide thorough documentation. Scrap the current Workflow Developer's Guide and make a new one from scratch. Maybe even make 2 new ones - a user's guide and a developer's guide. Make the Workflow Builder section an appendix and focus on detailed technical information. Add all the good stuff out there that exists in tech notes, supplemental documents and the advanced workflow class notes. All these great new features are pointless without giving us thorough instructions.

12) Need job archiving and history reporting capabilities. Would be nice for TeamSite to not throw jobs into a black hole once they were finished so the information could be archived and recovered if need be. Also would be nice to be able to provide reporting (GUI or text) on specific workflow data.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Some elaboration on the survey (again, I apologize for the confusion):

#1 is different from #2 in that #1 concerns the common user viewing an individual task. Do your common users want to see more information about the job (previous task, successor tasks) or simply the task that they must perform? #2 concerns an administrative person monitoring an entire set of jobs. Would your users (both common and administrative) want to interact with their tasks/jobs in a more visual way? (visual: diagrams, flowcharts, etc)

#5 addresses the notion that workflow developers should be able to create new task types (in addition to the standard task types). Is this something that you'd like us to investigate?

#7 goes beyond customizing. Do you want to create your own custom task list, or would you rather customize an existing one?

#8 is terribly vague, my apologies. It actually has to do with coffee. I take mine half-decaf, half-regular, with one packet of sweet-n-low. Tell us about your users' caffeine habits. We care... I'm talking about different views of the task list: sorting/filtering by name, date, priority...etc.

Thanks for your feedback!
Michelle

Migrateduser

#1 is different from #2 in that #1 concerns the common user viewing an individual task. Do your common users want to see more information about the job (previous task, successor tasks) or simply the task that they must perform? #2 concerns an administrative person monitoring an entire set of jobs. Would your users (both common and administrative) want to interact with their tasks/jobs in a more visual way? (visual: diagrams, flowcharts, etc)

I get it now. I think if the customization ability allowed different customization based on roles, that would solve the problem. I know that when a user calls me with a problem on the ToDo page, I want to be able to pull up that page and see exactly what they see without having to log out and log back in under a different role. Everyone has different needs, so allowing for broad customizations is a good goal. There's no way you can code up a UI that will satisfy everyone, so allowing for as much customization as possible should at least make 80% of the people happier.

#5 addresses the notion that workflow developers should be able to create new task types (in addition to the standard task types). Is this something that you'd like us to investigate?

This sounds like a difficult thing to pull off - allowing developers to create custom task types. Would be interesting to see a list of what kinds of task types people would want to create. Then perhaps Interwoven could provide the ones that make sense.

#7 goes beyond customizing. Do you want to create your own custom task list, or would you rather customize an existing one?

I'm still not sure what this means. Are you referring to the ToDo page? It's awfully hard to say - I guess for me it depends on the complexity of creating my own. What expertise would that require? Personally I would prefer to customize an existing one.

#8 is terribly vague, my apologies. It actually has to do with coffee. I take mine half-decaf, half-regular, with one packet of sweet-n-low. Tell us about your users' caffeine habits. We care... I'm talking about different views of the task list: sorting/filtering by name, date, priority...etc.

Haha...coffee...cute. This would be nice. Filtering by workflow comes to mind. I would definitely vote for filtering.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

mogoo

DEFINATELY more visual ways to interact -- I've seen posts about a visio-type diagram, so people can see at a glance what stage the job is in. That would be nice. Or at minimum, color coding of tasks.

Dave is right... don't give common users too many options. WE (admin) may be able to sort through all the options, but we can't hold common users hands, don't confuse them. TeamSite already asks them to learn and *be able to recall* so much, many things about the product are counter-intuitive. Please stop adding to all the little things they need to know about every step they take in TeamSite. Common users only need to know about their task at hand; beyond that they just want simple info on where in the process their job is.

Also, all users don't want to have to go through 3 windows from the todo list to find out anything useful about that job. The default information displayed in the list with the OOTB workflows is not very helpful at all. You look at the list and see 20 jobs submitted by UserA, and all you know about these jobs is "Default Submit Workflow" and the standard descriptions. That doesn't help find a job that has a specific file in it that needs to be approved right away. We've customized our todo list so a list of the submitted files and the submitter's comments show up in the todo list. That greatly reduced frustrations.

Addressing #7, there should be an OOTB task list, but make it highly customizable, and easy to do so. There should be a base to start from. The customizations I mentioned above were no easy task; it would be nice to have some documentation on that type of thing.

Thank you for listening. I'll add more if/when I think of it.
maureen

rishi

agree with all of the above.
was wondering if customization could be made possible upto a workflow\branch level.
We have different sites\countries using our TeamSite Server. Particular branches might want to have their tasks displayed in different ways.
Maybe i am dreamin. Or is that too difficult a feature to implement.

Migrateduser

Thanks for the helpful feedback, Maureen!

You mentioned that you've customized the TODO list to view files and submit comments. If we were to provide an OOTB customizable task list, what other pieces of job/task/file related information would you like to customize? Would you want do make different customizations for different users? Roles? Branches? Workflows? Please share your wishlist!

Michelle

Migrateduser

Count me in as a resounding YES!! to all those that you mentioned.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

How many others out there are interested in customizing the TaskUI on a workflow/branch level? (If everyone wants it, it becomes less of a dream!)

mogoo

Michelle-

It seems like each of our users focus on different things in the todo list... therefore, I'd say it should be customizable by user, or at least roles. I can't think of where it would be helpful to customize by branch or workflow, for our needs, at least -- I know rishi mentioned a need for it, though. I think it would be really nice for everyone to see a SIMPLE visual overview of where the current task is in the overall job structure. Other wishes...

Automatic refresh. One thing that really annoying about the workflows is that it doesn't automatically refresh when transitioning through external tasks. It causes lots of unnecessary confusion.

Better conflict handling. I think Dave mentioned this in one of his rants -- if I get a resolve conflict on my submit, it would be nice if I knew why ts sees the file as a conflict... sometimes we just remove the job, because the workflow won't let us submit because of conflicts that we humans aren't seeing.

Filtering - yes! I don't like coffee, but like the idea of filters/sorters -- by any field - user, date, workflow.

Job Details vs. Job Admin pulldowns. Are both of these really necessary? Does anyone use either of these? If nothing else, these 2 could easily be combined. A more visio-ish iteration of this information would be much more useful.

Easier to read interface...
Colors. Please give us colors! People like color-coding, and it would help to differentiate tasks.

Less (visible) task #s. Does anyone pay attention to the task#s in the todo list? For us, showing people all those task numbers just confuse. Job#s, helpful to know, task#s, not so much.

Variety. Make the todo list easier to look at. In addition to color coding, give (more) important information the ability to be bolded, italicized, smaller/larger fonts, something. That way the jobs/tasks won't blend into one another as much.

-maureen

Migrateduser

Maureen--

All good points. Do all of your users use the WebDeskPro UI, or do some use the WebDesk (Author) UI?

Does anyone have any comments about the task list in WebDesk?

mogoo

Absolutely all WebDeskPro. I've mentioned in one of my other rants, 2 different UIs are no bueno. Would be a training nightmare to teach both.
-maureen

Migrateduser

I get the feeling that the next response from Michelle is going to be something to the effect that the next version of WebDesk will be WebDesk for Editors, which will open up the more user friendly UI to more people. Well yeah, as long as you don't care much about your Admins and Masters seeing the same view as the users do. I would ask Interwoven to create a WebDesk for Everyone instead of a WebDesk for Editors. I agree with Maureen - 2 UIs is not a good solution at all.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

One of the goals of the new Interwoven usability campaign is to create UIs that require little training for end-users. (Someone from Interwoven, please correct me if I'm wrong!) Of course, every organization is different--some require more training than others. If need be, would you be willing to train your users to use a completely new-and-improved UI, or do you prefer that we make smaller, incremental improvements to the existing WebDeskPro UIs?

We at Interwoven want to improve customer productivity, but we don't want to alienate existing users who've spent a while "getting to know" WebDeskPro. Opinions?

Adam Stoller

Less (visible) task #s. Does anyone pay attention to the task#s in the todo list? For us, showing people all those task numbers just confuse. Job#s, helpful to know, task#s, not so much.

Actually, I find these very useful when trying to debug aspects of workflows. However, if they were to be accessible but not immediately visible through the UI, or if the UI is customizable by role, then I wouldn't have much of a problem with that kind of change.

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Migrateduser

I think as long as the basic functionality remains the same, you can go either way - just don't straddle the fence. I think the strides that Webdask is trying to make are good. A simpler, cleaner interface. Why not go the full mile and turn Webdesk Pro into Webdesk with all the features available in Webdesk Pro today? In addition, start opening up more customization options like those already described and start to figure out how you can provide some type of iconized flow view (Visio-like, but with drill-down capabilities) of complete workflows. Just pick one way to do it. Don't leave 2 different interfaces dangling out there.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

>>>>I get the feeling that the next response from Michelle is going to be something to the effect that the next version of WebDesk will be WebDesk for Editors, which will open up the more user friendly UI to more people. Well yeah, as long as you don't care much about your Admins and Masters...<<<<

I hear you! That's why I'm interested in hearing your (and everyone else's) wishlist so we can work toward a better user experience for everyone.

Adam Stoller

Something to keep in mind, that often gets lost in the zeal of possibilities ... the more customizeable the software is, the bigger the software tends to get in order to support all those customizations - but more importantly - the harder it becomes to support when things don't seem to work.

Consider that if you call support and start talking about "Projects" and that the To Do List isn't showing your "widget" field correctly or some such - how are they going to know what your talking about and how easy will it be for them (or anyone in this forum) to help you without actually replicating *your* customizations in *their* environment.

This doesn't mean that all customizations are "bad" - just that you sometimes have to think of the "bigger picture" and decide whether you're willing to trade the ability for ease of support in order to acquire your own personalized view of the product.

A lot of what's been discussed here are "enhancements" - and those are generally much easier to support. It's just the free-for-all customizeability that I think needs to be thought about in more depth.

Being able to choose the colors that are used to differentiate tasks is one thing, being able to completely change the columns of information (which columns, what order, where they show up) starts to become something else.

I don't mean to rain on the parade here - please keep the ideas flowing - but think a little bit more about their potentical ramifications. As has often been said "be careful what you ask for, you just may get it"

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Migrateduser

Good points, indeed. It's almost like asking someone what they want and they answer "world peace". They will probably be ok if they can achieve something less than that. And so when you open up a TeamSite forum by saying "what do you want?", we will ask for the equivalent of world peace, even though we know we're probably not going to get it. I would be content if there were small steps toward better customization - not necessarily moving things around on the page, but at least similar customizations that exist elsewhere in the product. Open all the pull-downs to allowing custom menu items and allow us to disable any pulldown option we choose. Allow for more information to appear, or less information, for a displayed task. I do think the best really big change would be the full view of the workflow - I think if I had to pick one really huge change that would be it. I understand the issues with support, but I don't really sympathize too much - this software is very expensive and I would hope that as it evolves that support will keep up. Easy for me to say...

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Michelle, are you for real? Or are you just a robot interwoven created that will be nice no matter how much I complain? Seriously, I appreciate your willingness to listen. I am somewhat disappointed at the lack of people responding to your original post in this thread. How many times do customers of a product get to voice their candid views to the engineers who deveolp that product? People need to take advantage of this opportunity.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Adam Stoller

this software is very expensive and I would hope that as it evolves that support will keep up. Easy for me to say...

Again - I think it depends on the degree of customization allowed for. Being able to shift the ordering of menu items or hide them (already available in the main UI) don't really impact support. Being able to move "standard" menu items around from menu list to menu list and/or to custom menu lists gets a bit trickier.

Customization is a good thing, but like all good things, too much can often be as bad as too little. It's a question of finding a good balance.

And again, don't let me stop you (as if anyone could stop you :-)) from continuing to contribute ideas for improving the UI.

--fish
(Interwoven Senior Technical Consultant)

Migrateduser

Thank you for appreciating my willingness to listen. I think that DevNet is a great way for customers to communicate with actual engineers. Hopefully word will spread that Interwoven engineers actually read and respond to DevNet posts. We're very interested in hearing directly how our products are used.

Michelle

Configure Platform and Queues.png

Hazzie

I have to agree that i find the Task Id's and Job Id's vital in finding out what is going on at times. That and a quick iwgetwobj help me out alot. If the id's are to go then perhaps iwgetwfobj could be modified to not only list the id's of the tasks that make up the job but add the task names so we can match up them up and there by do another iwgetwfobj. I wouldnt be adveresed to seeing Task Id's appear and disappear depending on role.

Hazzie
TS 5.5.2 on NT.