51黑料不打烊

Transcript

Well, we are two minutes in. Yeah, so let鈥檚 get started. Welcome everyone. This is the Workfront Fusion Fix, Ericsson鈥檚 Smarter Way to Unlocking True Event Costs. This is really, I can鈥檛 wait for this, this is going to be really fun. Before we get started and do our introductions, just FYI, it鈥檚 the question that everyone always asks, this session is being recorded. We鈥檙e actually recording it two different ways. So you鈥檒l get the recording, you鈥檒l get the slides and resources after this event. It鈥檒l probably be this afternoon just because of meetings, but I promise you鈥檒l get it today.

This is being sponsored, hosted by your Workfront Scale team. We鈥檙e all here.

You know us, so we鈥檙e not going to go into introductions because that鈥檚 not what you鈥檙e here to see. But if you do need us, you can reach us at csatscaleatadobe.com. So that鈥檚 the only thing I wanted to point out. I am Cynthia Boone. We鈥檙e going to talk about the Workfront Fusion Fix with Lucas. A bito today from Ericsson, and we鈥檙e going to have plenty of time for Q&A. So bring your questions.

With that, welcome, Lucas. We are so excited to have you here. I鈥檓 about to stop sharing so you can share. But this is so amazing, this session, and I can鈥檛 wait for everyone to get the best ideas from your session. So I鈥檓 going to stop sharing.

There I can see you. Awesome. Yeah. Let me know if my screen comes up and it shows mine for you guys. Awesome. Well, Cynthia, thank you for the introduction and for having me today. It鈥檚 funny to be here just over a year ago when we purchased Fusion or have the ability to use it. I remember reaching out to our sales rep and asking to be connected within the community, just to get ideas like how do people use this? I know it鈥檚 powerful, I know it can do a lot, but what are the use cases? Then fast forward, it鈥檚 quite interesting to find myself here now sharing with the community on a use case of our own. So it鈥檚- Love it. That鈥檚 the way it works, but I love that. It鈥檚 been really cool. Yes. So welcome everybody from whichever part of the country or the world that you鈥檙e joining from. I am actually based in Kansas City as well. I saw someone on chat that鈥檚 pretty close by. So that was interesting to see.

Wanted to quickly introduce myself before we get into the topic.

We have, within our team, we have two Fusion admins, me, myself, one of them and then Sam, my partner in crime. He unfortunately could not be here today to co-host a session with me, but I still wanted to really show that we don鈥檛 do this alone. We are a small but mighty team trying to automate some workflows and do some cool stuff and think outside the box here on what we do. So my role with Ericsson, I鈥檓 a marketing technology and analytics manager. What that long title just really means is that I鈥檓 responsible for our MarTech tools and any data analytics reporting insights. You鈥檒l see that that blends well with what today鈥檚 topic is, which is reporting on expenses using one of our tools, of course, work in combination with Fusion. My background is in computer science, so I love doing this. Automation is something that I鈥檓 really passionate about, just simplifying processes and helping people out to work smarter and not harder. This is something that I really enjoy doing. But before we get into the use case, I wanted to just quickly share where we are within our journey with Fusion. What have we done and share some insights from our experience. Just like I said, we have had Fusion for just about a year now. We鈥檙e two administrators. We have currently 14 active scenarios in our production environment. There鈥檚 three times more. Actually, four times more than that, just sitting inactive either being developed that have been deprecated or that we just use for training purposes and experimentations. I will cover some of those scenarios on how we use them shortly below here. Our team that鈥檚 involved within Workfront is of about 60 people, about 60 employees that we support directly. But the processes that Fusion implements or enhances, that is way over 100 plus employees internally today. It鈥檚 something really exciting for us that we can see this in action and actually see the results, the benefits that it brings within our organization. As far as simple scenarios that we run today internally, I broke them up into two simple categories. More of internal only Workfront tasks, where we focus on just reducing the number of steps or clicks that a user would have to do within Workfront. For example, automatically assigning a task based on inputs provided on the issue or the request form, or automatically creating a project after a certain approval is given. Automatically assigning a template based on the type of work that鈥檚 being requested, or dynamically just renaming a project to include a Workfront ID into it, that will then use it for today鈥檚 demo. All of these are what you might call small things, but they鈥檙e aimed to just make people鈥檚 life easier or remove some of those elements that they actually have to do with Workfront when it comes out of the box. Then on the right-hand side, we have more of the external facing integrations that we鈥檝e worked on. We export a lot of data from Workfront outside of it, going into tools like Power BI or SharePoint for additional reporting. We do SLA trackings outside of Workfront, and we do that through these types of integrations. We actually piloted a very interesting project, which was to track our inventory and asset management. Within our marketing team, we run a lot of events.

We spread across the US, so physical assets like tablets, computers, demos, and things that we use for these events. Of course, there are third-party tools that are built just for this, but we wanted to stretch Workfront and really see what Fusion could do.

Could we use this tool as a way to request inventory and make sure that we can actually see, is it being used? Is it not? For how long? When can I actually request? We were able to do that by creating assets as job roles within the system and doing API calls back into Workfront in order to get some status updates on them. So maybe that鈥檚 a topic for a future session. I don鈥檛 know, just a hint there for Cynthia eventually, but just something that I wanted to share that was a little out of the box as well. Of course, today鈥檚 topic, which is expense reporting and tracking. Then we also integrate with several by just doing REST API calls with several platforms with our data warehouse, which is based with just Google BigQuery, but also other MarTech tools as well. So this is at a very high level how we use Fusion today.

Let鈥檚 go into today鈥檚 topic of choice.

Events for us is really big. It鈥檚 one of the big components of our marketing team. We鈥檙e running events pretty much throughout the year, but reporting ROI or creating a full puzzle of expenses or for events can be pretty complicated. Within the marketing scope, when we think about ROI, the things that we look for on an event are normally attendance. How many people we invited, registered, and ended up showing up, and we have tools that we track that.

Sales opportunities. Did that generate any improvements or movements on our sales pipeline? So we track that as well. We track perception, satisfaction through surveys. And then there鈥檚 the component of cost, which I need to be very clear. All of this is done today. It was done before Workfront. It鈥檚 not that we didn鈥檛 have a handle of our cost, but it was just very manual in nature in how this was tracked and reported. And that鈥檚 because when we鈥檙e dealing with an event here internally at Ericsson, there鈥檚 three different systems that go into requesting or making purchases or incurring expenses. So that creates a fragmented approach, and I鈥檒l cover that next. So that鈥檚 the missing link here towards a full automation of providing an event ROI that we thought this could be a good use case to use Workfront for. So those three systems that I mentioned are outlined here. The first one are purchase orders. So if someone needs to make a transaction for an event that鈥檚 with a large established vendor, we actually brought this process into Workfront. We鈥檝e centralized it there. So we don鈥檛 use Workfront just from a project flow perspective. We also use it for these types of requests. Because an event is already logged into Workfront, it鈥檚 very easy for us to tie a purchase order that鈥檚 also requested in Workfront to that event because we鈥檙e talking within the same system. But for virtual cards, which are used for general incidentals as an example, those are tracked on a completely separate custom built internal tool to us. And then we also have the travel expenses. So those are your expenses related to when you鈥檙e on site, your airfare, hotel, business meals, transportation, anything of that nature. Those are tracked via SAP. So as you can see, three different locations where employees need to go in order to record their transactions associated to an event. So we thought we need a better place to store this because this is what we normally get from finance. These really big, raw financial exports that are very hard to parse because they don鈥檛 really describe that a transaction belonged to a particular event that we鈥檙e looking for. Yes, we鈥檒l see the details of who the employee was, how much it cost, what that transaction was for, whether it was airfare versus hotel, as an example. But because we run so many of these events, it gets very confusing and things get mixed up very quickly. So normally what would happen, potentially here based on dates, is we might have someone from our finance team or our ops team reach out to the participant and say, hey, which one of these were your transactions so that we can reconcile? So when we saw this, we鈥檙e like, there鈥檚 got to be a better way. And that鈥檚 when Workfront really came to mind. So we鈥檙e like, OK, we鈥檙e going to use Workfront. It鈥檚 going to centralize all the expenses. It鈥檚 going to streamline it all. We鈥檒l ask employees to come in. They already use Workfront, so they鈥檒l click on the Expense tab and log in those expenses again. Life is good.

Problem is, we already have three separate tools that they have to go in to track expenses. Now we鈥檙e introducing a fourth one because they still need to go to the source to request them anyways. So while this provided a good foundation, a good landing place, we didn鈥檛 want to introduce that additional step. So that鈥檚 when we thought about Fusion. So if Fusion can be our orchestrator, if Fusion can go out to all of those systems, pull those transactions, and then load it into Workfront itself, then we鈥檒l deliver a real value. So this was our ideal path when we鈥檙e thinking about SAP, that last bucket there that I showed on system number three. We鈥檒l build on Fusion on top. We鈥檒l move the data into Workfront. Problem is, we never got access, direct access to SAP. So that was our first blow. Like, well, how do we solve this now that we don鈥檛 have direct access? So either one, we give up and just tell people, hey, you need to go to Workfront and put in your task, but I wasn鈥檛 willing to fight that battle.

Or we tried to be creative. So our current path today is we learned that from SAP, the Finest team creates a Power BI dashboard. So we said, great, we鈥檒l connect Fusion to Power BI. We didn鈥檛 have access. We鈥檙e like, what can we do next? So our thought was we can use Power Automate to connect to Power BI and then move that data into SharePoint. And now that it鈥檚 in SharePoint, we can have Fusion connect to it and finally move it into Workfront.

So what should have been a straight push from the financial source system into Workfront became a four-step hop with Power Automate involved, with Fusion involved. But this is just to show that if you keep on trying and you think outside the box, you can still move things around and get things done. So what does that look like practically for our employees? What do we ask them to do? So going back to that puzzle piece on cost, there鈥檚 three components, three systems. Whenever they request a purchase order within that source system, what we ask them to do is the Workfront reference ID, your project ID, becomes our key to joining this all together. So when you go into your source system, I know it鈥檚 very small and probably hard to read, but this is just to give you an idea, within your expense name, please make sure you enter WFID and whatever that number is, and we鈥檒l provide that to you. When you go to SAP, the same thing. Make sure you just enter it as part of your expense name, and the same thing happens on the virtual card system. As you can see, the interfaces are completely different, but what we鈥檙e asking them to do is for all of them, please enter that ID that we鈥檒l then use to map back to Workfront.

So if all that is done, this is what we can create. These are fictitious numbers. I messed them up here for privacy purposes, but now we have a central, automated, and an easy way to analyze all of those expenses in one place. This screenshot here that you see was a combination of six different reports submitted by employees, where we could very quickly track all of the purchase orders, over $300,000, $30,000 in travel and expense costs, and $82,000 without ever having to open that Excel file that I showed you a couple slides ago. Giving us a total cost for that event. This also gives us the ability to track individual line items when it comes to categories.

I will get into a demo here shortly, just to give you guys an idea on how everything gets connected. But what I wanted to mention here is that our goal with Workfront, with this project, was never to understand what each individual employee is charging to an event. I don鈥檛 care what Lucas鈥檚 airfare cost. I just want to know how much we paid in airfare altogether for this event. So when we鈥檙e pulling this information in, we鈥檙e not bringing in any employee-related identifiers, or anything that can be tracked back to an employee. What鈥檚 shared in Workfront here are just the transaction amounts and the category they belong to. So we鈥檙e now consolidating it all here into the view where we can have a better understanding of how much we spent on airfare, on hotel, on meals, just day-to-day expenses, and in other transactions involving expenses.

The last point I wanted to make here about this screen, which I know it鈥檚 probably also hard to read, I apologize, is that because we don鈥檛 want to track every line item, let鈥檚 say six of us submitted this report.

I don鈥檛 want to see six individual line items for tickets. I only want to see a total line item for airfare. And that was another challenge that we had to address via the Fusion scenario, just making sure that we grouped all of those transactions together of the same category type to be able to simplify reporting here on Workfront.

So I showed you what we were trying to do, how we did it, but it wasn鈥檛 easy. I talked about the access limitations. That was definitely a bump that we had in the road. But the main one was just inconsistent naming conventions, because yes, there鈥檚 still the human element. They still need to go into those source systems and enter that WFID into the source systems. But we thought we had it all mapped out. So we said, well, we鈥檙e going to use a regular expression. We鈥檒l play with regex. And what we鈥檒l do is we鈥檙e going to look at whatever that report name that they used, and we鈥檙e just going to pull the numerical values out of it. So bullet point one, if someone enters something called Ericsson event WFID 12345, we鈥檙e just going to get 12345 back, and we鈥檙e going to use that as part of our Fusion flow. So that proved to work, and we were really excited. We thought we were done until someone entered what looks like bullet point number two, where they actually put the date, the year, I鈥檓 sorry, as part of their event name. Because our regular expression was looking at numbers, it took that year as well, concatenated it with the actual ID, and created an ID that doesn鈥檛 exist. So we鈥檙e like, all right, how do we address for that? So we thought maybe we look for year patterns, four-digit numbers that start with 19 or 20, and then we exclude those. But what if by some reason there is a work for the ID that starts with 20, and we鈥檙e going to incorrectly remove it? So that was another issue. Then bullet point three came in, where we started seeing variations where people were entering additional IDs from other systems as well, which our previous thought on looking for the year patterns were no longer catching it anymore. So this was really a big thing for us on how to create a formula that really tried to encompass all of these scenarios, and that鈥檚 what we got to with that little string there. I鈥檓 recommending regx101.com. I think it鈥檚 a really valuable site for you to test inputs and see how it outputs within the tool. That鈥檚 something that we leverage, and we finally got to that solution where it looks for any numbers that come after WFID, and if it finds any space after that, it ignores other numbers. So it鈥檚 working for all of these scenarios that I showed you. Is it 100% airtight? Not really, but we鈥檙e 90 to 95% there, which for us at this point, until we have full automation, is good enough at the moment. So inconsistent naming conventions, access restrictions, like I said, would have been much easier if we could have gone system to system, and then missed inputs. So our source systems, once you submit an expense report, for example, it locks those headers. So if someone forgot to put in their Workfront ID initially, you can鈥檛 go back, edit, and include it. So we still needed some sort of a manual way to get those reports from people and still link them into Workfront. These were the Ericsson side of the house issues. And then from a Fusion side, just upscaling in general, and learning how to use the platforms, which modules to use, when to use them, and how they interact. Like it was our first time using the expense collections and understanding how to group those transactions together and lump some of them all into one in order to create one category instead of multiple line items. So challenging, but we got there. But we don鈥檛 want to stop here. This is our first step. We have bigger ambitions.

What comes next for us is, like I was saying, we want to push this automation further. We want to continue to remove manual work. And the way we achieve that is if we can actually push data from Workfront into SAP instead of just pulling data out of SAP. So right now we鈥檙e asking people to go to SAP and add a Workfront ID into their expense report. We want to create the expense report on their behalf, being triggered by Workfront. So in the people tab, if I can add a list of people that are going to attend our event, I would love to upon approval, to take all of those names, go into SAP programmatically, and create the shell for that expense report on their behalf. So one, we鈥檙e ensuring this process gets done. It鈥檚 being done correctly. And we鈥檙e also helping our end users because they don鈥檛 actually have to do this in SAP when they actually go there. So is this currently in flight? Not yet. There鈥檚 a big battle here in push, though it鈥檚 getting approval to do this because of course it鈥檚 a financial system. It鈥檚 very sensitive and opening to external integrations. But this is what we aim to achieve.

So with that, let me show you a little bit of it in action here because I felt like I did quite a bit of talking.

I will jump into our scenario in Fusion. But this is what it looks like. We have three of these scenarios, one for each of the systems that I showed initially, one for the purchase orders, one for the virtual cards, and one for the SAP connection. The overview of it in a very high level nutshell is that we start with SharePoint. We鈥檙e watching for those items there in SharePoint, looking for new entries within the source system. Then we鈥檙e filtering for just the transactions that are relevant to us because these source systems spit out more data than we care for. We only care for event-related expenses, so we鈥檙e getting all of our team鈥檚 expenses through it. So we of course are trying to filter for just the transactions that contain that WFID as part of it. Then we use an aggregator to create those bundles of expenses and that鈥檚 where we go into regex to fully just parse out the numerical value of what was entered by the user. And then we start going to the regular process of Workfront. So with that idea, we鈥檒l jump into querying what project that is. Out of that project, what expenses does it have? Once we get the expenses, of what type are those expenses? Again, going back to what I described, we want to club expenses together within the same category. This is what we do here through additional aggregations and variable settings here. Until we finally get into our first decision, our first decision fork here, or second, I guess, where we decide, is this a brand new expense and a brand new expense type that we need to add to the project? Easy path. We go up. If it鈥檚 something existing, we need to query all of those transactions. Again, search for the project and then eventually add those costs in there.

So with that, let me transition my screen and I will show you here on the other side.

This is special, folks. What this looks like? He鈥檚 about to go into Fusion. I鈥檓 sorry, I couldn鈥檛 hear you, Cynthia. I was going to say, this is special. He鈥檚 about to go into Fusion. So we don鈥檛 get this that often.

Let me make sure I鈥檓 sharing my right screen here. There we go.

Can you see my screen? Yes.

Yes. So I鈥檓 sorry, I鈥檒l probably disappoint. I can鈥檛 run this scenario live here for the demo because this is in production. I did not set a test environment for it. So if I do run it, we鈥檙e going to potentially mess up our reporting. But I鈥檒l at least show you some of the modules as I was explaining. So very simple SharePoint watch items here. If you鈥檙e using it, instead of just doing the list items, we鈥檙e watching for any new elements that come in.

Within our variable setting, one thing that we did was we had to map all of our expense types that were coming in from SAP. We created them in Workfront as well. So we could merge them together. So we had a place to store those transactions in an easy, digestible way. So this is what we do here with this long list of variables. Now, I know there鈥檚 probably 100 different ways to achieve this same goal with Fusion. This is just the route that we took, of course.

Then we aggregate the bundles. So here鈥檚 the regex expression where we take out those Workfront IDs from the strings entered by the user. And then we go into Workfront to search the projects. Using that ID, we get the attributes that we need. And then we query expenses, get the expense types, and then we start going through the flow in order to create the expense again, doing several tests within the bundles that we have. Here鈥檚 a sample output that I can share. This just kind of showing from a previous run where we have a bundle that has an ID. And here鈥檚 a better example. On bundle number three, you have the SharePoint ID with multiple entries. That just means multiple transactions. So we had multiple employees charging hotel expenses where we鈥檙e aggregating that number and storing it as one back in Workfront instead of having each one of these transactions as a different line item, really creating a long list within our Workfront site.

So really, this is all I had to share. This is kind of the journey that we鈥檝e been on. We鈥檝e migrated away from those Excel files. Everything shows up in one place as long as we have the human aspect working, which is adding those IDs into the tool.

We have plans on making that process better and smarter, but some of these things are beyond our control when it comes to access control and permissions to be granted. So that鈥檚 it. That鈥檚 amazing. Because, OK, so I wrote some things down that just to me, you鈥檙e doing true Workfront work, right? And we all know what that means. Like you鈥檙e stretching it. Because my favorite part, honestly, of the presentation is we鈥檙e like, oh, we want to connect to SAP. You didn鈥檛 stop. You went, OK, well, I鈥檓 just going to walk around and I鈥檓 going to figure out a different way. And I feel like that鈥檚 all of us. OK, well, we鈥檒l find another way to do this.

So I just love that you didn鈥檛 just give up because we don鈥檛 ever give up, do we? So I鈥檓 going to start asking you questions from the chat. Are you ready? Yeah, let鈥檚 do it. And then we鈥檒l open it up. So the first one, just in general, it is from early in the presentation, but what do you get from exporting timelines into SharePoint? Is that some sort of visibility or what is that help of the team? Yes, so for example, when I talk about timelines being exported, our whole purchase order process, when we centralized it through Workfront, what it helps us with doing is that it gives us a view, a custom level view, onto SLAs. So within our template, let鈥檚 say we get a request in for a purchase order to be created. The first step is, of course, it needs to be reviewed. Do we have the budget for it? After there鈥檚 an approval on that, we move on to the actual inner works of going into the source financial systems and logging those, creating the actual POs and all of the bureaucratic pieces of executing or creating a purchase order. So each one of those steps are a task on our project flow within Workfront. And because we know how quickly people, when it was assigned, when it became ready, to the point that it got ready to be worked on, we just track those timestamps and we bring them out into a Power BI dashboard that we keep tabs of. I know we can do a lot of reporting within Workfront itself, but this is part of a bigger, I don鈥檛 know if I can show it here, honestly, but it鈥檚 part of a bigger analytics dashboard that we have that covers all of marketing operations, not just the PO side of things, but also how our campaigns perform. So it all sits in this separate portal and we can provide insights to our ops team to say, we鈥檙e hitting our SLAs in the intake form, like we鈥檙e processing it quickly, but the review step is taking longer than it should, or the PO generation or the communication with the supplier is taking too long. So that鈥檚 why we export these data points outside. We always talk about going to where your users normally want to find information. So that鈥檚 great. And the ability to see where we鈥檙e at with our SLA, because that鈥檚 always been a problem for me too. So that鈥檚 really brilliant. I love that.

Okay.

The question, and Monique asked this question, so did you have plans? Okay, so we know that you didn鈥檛 have access to SAP, but do you have plans to work with the SAP team to get read-only access for cleaner export? And bonus question, if so, did you build that original scenario where if you do get direct access, you can rework it or are you going to have to start over? It鈥檚 a two-part question. Yes. So we haven鈥檛 given up on either one of the fronts from a consumption layer or actually ingesting or pushing data into SAP.

What our finance teams wanted to, they challenged us within this process saying, well, instead of you going through this process, we鈥檒l create you different network codes or cost centers for each one of these transactions. So that was their way to try to solve the problem for us. But we run so many of these events that if we go that route, it becomes just a governance and reporting nightmare because we have different numbers for our employees to use on each type of event. So reconciling these would become harder with having to share all that information every time. The fact that everybody is in Workfront already participating as part of the project flow, it鈥檚 easier for them to just carry that ID there into SAP than introducing a complete new system, a complete new ID that they would have to track. So we keep on trying. We鈥檝e explained, we showed the benefits. It鈥檚 a governance approach as well. It鈥檚 not just simplification. We want to make sure that we are better forecasting our events. Like we get more requests to conduct events than at times we can fulfill. So having a true handle on all of these costs, when 2026 comes along, we can better prioritize to say, yes, we got these number of, these many people show up. We got these deals. We got this satisfaction, but it did cost us this much to execute. So is it still worth us going there compared to this other one that cost us less? Or can we do more or can we re-shift our strategy? Maybe we, you know, there鈥檚 different approaches based on cost or financial insights that can be analyzed by looking at this data. I was just thinking also, for me personally, the time saving that you鈥檙e helping with, like the multiple entries, even especially if you were able to push data into SAP and automatically create that expense report. In my mind, it鈥檚 always like, how much money are you saving without, by taking away the necessity for your employees to have to enter all this information and build that out. To me, that鈥檚 a big piece of fusion. So I don鈥檛 know, have you gone that route as well as like, hey, we鈥檙e also saving time and money in terms of automating this process? The effort to actually go out and create that initial expense report is not the big concern there. It鈥檚 because it鈥檚 pretty quick. So we don鈥檛 have hundreds of thousands of people doing that on a daily basis that we can really quantify and say, this is where our ROI really is. But it鈥檚 just the ability of being able to track what those events are in a faster way. Sorry, what those expenses are in a much faster way if they do get, if the process is followed, as we are asking people to do. Because going back to that Excel file that I showed, that is the reality. That鈥檚 how we get things and how we consume. So those transactions are categorized. Like I said, it鈥檚 going to say hotel, and it鈥檚 going to say Cynthia and a certain date, but it doesn鈥檛 belong. It doesn鈥檛 say this belongs to the 51黑料不打烊 Summit versus the experience gathering or whatever. So as we鈥檙e trying to reconcile these, it just becomes very hard because you can have employees at then two to three different events within the same week. So at that point, it鈥檚 like, was this airfare here? What should it fall under? For B, for C, for D. And that鈥檚 where we get the true value in having those answers much faster. But it鈥檚 also hard to quantify what that saving really is, because it can be a lot during a certain time of the year, less during other times. It just depends. Gotcha. I think we also had that report, the Workfront report that had the chart on it. There was a request if you would mind, like, what鈥檚 the break, how you created that report in Workfront.

Let me see if I can pull that out, because I鈥檓 actually not the one who created that. That was Sam.

So I鈥檒l see if I can bring it up before the end of the session as you鈥檙e going through the next questions. And we鈥檒l see if we can get there. There鈥檚 just one more, and then we鈥檙e going to open it up.

The tip, I think it was from Kristen. Kristen, you gave this tip. You might be able to use Fusion to push a communication to the relevant folks with the correct naming convention ID for them to use in the SAP report. And I didn鈥檛 know if that made sense or if, because I鈥檓 not a Fusion expert or a few, but I just thought it was cool that she was like, hey, here鈥檚 an idea.

I actually love that, and I appreciate the comment. This is something that we鈥檝e been, and I鈥檇 love to get some feedback on from others as well and from the person that asked the question, because we are currently struggling in getting our outlook integrated with Fusion. So the ability of sending communications directly through Fusion, maybe there鈥檚 a better way. It鈥檚 the first time that we鈥檙e trying to do such thing, but not just for this purpose, but for other use cases as well, like communicating with suppliers, emails that are more customized than just what Workfront would generate.

We thought that we could just integrate with our Microsoft 365 Outlook module or connector in Fusion, but it鈥檚 a permission issue internally where our IT team is saying what鈥檚 being requested of Fusion from us is that we give, I think, full read access or read permissions, and we can鈥檛 entertain that. So it鈥檚 a roadblock for us on the email side. So if people found workarounds or that鈥檚 not how they鈥檙e doing, I would really like to learn more on that.

You can definitely get it from this community, so we鈥檒l put the challenge out there. I know a lot of customers that have used Outlook. I don鈥檛 know how they overcame that. Again, you鈥檙e probably in a very locked down. I came from financial services, so every system, anytime I tried to integrate with another system, there was always pushback.

So I think that鈥檚 a legit question.

Oh, Kirsten. Thank you, Kirsten. Said we have Outlook connected with service account that sends custom emails. Feel free to reach out. So you found your friends. For the record, y鈥檃ll, I promised Lucas that this would happen, and so I did not set this up. But thank you for being the generous community that you are.

So do y鈥檃ll want to just come off mute and ask any other questions? I鈥檓 just going to keep reading, but rather hear y鈥檃ll鈥檚 voice if you just want to ask your questions directly.

Hey, so we are in the process.

So first of all, thank you very much for organizing this, Cynthia and Lucas. Thanks for that wonderful presentation and clarity.

Our team is in the process of looking into integrations with Salesforce.

And while the requirements elicitation is in the preliminary phase, are there certain things you would want to call out that would guide us through bringing the data from Salesforce into Workfront? Because that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e looking at right now. Number one. Number two, what are some of those governance precautionary measures? We should take into account when bringing in data from another system, especially Salesforce in our case, which I know you鈥檝e demonstrated SAP, but I think the ideology is the same, right? Or similar.

So and Cynthia, I don鈥檛 know if you want to address that as well, but my two cents on it, because as you alluded, we鈥檙e not connecting directly to Salesforce. Salesforce for us, it鈥檚 a very controlled and tight environment, which I would love to be able to integrate directly with. But that is not allowed at this point. But from a governance standpoint on what we do with this financial data is we have when we created that SharePoint list that鈥檚 pulling out of Power BI, we just put a lot of effort to ensure that we鈥檙e not creating duplication of records so that we鈥檙e just getting the unique records and we鈥檙e just pulling things on certain timestamps. So when things get modified within the system, we do also do complete trunk and loads at times just to make sure things get refreshed so that we were always in sync and we鈥檙e matching both sides. So those are a couple of things that we do just to ensure that what the elements that we have are not matching with the source system originally intended. And then we also expect to get things on a certain date. Our financial systems don鈥檛 update.

The exports from those financial systems don鈥檛 update on a daily basis. Yes, the financial systems do, but they鈥檙e not pushing it on a daily basis. So we also check if new data is coming in when we expect it to. So those are kind of the controls or what we do in order to make sure that we鈥檙e not incorrectly reporting or creating an incorrect financial view or representation of what we have.

And Mike, go ahead, Ritesh. No, that鈥檚 fine. I was just thinking.

So, yeah, I was just gonna say that Salesforce was the only one that I was successful with. And that鈥檚 because it was the coolest admin team ever, the Salesforce. Like they were, it was so funny. They might as well have been work front people because everything, when I would meet with them, I鈥檓 like, hey, what would you think about us doing this and cutting out, you know, maybe automating? And I just need to know the field name. Like they were so willing, unlike the JIRA team, but like to just jump in there and let鈥檚 just see. So like that would be the only tip that I have. And I think, oh yeah, Stacy did the same thing in the chat. Like it came down, honestly, even though there were very strict rules on integrations, it strangely came down to the team of admins and what they were willing like kind of to go around the rules to try something out. So that was my experience. But I don鈥檛 know about anybody else.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Mona, you鈥檙e right. Definitely. IT versus like sales. Sales to me was always like, whatever we got to do to make it easier for like, yeah. So it鈥檚 just as a funny mindset. But yeah.

Anybody else got any questions? We have some time and I have some resources to share because I know that one of the big questions we get is how do you learn Fusion? And so I see names in this right here. They are self-taught Fusion people, but there are definitely some options. There鈥檚 classes, there鈥檚 remote consulting. Oh, Krista, go ahead.

Oh, I did. I achieved at this time. I got the mic. Turned on.

This is unfortunately not a Fusion related question, but Lucas got my brain moving. We also have super complicated event, events request forms.

And so if we ask the user, is this a presence or web? Is it a single event? The next question is, is it a single event? Is it a road show? Is it a row of events, which is different than a road show? And then we ask, then we, depending on what they choose, they have different web formats or different present formats. And each combination carries its own planning day count.

If you have a road show or a row, then it gets multiplied by how many appointments there are.

And then we try to tell them how much all that鈥檚 going to cost.

And I鈥檓 wondering, we鈥檝e been using a super, a few super complicated calculated fields to calculate all of that and let them know. I鈥檓 wondering if we would be better served with external lookup fields and does anyone have any experience with that or opinions? Thoughts? Would you use Fusion for that Krista to like go grab data? I鈥檓 trying to think if that would even be necessary if it鈥檚 solved in like an external lookup thing. But I feel like with external lookup, it鈥檇 be much easier to remove choices and add than it would be because now with half of the web formats, it costs 40 an hour because it comes from a team internally. And with all of the other formats, whether they鈥檙e web or present, it鈥檚 an 85 euro per hour price tag. So that adds then another complication to it.

Monique, did you have some thoughts or questions? I did. I did.

I was going to say, I like your background, Danielle.

But anyway, I was going to say that in Fusion, there are data stores. So depending on where that information lives and how often it鈥檚 updated, you could just have it live there and then have Fusion kind of tap into that, do whatever multiplication and spit out a number.

Maybe not the VLOOKUP route, but just using your information in a data store and then doing it that way.

What I鈥檝e learned recently is that Fusion doesn鈥檛 work with requests that haven鈥檛 yet been submitted. And what we鈥檙e doing currently is we鈥檙e showing them a cost before they鈥檝e submitted the question, the request, sorry.

Yeah, no, that鈥檚 an important little caveat there because, yeah, live in depending on what your process is, like I鈥檓 assuming once they see the cost, they can kind of make different choices and update their requests on the fly. So because of that, you might need to go to VLOOKUP or because even calculated fields are going to give you the same kind of thing where you kind of have to hit the done button before it can do its thing. But if there is a possibility for them to submit it, then see the number, and then with that edit it, you could go that route or have like a secondary form that gets attached by some Fusion that once they鈥檝e done it, then they go back in and answer it. So there鈥檚 still a couple of routes, but all of those are going to be just as complicated as what you have going on. Okay.

I was just going to add one note on the external lookups that one thing we鈥檝e found recently is that they do act differently to the type of head fields and that they don鈥檛 have a link to the data. So as you鈥檙e going in and making changes, that might work well for you if you鈥檙e just doing it right there and showing them that immediate cost. But if you鈥檙e ever having to go back and then update those fields or change anything on the back end, the external lookup field doesn鈥檛 then update. So there鈥檚 no link to the data back and forth there. So just something if you do go down that route, something to be aware of. Okay. Thanks so much.

Thanks, everybody. Again, Lucas, check it out. Here鈥檚 your team. I know. And I was thinking when the external lookups came up because the solution we did with the inventory tracking, we kind of ran into a similar issue where we actually had to do an initial submission of that request in order for it to then spit out the availability instead of it live, just telling us, no, this is already being used.

But it鈥檚 not an area that I鈥檝e worked on too much. So I didn鈥檛 feel I felt like there would be other members in the community more qualified to answer on it. Cindy, I just wanted to cover one thing really quick that I kind of pushed back from an earlier question. I鈥檓 going to share my screen again. Someone had asked about the expense, the report that we had. So I was just kind of reverse engineering what we had here. Basically, what we have are just two reports that were done. So very, very basic reports, just charting and then putting on a matrix on a table view where we built charts. And then we have a dashboard that put these two reports together and have it in work front. That is what that visual that I showed with the six transactions looked like. And so the one was a matrix report? Yes. So there鈥檚 one report for the chart visual and then there鈥檚 another report for just the matrix in the bottom. So then we have a dashboard that puts those two reports one on top of the other. So that鈥檚 what it is. Well done. Thank you for sharing that. Of course.

I鈥檓 going to share my screen really quickly. We only have a few minutes left. With you all, just like some resources really quickly.

And give me one second. And then we will, if you want me, share your screen. There we go.

Back in presentation mode, please.

Then we can see. Yay. There we go. All right. So we have upcoming events just really quickly. So next week we have the admin 101, bring your questions, work front collective. And then there鈥檚 another Fusion event this month. This is the follow up for the navigating the work front API for the multi-select fields. And then we have a planning, a work front planning event.

Just as a note for you all, the 51黑料不打烊 summer break is coming up.

Just, you know, not, it鈥檚 not a brag. It鈥檚 just a fact. I鈥檓 just kidding. June 30th through July the 4th. So we won鈥檛 have any events that week. But we will come straight back in with getting started with work front. And the thing that you all are going to want to come to is the third quarter release webinar. So you鈥檒l get these links, but you鈥檙e going to want to sign up for that. And then the next day will be the admin chat for marketing creative. So those are upcoming events that you want to sign up for.

This is hot off the press, like literally like days hot off the press. There鈥檚 a brand new fusion template change project timeline when tasks completed early. And your PMs will love this. So typically, right, if something gets completed ahead of schedule, then you have to like literally change dates and update, like instead of trying to just automatically accelerate the timeline. This is done early. Everything should like let鈥檚 go ahead and get everything done early. So this template will automate that. Just wanted to share that with you all, that that is available as a template. The other one that was released, I believe last month. This is again, I just want to bring it back up just in case you weren鈥檛 aware. This is something that we have been wanting forever is where it changes the proof role to read only. So if you just have a bunch of proofs that if the project鈥檚 rejected dead, then it鈥檒l take care of all of that for you. Here are the things that I wanted to show you. So we have a lot of fusion resources for those of you that were like wanting to learn more or to start your training. And I think Kristin posted one too. So there鈥檚 a bunch of resources here.

And there鈥檚 two new perspectives. Nicole published the eight step, Nicole and Jen eight step reporting guide. So this was something we mentioned last week. But if you haven鈥檛 checked it out, please go look at it. This is an amazing. And then literally again, just published, Kurt and Sky published a perspective on work front certification. So these are like just so many different resources coming out. And we wanted to make sure that you all were aware of them. Thank you for posting the survey in the chat. So please do the survey and let us know if you liked it.

I鈥檓 going to stop sharing here because Lucas, this was amazing.

Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure. And just seeing the ideas here sparked, I know I鈥檓 going to take a lot back on the email side. So this helped me a lot as well. I鈥檓 glad. I鈥檓 so glad. That鈥檚 when you give your time to the community and take the time to build that presentation and share it with us. I really wanted you to be able to get that that information back as well. So thank you for your time. Thank you all for being the best, generous community in the whole world. You all are amazing. And I mean, I鈥檝e decided you can take tomorrow off. Everyone can just take tomorrow off. And I want you to have a nice long weekend.

Sounds good. Thank you. Yeah, you鈥檙e welcome.

Thanks, everybody.

And we鈥檒l get the I promise you鈥檒l get the recording and the follow up and all the things this afternoon.

So we鈥檒l see you on the next event, hopefully next week. And otherwise, have a great weekend. Thanks again, Lucas. Thank you. Amazing.

Bye, everyone.