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Workfront: Maximize Efficiency with AI | Adobe for Business

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Workfront: Maximize Efficiency with AI | Adobe for Business

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422 segments

0:07

Hi everyone, we are so glad to be with you today to talk about AI in the world of work

0:13

management. This is something that is really interesting. We often think of AI in the sense of

0:18

generative AI and content creation, but there's huge benefit and application in bringing the

0:25

capabilities of AI into the way we enable work each and every day. So Scott and I are really

0:31

excited to talk to you about that. We're going to share some theory. We're going to talk about

0:35

practice and practical applications, because Scott is using many of these capabilities in his day to

0:42

day work today. But I wanted to start with some introductions so you know who we are. I'm Corey

0:49

Wolf, I'm a principal product marketing manager at Adobe. I've been in the marketing space for more

0:54

than 30 years. Sometimes I hate to admit that, but it's true. I've been with Adobe for nine years. And

1:01

a fun fact is that I am a work front boomerang. I was with work front before they were acquired. I

1:07

came to Adobe and when Word Front was acquired as a key linchpin to the Adobe portfolio,

1:14

I made sure I could get back on this team because I'm really passionate about the product. I think

1:20

it has such a relevant value proposition. Eliminating work chaos is something I'm keenly

1:26

interested in doing, as I'm sure all of you are as well. So I'm excited to be here with you today, and

1:32

even more excited to have Scott Maus joining me. And I'd like to give him a moment to introduce

1:37

himself. Thank you Corey. So I'm Scott Morse, as you mentioned, and I work for

1:43

ThyssenKrupp system Engineering. So we build assembly lines for automation for many industries.

1:49

So we work front more in a operations and manufacturing aspect than marketing. So we have a

1:55

lot of great use cases and AI has really helped us. We're going to cover some of that, but I've

2:00

been in operations and manufacturing for over 25 years. A work front sysadmin for six years. And

2:06

right now I'm leading our AI and our robotic processing initiatives within our companies. We

2:11

have several actions going on within our company that we're taking part in and trying to improve

2:16

our workflow, and Adobe is one of those. I have partnered up with many of the Adobe AI engineers

2:22

in exploring some ways in which we can make AI do more things for us. So it's been exciting to work

2:28

behind the scenes and trying to build things up that may be coming in the future. Thank you, Scott.

2:35

And I just want to reinforce that last point he made. Scott is on a first name basis with the AI

2:41

engineers at Adobe that are developing and refining the capabilities we're going to talk

2:45

about today. And as we've been preparing for this presentation, it's been really fun for me to see

2:51

the depth of his knowledge and how he's sometimes aware of things even before I am. So it is a real

2:57

privilege to have him here sharing both his knowledge about Adobe's plans and his expertise

3:03

as a practitioner using them. So this is our agenda. We're going to talk about AI's

3:10

role in the future of work management. Then we'll cover some work front AI features that are

3:15

currently available, and that you can all go try out immediately after this session. We'll tease

3:21

some upcoming work front AI features that we're very excited about. And then before we hit Q&A,

3:27

Scott and I have each curated a list of tips and tricks that we think are going to help you on

3:33

your journey to AI proficiency. So let's start with how AI is

3:40

transforming the work management landscape. Like I said earlier, I think we're all very familiar with

3:45

generative AI, but when you think about AI as a way to automate tasks, to to

3:52

enhance processes, to optimize the way we get things done, the potential is just limitless. And

3:59

so we're seeing huge interest in AI driven transformation in marketing organizations and

4:05

beyond. So this is really unlocking a new era of marketing productivity. And I think this stat is

4:12

very interesting. In our 2025 Digital Trends report, we found that more than half of senior

4:18

executives who are using AI report significant improvements in team efficiency. And this is

4:25

remarkable because AI is a relatively new technology. I've seen many transformative

4:31

technologies in my time as a product marketer, but nothing that approaches the scope and the scale

4:37

and the breathtaking speed of AI. And so what we're finding is that teams are feeling

4:44

urgency to get on the bandwagon, to start using it, to begin to understand how it's going to improve

4:50

their speed and scale, because without it, teams will struggle to keep up. And we hope this session

4:56

is going to help you in that quest to get ahead of the curve and to do some really great things

5:02

with AI that will make you more efficient than ever. So one thing we get asked quite often is

5:08

when should you invite AI to the table? We all know that that AI has application in many, many

5:15

places, but there's also a fear that it can do everything, that it can take over. Every process

5:20

and task that humans are accustomed to doing that simply isn't true. We really view AI as an

5:26

augmentation of human capability, and something that helps automate away the repetitive or time

5:33

consuming work that takes away from strategic pursuits. So that's the first thing. If you have

5:38

tasks that are repetitive, that are time consuming, that are laborious, that are preventing your

5:44

people from doing what they do best, that's a perfect time to bring AI to the table. The second

5:50

use case is when a task is particularly data heavy. AI is brilliant at mining data,

5:57

at collating and collecting information from many different sources, and synthesizing it so it can

6:02

be actioned upon. And that's the second case where you should absolutely not hesitate in bringing AI

6:09

to the table. The third use case is when you have a need or a task, or a process

6:16

that is rule based, but still requires some flexibility, in other words, some contextual

6:21

relevancy. AI is definitely capable of this, of applying the rules, but looking at a little bit of

6:28

nuance and context to ensure that the right result is achieved. And then finally, when you're

6:34

bottlenecked by human capacity and I think this is something every single one of you is probably

6:39

nodding your head at. We are getting more and more pressure to generate more and more output.

6:45

Whatever your industry, whatever department you work in, we are all being asked to do more than is

6:52

than we are humanly capable of doing. And that's why we need AI to come in and help in the areas

6:59

where it is best suited to do the work, and we can continue to do the things that humans are

7:04

uniquely capable of doing. Now, this is a list of some work front AI features that are currently

7:10

available in the product. Smart filters, catch me up summarization and as a non numbers

7:17

person, my personal favorite formula generation. But instead of talking about them generically, I

7:23

want to have Scott talk to you and show you how he is using them in his work at ThyssenKrupp

7:29

today. Thank you Corey. So as I mentioned, we use our work front instance to run

7:36

our entire operation. So that means every department from the beginning to the end

7:41

manufacturing health and safety. So we have a lot of tasks. Some of our projects have tasks upwards

7:47

to 200 for each project within a program. And we can go into greater detail on that. But this is

7:53

about AI. So let's talk about that. So AI helps us very quickly summarize where we're going and what

7:59

we're doing within a day. So in this first one we constantly have this debate within work front on

8:05

whether we use the homepage or priorities. But we have found that priorities really helps us out

8:10

due to the AI features that have been built into the priorities. First of all, in filters, you can

8:15

see here we have a filter screen pulled up in which we can use AI to do some kind of natural

8:21

language filters if you want, but also there's some suggested filters that are shown here on the

8:26

screen. So if you're looking for a task or a project, you can simply type it in. Or if you want

8:30

it to summarize certain things, you can do that here. But then the next feature, which is really

8:36

nice, is Catch Me Up. So if you've been away for a few days, or if you need to kind of figure out

8:41

what you've done over the last few days, you can use the Catch Me Up feature. So you just simply

8:46

click on it. A window opens up, which is our AI window, and you can type Catch Me Up. You can

8:52

summarize the last 24 hours, the last day or the last seven days. So if we take a look and we click

8:58

on the last few days, we can see that it goes through each of the different projects that are

9:04

shown in the screen to the left, and kind of gives you an update of what's going on in those

9:08

projects within the last seven days. So if we look at the next one, there's actually a little bit of

9:13

activity, more so than the other two. But here we have there was two new comments on the project,

9:18

and it gives you a link that you can quickly link. Click the link and get to it. So it's a great

9:23

feature to summarize your work really quickly. If you have a lot of tasks or projects that you're

9:28

participating on. So the next feature is summarizing, which again will also show you a

9:34

different way in summarizing, but with the AI assistant, if you have a project or a program that

9:40

has many projects underneath it, or a project that has many tasks it can very easily summarize. This

9:45

screen is showing us here that we're summarizing a program, and it will just give us a high level

9:51

view of what's going on within that program. If you click again, we can kind of see all the

9:56

information that it provides us when we say summarize this program. If we go to the next

10:02

screen, we're going to see a project. So now let's summarize a project. And as I mentioned our

10:06

projects. And you can kind of see by some of the task numbers there that our projects have about

10:11

200 tasks. So it's a lot of information that a project manager will have to go through to kind

10:16

of see where the project is heading. If we hit summarize the project, we see something very

10:21

similar. Then when we summarize the program and we get a little bit more information, though about

10:26

how each task is progressing or those that are late, some comments that were made, but it gives a

10:31

project manager a very high level view of how that project is performing. This has been very

10:37

helpful with our project managers as they start to get ready for project reviews with our

10:42

executive team. Another area of AI that's really exciting for us that helps us as sysadmins is

10:49

formula generation. So sometimes only a formula generation can really get you tied up, as they're

10:56

not always the same. And you might get one thing wrong or a little comma in the wrong place. Here

11:01

in this example we use date diff, so we just ask for it to create a formula for the difference in

11:06

the date and the generate of the formula for us. So we were able to put it in. Now let's say you do

11:12

something a little more difficult and you maybe forgot something. And you see in the bottom you

11:17

get the little red box that says this is an invalid custom expression, and you're looking and

11:22

you just can't figure it out. So you can use AI to say, rewrite the formula to remove the invalid

11:27

custom expression, which we've done. And now we've got a new expression or a corrected expression

11:33

which now works. So AI has helped us quite a bit in speeding along our custom fields when we're

11:40

trying to do some of these formulas. So now let's talk a little bit about prompting.

11:47

When we use AI, prompting is the key to getting the answers that you want, And some of us have

11:53

experienced this with other software programs. But the art to getting the answer that you want the

11:58

first time is to understand how to ask the question. So some of the key basics in prompting

12:04

is start with what you want. What are you object or formula or something like that that you're

12:08

going after. So simply put it in the beginning. I want a formula and then give some details about

12:13

what you want. So identify two fields or maybe another object. And then also if you give AI the

12:20

expected result, then it can check itself to see if maybe it's getting the right result or not. And

12:26

if not, it allows you to rephrase or ask additional questions to potentially refine your

12:30

list. What's key is prompting may seem technical, but it's an art, and one of the best examples

12:37

that we have for that is to share your artwork as if you were to draw a picture or something of

12:41

that nature. In our company, we have a bulletin board in which we share prompting examples so

12:46

that others don't have to try to create and get the same result as maybe their neighbor did. Here

12:52

are some examples of some prompts to share with you. So create a formula that shows or help me

12:57

find who is subscribed to my project. Generate text multiple username into initial report. These

13:02

are actual examples off of our bulletin board that we have shared with our colleagues within

13:07

our company. Now I'm going to turn it over to Cari to talk about AI agents. Thank you so much, Scott. I

13:13

just think this is golden information from someone who is really ahead of the curve, who is

13:19

using AI in context. You were able to see Scott's actual project, his actual

13:25

programs, and the way AI is coming into play to make he and his team even more efficient

13:32

than they they already were. So, Scott, thank you. Really appreciate you being willing to to share.

13:38

Um, yes. We wanted to talk a little bit about agents. This is something you're probably hearing

13:43

a lot about. There is generative AI capability, and there are AI agents which

13:50

are essentially collections of skills. You could think of it as a collection of skills or

13:56

intelligent operators that are capable of helping you to interpret your goals,

14:02

create and take action on plans, and even work independently in addition to alongside

14:09

you and your team and agents can can follow a spectrum so it ranges from the

14:16

low end, which includes things like single step responses or activity that is specifically

14:23

directed by humans, and that is grounded in more generic or publicly available data all the

14:29

way to high AI agent capabilities that do multi-step reasoning, that can

14:36

take autonomous activity within boundaries that you set, and that are grounded in your own

14:42

proprietary data or contextually relevant information that you have fed into the system. So

14:48

this is a really interesting way that you're going to see a lot of of organizations, including

14:54

Adobe, bring AI capabilities to market. And so we'll be releasing the

15:00

workflow optimization agent, which is going to include the skills that have particular

15:06

relevancy for work management and automating and optimizing processes. So one of

15:13

these is smart Sort. I wanted to give you a quick look at what this means. It's essentially an

15:19

intelligent way of prioritizing your task list or your to do list. As a user today, that's typically

15:26

done based on due date, which is a very good default. It's something that that makes sense for

15:31

a lot of people. But again, there's a lot of intelligence in the work front system that can

15:37

add to that ranking and make it a lot more nuanced and useful. For example, in

15:44

in this case, the tasks have been reordered based on things like, um, tasks that

15:51

are blocking someone else from completing an important task, or tasks that will require an

15:57

approval process that might add a few days to the the expected time frame, depending on how

16:03

quickly the reviewer can respond. Maybe this is a project with very high

16:10

priority, or your focus is high on this particular project. You're in the zone, and it just makes

16:16

sense to do a few more of these tasks while you're at it. This is a really, really key way of

16:22

getting the most productivity out of each and every person on your team, and helping them see

16:28

how much they're adding to the organization's success and business goals. The next capability is

16:35

Project Health. And Scott alluded to this. When you are wondering how a project is doing, it's very

16:41

easy just to look at the the system and say, well, everything seems on track. But I think what we

16:48

have learned is that on track doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. So this capability, this

16:54

project Health advisor, is capable of giving you a score, a Project health score, which you can see

17:01

here based on the schedule, the scope and the budget or the resources. So if you're finding that

17:08

the project is not where you want it to be, you can drill into those three areas and see, hey, the

17:13

schedule looks particularly at risk here. Let's find out what's going on. And it will tell you

17:19

things like, um, several tasks have been moved out, so they were underestimated to begin with,

17:25

or a lot of tasks have been added to this project after it was created. So maybe it wasn't. It wasn't

17:32

scoped properly. The really beautiful thing is that in addition to telling you what's going on

17:37

with the project, it gives you the ability to take action. For example, if a schedule is

17:44

is at risk because a person is over allocated, instead of having to go into the resource

17:50

management portion of work front and and find someone else to reassign the task to this project

17:56

health advisor is going to make a recommendation and give you the opportunity to activate it right

18:02

there in the AI assistant panel. So really, really powerful stuff. The next area

18:09

for workflow optimization is review and approval. And I think we all know this has become kind of

18:15

the new bottleneck as generative AI increases the amount of content that that can be created

18:22

by creative organizations and marketing teams, review and approval becomes the next bottleneck.

18:28

And it's more important than ever when you're relying on AI to create content, you need to

18:33

ensure that content is meeting your brand guidelines and is suitable for activation. So in

18:39

this case, what you can do is upload your brand guidelines into the system and then create a

18:45

reviewer just like you would a person that essentially encompasses those brand standards, you

18:51

can then assign that brand reviewer to review a piece of content it will go through

18:58

and compare everything it knows about the imagery guidelines. It will make comments, it will

19:04

say it needs work. It will tell you. In this case, for example, we like active imagery, not passive

19:10

imagery. So we need the designer to go back and take another crap. Again, this is not intended to

19:15

replace humans role in review and approval, but rather to ensure that some of those basics like

19:21

logo placement and image guidelines are where they should be. Before you have people take time

19:28

to review a piece of content. Our customers are really, really excited about this capability. The

19:34

next thing that I wanted to talk to you about is AI powered briefs. Now we all hate

19:41

duplicate data entry. There's nothing worse than being asked to enter data that you've already

19:46

created in other systems or in other formats before. In this case, you're you're going to

19:53

be using information that you've already documented to. Create a brief to kick off a

19:59

project so you can upload a PDF or a PowerPoint or a word document. It is going to compare

20:06

the information in that document to the custom fields in your brief, and it will populate

20:12

everything that it can find a match for and give you a chance to review that information. So again,

20:18

a very quick way of automating automating away the mundane. Kicking off a project quickly,

20:23

ensuring accuracy and eliminating the time lag and the error that can be introduced when you're

20:30

asking people to duplicate information that already exists. So these are some some teasers. We

20:36

wanted to make sure you're aware of things that you can be looking forward to in the very near

20:41

future with work front, but with that, I wanted to invite Scott to share his top three tips. I know

20:47

there's a lot of information here. We wanted to just kind of round up the three things each of us

20:52

think you should be focused on in doing right now as you as you exit this session. So, Scott, over to

20:57

you. Sure. Thank you. So again, as I mentioned in my or earlier, my presentation, understanding AI

21:04

prompting, mastering the skill of how to ask the questions and share your artwork will help you be

21:11

very successful in using the AI keywords when using prompting will help you and also again

21:17

gets you to the artwork of prompting. If you go to Experience League, they've already given a few

21:22

ideas of what keywords to use when you do the prompting. The last thing is AI feedback. So

21:29

AI is only as good as the feedback that we give it. If you've seen throughout these demos that

21:34

there was a thumbs up or a feedback button, give it it's thumbs up or thumbs down and give the

21:40

feedback. The AI engineers truly use that feedback to continually improve AI and teach it where it

21:46

did things right and did things wrong to get better results. This AI is learning every day. It's

21:52

new to the work environment and so it still has a lot to learn. And you're part of that learning

21:57

opportunity by providing its feedback. That is so true. Scott, we we sometimes talk about AI

22:04

as a child that needs to be raised, that needs to be nurtured, that needs to be taught. And so the

22:10

more you use it, the smarter it gets and the more it will be capable of helping you. I should say

22:16

too, in our tips you'll see some underlying content. These are links that will populate, so you

22:22

are able to access that information so you can look in the chat for those those links. Here are

22:29

my three tips. First of all, there is an Adobe AI writer that is required to use all that basic

22:36

AI features. This is a document that your organization needs to sign, and your legal or IT

22:42

team might need a bit of a heads up, or they might need a bit of runway to complete their due

22:47

diligence. So what we find is that it's really great if work front users are

22:54

asking their work front admin. Have we signed the AI writer? And if not to give a little nudge to

23:00

make sure that process gets underway, you don't want to have all the interest and all the need to

23:07

use these capabilities and be be delayed because that writer hasn't yet been signed. So the sooner

23:12

you get that started, the better. To help you do that, there is an AI security fact sheet that

23:19

Adobe has produced, and then a Harvard Business Review piece on the unique way that Adobe

23:25

approaches AI security and risk that you can share again with your IT team or your legal

23:31

organization just to help build confidence in all of the care and thought that has been put into

23:38

the way Adobe as a whole is approaching AI. And then my final tip is to implement AI with

23:44

workflows that you have already optimized, that are clean, that are working the way you want them

23:49

to. If you overlay AI on a broken process, you're just inviting more chaos. So our

23:56

recommendation is to clean house and then add the the new decorations or the new furnishings.

24:03

That's definitely the way to go. And our final recommendation is to just get on the AI bike.

24:09

This this image is really familiar. We've all seen kids that are in such a hurry to get where

24:13

they're going that they're running alongside their bike instead of hopping on, taking the time

24:19

to get on and pedal and and trust that they will get where they need to go more quickly that way.

24:25

So we encourage everyone to get on the bike to start your AI journey, to begin learning, to

24:31

experiment, to see where you are, finding particular value, to help the system get smart, and

24:38

to roll it out in ways that make sense for your Organization and as a final call to action. There

24:44

are a couple of things that Scott and I talked about that we think would be most beneficial. As

24:50

you as you, um, finish this session and look to take advantage of the things we've talked about.

24:56

The first is to click on the AI assistant button in work front. This is going to open up that panel

25:02

in the right rail and give you access to summarization and formula generation and all

25:09

of the things that Scott showed you earlier. The second thing is to try out the catch me up button.

25:15

It's just such a simple way of seeing what the system can tell you, whether you've been out of

25:20

the office or not. See what it can tell you about what's happening with the project. And at a glance,

25:25

bird's eye view is so valuable. So those are two things you can go click on right after this

25:30

session. Try it out, get on that bike. And so with that, we're really happy to have shared some

25:36

information. We hope it was helpful. And now we would love to take your questions and see what

25:42

you would like to know more about.

25:50

Oh my gosh. Corey Scott, my head spinning. There's so much information that you guys shared. Thank

25:56

you both for being here. This is a really great meaty topic, and we're so happy to have been able

26:02

to share some time with the group. We're really looking forward to hearing your questions and

26:07

helping you explore this topic a lot more. All right. Well, the the chat is on fire. There are. It

26:13

took a minute to get you guys warmed up, I have to say. But once the questions started coming in

26:17

there's so many. So we're going to do our best to get to as many as we can. Keep typing them in. If

26:22

you haven't asked your question, um, Scott, I'm going to take the first one for you. There's a

26:27

question that says can catch me up. Also summarize custom fields and forms. Or is that only native

26:33

fields? Yeah, that's a great question. And catch me up. We're only looking at the native fields within

26:38

word front. It still hasn't gone to the custom fields quite yet, but just keep that in mind.

26:45

There's a lot of development going on, but it's really focused on the native fields at the moment.

26:50

Got it. That makes that makes sense. Uh, I'm going to keep it moving. Corey, I have one for you. That

26:55

came in pretty early on, and this one is do you have to have the AI assistant for all these

27:00

examples? That's a really great question too, because the AI assistant is something that is

27:06

native in all current work front packages. So that's going to include things like the formula

27:12

generation, the summarization, the catch me up and the access to documentation and

27:19

project history. So if you're on a current package that is going to be available to you as part of

27:25

the AI assistant, what is coming is the workflow optimization agent, and that's

27:32

where you're going to get capabilities like the AI reviewer, Project Health, and some of those

27:37

other coming features that I showcased later in the presentation. That's all very

27:44

exciting. Thanks, Corey. Uh, Scott, this one's for you. We're getting technical. I know you're ready for

27:50

it. So, uh, this question came in. That said, if you ask the AI for a formula, that's not possible. Does

27:56

does it alert you that it's not possible? Or does it output a formula that simply has no function?

28:00

This is a common problem from ChatGPT, for example. Yeah, the AI system is continually learning. So if

28:07

you type in a formula, it depends on the object that you're in and whether it's going to

28:11

understand what you're trying to do or not. If it gets confused, it will simply tell you, I don't

28:16

know. I can't help you, but it can generate a formula that it thinks, knows what knows what you

28:22

want. And then when you put it in your custom field or wherever you're popping your formula in,

28:26

it'll tell you it's an invalid formula. So you could start to get into a little bit of a circle

28:31

with it. But for the most part, it's pretty well tuned in to the formulas and where they are

28:37

within the objects. but again, remember to always give it feedback. Thumbs up, thumbs down and reply.

28:43

Because that's how the engineers try to eliminate some of these problems within the AI assistant.

28:50

That's actually a really good point. That feedback not just for the AI, but just the feedback for the

28:54

engineering teams that are working on it too. That's that's a great reminder. Um, speaking of

28:59

learning, Carrie, I'm going to send this one to you. Um, this question says, is there a way to feed the

29:05

AI industry? And more importantly, oh, sorry. Is there a way to feed the AI industry and more

29:11

importantly, company specific information? Not the AI industry, but your own industry and company

29:16

specific information to give the AI more context of the information it has access to and work

29:22

front. For example, this type of info would be maybe the roles in your company and what each

29:27

role is responsible for. That is a really great question and something I see us moving into more

29:33

fully over time. Right now, the AI capabilities are largely mining intelligence that's

29:40

already in the work front system based on project history, based on the data that that has been

29:46

captured from historical projects and things like that. Um, the one area where we are

29:53

definitely working from information that you can you can supply to the system is the

30:00

AI reviewer because it's based on your brand guidelines. So in that case, you do ingest your

30:07

brand guidelines into the system so that it has the information that's tailored to you, that it

30:14

needs to make sure that that preflight check is accurate and is going to catch anything that's

30:19

important for your own brand standards. That's super helpful. I there's a lot of these questions

30:26

about kind of what what it's learning and kind of how we're how we're continuing to interact with

30:31

the with the AI. I think there's a there's another question here. This one, Scott, this one is kind of

30:36

similar. It's about learning from previous projects, but it's more specific about if you have

30:40

to set up the priorities. So the question is, does the agent learn from all previous projects, or do

30:45

you have to set up these priorities? That's also a very good question. The AI is constantly

30:51

learning in the engineers. So as I said earlier, I'm fortunate enough to work with a lot of the

30:56

engineers not only at Adobe but in other products in the AI is constantly learning and they're

31:01

watching what's going on in the interaction. So again, I can't stress enough the feedback, but it

31:07

is learning your projects and things that you've done previously to help you start to grow and

31:12

develop the AI assistant. But keep in mind it's the AI assistant on the Adobe platform. It's not

31:17

specific to your company or to your data that's within your system. Got it. Yeah,

31:24

I feel like a lot of the questions are kind of falling into the two buckets right now of kind of

31:29

the, the how the AI is still learning and then the other ones. There's a lot still for you around

31:34

kind of what's available. And someone did just ask a question about. Can you remind us what are the

31:38

two features that we can use right away? And does that writer still need to be completed for those?

31:44

Yes. The the Catch Me Up feature is available right now, and everything that's included in the

31:50

AI assistant, which includes the formula generation, the project summarization, the ability

31:57

to kind of ask natural language questions to to gather information about projects,

32:04

issues, tasks and to access experience league documentation. So those are available

32:10

today. And you do the best practices always to have the AI writer signed,

32:17

because it's absolutely a requirement for some of the the workflow optimization agent capabilities

32:24

that are coming, like Project health, like the AI reviewer, like being able to use an

32:30

existing document to populate a brief or a request. So my recommendation would be even. Even

32:37

though you're going to be able to access some of those basic features without the AI writer, please

32:43

make it a priority to get it going in your organization. Like I said, sometimes that can take

32:49

some time and it involves other functional groups. And I think the sooner you get that going, the

32:54

sooner you can take advantage of the more advanced goodness that's coming. Yeah. Just one

33:00

thing to add to that too. On top of the writers, you also have to be in the unified experience. So

33:05

those that haven't converted to the unified experience will not be able to get to the AI

33:10

quite yet, because again, it's sitting on an Adobe platform. And so it needs to be able to

33:15

communicate through the unified experience. So that's another key point. On top of the rider. That

33:20

really is important. And and Kristen, maybe I'll just jump in and and add on to that a little bit.

33:26

I think a lot of people are wondering how how do I get access to these features beyond signing the

33:32

AI rider? Um, you need to be on Adobe's identity management system. The vast

33:38

majority of our work front customers have already been through that process. You also need to be on

33:45

Unified Shell, which is sort of like a unified product navigation for Adobe Solutions,

33:52

and that is a requirement for these advanced AI features. You need to you also need

33:59

to have signed the writer like we've reiterated but can't reiterate enough. And then for the AI

34:05

reviewer, you also need to be on unified approvals. And I think that might be what you

34:12

you also were referring to. Scott. So you need to be on unified approvals. If you are not or you

34:19

don't know, you can check with your sales rep. It's a very simple process to turn you on. So we have

34:24

made it as easy as possible to get you going on these new features. And this AI reviewer

34:31

just went into open beta last week, so you can take advantage of it right now. If you just make

34:37

sure those four prerequisites have been met. There's a lot of goodness. I know that some people

34:43

have said, well, we'll wait. We'll do it a little bit later. But truly, I think the the bulk of

34:48

customers are now kind of it's been a few years since Work Front has been acquired, and we're now

34:53

seeing a lot of folks over on, on Unified Shell over on Adobe IMS. So thank you for those that

34:58

have done that. And there is a session in today's skill exchange, by the way, on unified review and

35:05

approval. So if you're wondering what that is as well stick around. There's a session on that today.

35:10

Um, Corey, this is a bit of a follow up to that kind of what you were just talking about of, you

35:14

know, you know, we've got the IT writer signed. This question is about sandbox asset access. Once the

35:20

rider is signed, can can it only be turned on in the state? Oh, I think they're saying can they turn

35:25

it on in their sandbox first just to test it there before pushing it to production? No, we're

35:30

we're feeling comfortable with it in production. It is an open beta. So we we have a few things

35:37

we're still kind of finalizing, but it's very solid. We think that the best thing is to get

35:42

users using it. Again with AI, adoption is is the key to realizing value, getting people using it,

35:49

providing that feedback, making sure that the system is learning as you're using it. So we're

35:55

looking and we think it's to your benefit to open the aperture a little wider, given that it's AI.

36:01

That's fair. Yeah. Uh, Scott, I've got two questions coming your way, both a little bit more technical.

36:06

One is about fusion. Uh, I, we I know you've done a little bit with fusion, and so this one is how is

36:12

the AI assistant working with fusion technology to enhance automation in workflows? Great question.

36:18

And we are in fusion and we use this quite a bit. Uh, it's not as mature as in work front. I think

36:24

work front is a little bit further along in the assistant. Uh, it does kind of help you navigate

36:29

through, you know, some of the modules a little bit, but it's still learning. I think it's, um, if you

36:35

look at what grade level it is, it might be entering middle school at this point. And it's

36:39

learning opportunity where work front might be entering its freshman year in college, so to speak.

36:45

Uh, but again, we use it. We keep giving it the feedback because we want it to grow to help some

36:50

of our more inexperienced fusion developers within our company. That's great.

36:57

Corey, there's one follow up question for you on that last question that someone said, what is

37:01

unified experience? How do we know if we're on it? This tells me this person may or may not be there

37:06

work for an admin. So what would you recommend to know if they are on or what is unified experience?

37:12

Yeah, sure. The the unified approvals experience. Um, as many of you may know today,

37:19

you can do approvals in two ways. You can do them on on documents, or you can do them on

37:25

generated proofs. We have unified that experience. So it's really one path. It's based on

37:31

Documents, and that is where we're building all future functionality, including

37:38

enhancements to the viewer, including connection with frame IO. So you want to be on that,

37:44

that unified document approvals. And again, it's just a toggle we turn on in the background so you

37:51

can talk to your account rep if you want to know if you're experiencing that. But if you're

37:56

generating proofs in work front proof, chances are you are not. And you'll want to look into that. And

38:03

that is exactly what the next session is going to be talking about. So not to tease what's coming up

38:07

next, but if you are asking that question and wanting to learn more. Micah Bozak is speaking

38:12

right after this session, and she's going to be talking about that, that unified approvals

38:16

experience. All right. It's got one more technical one for you. And that is, um, the question around,

38:23

can AI generate a report for a portfolio and all the projects under it? AI at this point is

38:30

not generating Reports. It's simply helping you get to experience league formulas, maybe looking

38:36

at project Health. AI is strictly object focused at the moment and not generative, so it's

38:43

answering questions that you can interrogate data or interrogate information, but it's not

38:47

generating at the moment. But I know a lot of people ask me, can project health look at at

38:54

higher order categories like programs and portfolios? And the answer is yes, because those

39:00

are objects like like Scott said. So projects, portfolios and programs can all leverage the

39:07

project health advisor that we showed you. That's a great follow up. All right. We are almost at

39:14

time. We have time for one more question. I'm going to do a speed round. This is for both of you. I'll

39:19

have Corey go first and then Scott. And this is just around your own personal use of AI. I'm

39:24

curious to know what are your most used prompts week to week? What are you using AI for yourself.

39:31

Okay, I'm going to answer this quickly, but in two parts. Um, inside of work front. I hate to admit it,

39:38

but the most common question is show me the projects that have executive visibility so I can

39:44

triage and prioritize on that on that basis. Um, just in terms of AI in general, because I think

39:50

we're all experimenting and using it in all aspects of our lives. Um, the, the marketing team

39:56

and myself have really been using it to prep for customer calls. So when we have a customer call, we

40:01

can say we're covering the work front roadmap. This is the organization, and it's going to go

40:06

mind a bunch of useful details that help us make that presentation as relevant and non generic as

40:13

possible. And it's been going really well. Awesome for us. I'm going to answer this in two parts as

40:20

well from a sysadmin. We use it a lot for the formulas. So in our business we have a lot of

40:25

custom fields and a custom calculations that we have to do. And since we've had the AI, it has

40:31

saved us an immense amount of time because now we don't even worry about trying to put the formulas

40:36

together. We ask AI very specifically based on the custom fields or the fields that we want to

40:42

calculate, and it generates a formula for us. And then the last item in the project management side,

40:47

our projects have many, many, many different projects underneath its portfolio. And they'll

40:52

interrogate and ask how the project performance is going. I love it. Thank you both so much. I it's

40:58

it's crazy that flew by. We are at time. I know we didn't get to all of the questions. I will tell

41:03

you a little bit more about this later, but we do have a user group coming up that we're calling a.

41:07

It's a mega user group with a bunch of different chapters. Scott is going to be there answering

41:12

additional questions. It's on September 10th. I will tell you a little bit more about that later.

41:16

But for now, Corey Scott, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing all of these tips and

41:21

tricks with us today. My pleasure. It's been great to be here. Thanks for having us.

Interactive Summary

The presentation explores the application of AI in work management, moving beyond generative AI to focus on automating tasks, enhancing processes, and optimizing workflows. Speakers Corey Wolf (Adobe) and Scott Maus (ThyssenKrupp System Engineering) discuss current Workfront AI features, with Scott providing practical demonstrations of tools like "Catch Me Up" summarization and formula generation. They highlight when AI is most effective, such as for repetitive, data-heavy, or rule-based tasks, and for addressing human capacity limitations. Upcoming AI-powered features include Smart Sort for task prioritization, a Project Health advisor, an AI reviewer for content approval, and AI-powered brief generation. The session concludes with tips on effective AI prompting, the importance of feedback, signing the Adobe AI writer, and implementing AI with optimized workflows to maximize its value.

Suggested questions

11 ready-made prompts