Adobe Workfront vs. Datto Autotask PSA

Workfront enables us to manage all our projects effectively while providing a comprehensive overview of team resources. The Resource Planner helps the team identify their capacity to determine whether they are over- or under-allocated. This information is crucial for project planning and ensuring team members do not experience burnout.

Incentivized

In my opinion, Datto Autotask is exceptionally complicated to set up, manage, and use on a daily basis. I would think the target market for this product would be someone managing a team of 20 - 50 people, possibly more. In my experience, for it to run properly you will need to dedicate at least half an FTE to running this product in an organization of that size per month. I would not recommend it for companies with less than 10 people or for companies that value quick communication with their clients. I would not recommend it for companies using Datto's RMM product. The integration exists, but it is clearly a bolt-on. They were not developed together and they are slow to talk to each other. Frequently you cannot add details from RMM sessions into the PSA without manually copying the ticket number, and if the ticket is more than a week old, then you can't even find it with the ticket number.

Incentivized

• Routing. Workfront's capabilities to route tasks to multiple people far exceeds the capabilities of SharePoint in terms of back-end configuration required and ability to track task status.
• Form Creation. Workfront forms have a better UX than SharePoint as well as the ability to customize forms based on certain responses.
• Project Management Tracking & Reporting. The ability to track task and project statuses and send reminders/alerts when parameters are set are very helpful. Additionally, the reporting capabilities are very helpful when tracking multiple projects across multiple functions to deliver to leadership.

Incentivized

• AutoTask allows for us to receive and work support tickets very easily. We've setup various 'Issue Types' that in turn are bound to SLAs ensuring that items are worked appropriately as they are received.
• The automation that AutoTask allows for with regards to various emails/requests coming through has been great. It allows for us to not have to constantly "watch the queue" as when a critical item arrives the appropriate persons are notified and can work it.
• I feel that the management of AutoTask for both user setup, and various automations is done well. We're able to copy settings as needed, and create templates for multiple items.

Incentivized

• Notifications (sometimes I am emailed when I am tagged, other times I am not)
• Certain file formats do not render correctly in Workfront Proof (eg, .XLS files)
• It can be difficult to manage projects if you have not been assigned the correct permissions.

Incentivized

• The GUI is a little dated.
• Some integrations are limited for not being a Datto product.
• While not as complex to set up as Connectwise, it definitely requires some serious thought during the initial setup.
• Email processing could offer more options for parsing keywords and allow for more automation.
• The mobile app is just not worth using in my experience.

Incentivized

All that I've said already is why. I suppose the clearest way to say it is that at this point? I cannot imagine running the 300+ active projects in eMarketing without AtTask; it simply wouldn't be possible and even more; I wouldn't imagine why we'd try to find an alternative tool when we have one meeting our needs.

After using multiple products on the market, Autotask was intuitive and easy to manage.

Incentivized

For my needs, it's easy to jump in and out of, make changes and update projects, and check in with my employers. I haven't used to it create my own projects, they're created by my employer as we go, I suspect it's not hard to use in that way, but I don't have first-hand knowledge.

Incentivized

Datto Autotask PSA is a full featured product that can do almost anything you need. There is a significant learning curve to get started which requires several hours spent in product training. Additionally, several hours / days are needed to get clients imported, contracts configured, and integrations implemented. Once the setup and user training is complete, the product is very functional, but it's imperative to not get overwhelmed when starting out.

Incentivized

Maintenance is required, but usually after work hours, Some days the proofing tool function is not operational, but this is a new function of the tool that WF is working out. the kinks on. Chrome is the best browser to use the system in and we find Firefox and Explorer lose some view functionality - Gantt Chart, Resource Grid

Incentivized

Workfront's performance has been very good. Everything always feels very fast and snappy in my experience. We have integrated it with custom scripts to create folder structure for media managing our projects. It works very well.

Incentivized

I haven't directly interacted with the Workfront support team, but my sense, from speaking to the person in our organization who's job this is, is that they are generally very responsive to support requests, and very supportive an pro active in making sure that those requests are taken care of in a timely manner.

Incentivized

They are fairly quick at returning a response to a problem and have been able to fix all issues for the most part.

Incentivized

It was from my boss, not a rep from AtTask.

The training is very easy to use and you can simply choose the topics included in the course(s) that are most important to your training needs. After each training course, you are tested on what you have learned. If you need a refresher course, they provide Course Catalogs as well as instructor-led courses & workshops.

We have implemented and integrated Workfront into three departments (R&D, Marketing, and IT). All have experience overall performance gains in productivity. R&D has developed a record number of new products, while streamlining and reducing workloads. Complex projects are now easily managed and delivered. Marketing has expanded the management of media and collateral, implemented more campaigns and increase brand value. IT projects are all now visible and managed. Helpdesk is being converted to the system allowing for better visibility and management of day to day requests from our growing company

While I consider Jira to have a somewhat different targeted use case from Adobe Workfront, they definitely overlap in some of their capabilities. As mentioned earlier, I find that Adobe Workfront is better at tracking progress and managing resources for larger projects that cross a number disparate teams or stakeholders. Meanwhile, Jira is better for tracking individual projects within a single team or smaller tasks, something that can be a bit harder to do at scale in Adobe Workfront.

Incentivized

The portion of Autotask that we've used other companies for prior to using Autotask is the Endpoint Management. The Autotask Endpoint Management (AEM) portal integrates perfectly with their PSA/CRM tools. It's alerting features are much better than the above software as there aren't a bunch of superfluous and unneeded alerts. Instead, it only alerts for things that you specify that you want. Alerts aside, for the PSA/CRM, I don't have much to compare it to as Autotask was the first PSA we tried. It's hard to imagine a PSA having more features or doing a better job than Autotask.

Incentivized

We have been using Workfront for about 3 years. During this time they continue to be a very stable project management system. Workfront's overall scalability is able to handle increased loads of work. When using Workfront for a project management tool for the web team, we store documents, images & video's without any issues. They work with their customer's to provide the best project management system in the market today! I highly recommend Workfront for all project management needs. Workfront strives to deliver unique technology solutions to growing companies!

• Positive - we get more work done in a timely fashion because all team members are using Workfront.
• Negative - projects can get held up quickly due to user error (e.g., someone not using Workfront or checking notifications)
• Positive - we have a good gauge of where personally we are with projects, and how are team members are spending their time.

Incentivized

• We were able to identify the profitability of our entire client base.
• We identified a loss of over 1 million dollars for time unbilled consultancy fees using metrics derived from Autotask.
• Autotask helped us serve our client base in a professional manner, it's like having an entire department at your finger tips.
• Autotask is the heartbeat of our operation.

Incentivized