Here, we take a look at some common goals that you may want to achieve with your implementation of ftrack.
It’s important to establish a shared vision across your team regarding what you want to achieve with ftrack and how you wish to use the software. See how many of the below workflows and processes apply. Ask yourself, what are your goals, and how many of these do you want to check off when you roll out ftrack following the onboarding process?
Once you are done, share the results with your team. That way, you’ll get the most out of the platform once onboarding is complete.
Remember that you do not have to check each box to be a “successful” ftrack user. The below is for guidance and inspiration around your implementation of ftrack only. Ultimately, how you use the platform is up to you.
Planning
☐ Plan your projects with events and milestones.
☐ Share a plan of how and when you wish to tackle different parts of the project.
☐ Track holidays and vacations and understand the availability of your team.
☐ Allocate team members on projects you have enough capacity to tackle them.
☐ Use the forecast report (currently in beta) to gain an understanding of available capacity vs. what you have planned for.
Production tracking
☐ Add projects and break them down into tasks you can assign to your team.
☐ (If you have a process involving a spreadsheet where you bid on your projects) Import an existing spreadsheet into ftrack.
☐ Use bid estimates to see if your estimates tally up with the actual time tasks take to complete.
☐ Ask your creatives to log time so that you can compare it to your bid estimates.
☐ Set start and due dates on your tasks in detail using the Scheduler (a Gantt tool) to ensure milestones and task due dates align.
☐ Set statuses on tasks and track progress to ensure you hit your goals and deliver on time.
Asset management and automation
☐ Use ftrack to orchestrate and track assets on your digital asset management (DAM) system, whether a simple NAS on your network or a more sophisticated solution. (This is accomplished with something we call storage locations.)
☐ Publish digital assets directly to storage from an application integrated with ftrack: Adobe Creative Suite, 3ds Max, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Nuke Studio, Hiero, Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, Unity, Deadline, and more.
☐ Use the Connect desktop service to launch applications in the correct environment with ftrack integrations available.
☐ Leverage the Connect standalone publishers for scenarios where ftrack does not natively integrate with an application in use, or build your own integration.
☐ Automate tedious tasks, like moving files or assembling reports with the ftrack Actions system.
Reviews and approvals
☐ Review assets.
☐ Use ftrack as your main solution for tracking feedback.
☐ Share your assets with external clients for feedback.
If you know what you want to use ftrack for, you’ll get much more out of the platform than if you dive in without a plan! 💪