Assignee being able to see custom fields

We are on a Premium Plan.

We have people that are not members of our team, that we just want them to see that tasks that are assigned to them (not the whole project), along with custom fields.

Is this possible? And if not what might be some workarounds?

I think I asked something similar but now that weā€™re actually trying to use the custom fields with some people who are not team members or project members Iā€™m trying to wrap my heard around it for exactly how we need to use it.

Thanks!

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As long as these users are being kept out of the Team or Project, with Team and Project settings. These user canā€™t see the Tasks in the Project in general.

If these users are then assigned to or set as a collaborator to a Task in the Project, they will then be able to see that and only that Task in the Project, including custom fields. What they will be able to edit is another factor.

Permissions can be a little tricky to get just right. I suggest doing a little testing to get it exactly the way you want.
The settings to consider are

  • Team privacy
  • Project privacy
  • Project members, including collaborators, set to can comment or can edit.
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Thanks @Vince_Mustachio.

I am starting to realize that what the issue might be for us is that all of these users are GUESTS in our organization.

This seems to be distinctly different from these people just not being members of the Asana Team in question.

Support documentation says that:

[Organization Guests] (those that do not have a company email address) cannot modify a projectā€™s custom fields.

But I had interpreted ā€œmodifyā€ to mean alter/changing the custom fields themselves, not INTERACTING / USING them (e.g., choosing a value from the dropdown).

Now I am thinking that perhaps thatā€™s what our issue is - that GUESTS cannot USE custom fields even if they are project members.

I created a sample project, made the guest a member of it, and assigned her a task, and waiting to hear back to see if she can now see the Custom Fields.

Iā€™m hoping she can because if she can, then for our case we couldnā€™t use custom fields for most of what we need.

Meant to say ā€œif she CANNOT see themā€ above

For reference, in case this is helpful to anyone who may be having some of the same questions:

@KarenV, I donā€™t think Guests is the issue; they can change the values of custom fields, they just canā€™t add or delete custom fields, or make changes to the definition of them (like the values available in a dropdown). Further down in that Guide article it says:

Who can modify a taskā€™s Custom field values

Anyone with access to a task can modify the values of its custom fields. Learn more about task permissions here.

Your right @KarenV. I should have made, if the users are a Guest, a forth bullet point in my list of factors to can have an effect.

Confusingly, modify Custom Fields can mean 2 things. Modify what Custom Fields are associated with the Project and what values the Custom Fields have. Either way your initial concern of being able to see the Custom Fields shouldnā€™t be an issue. Iā€™m pretty sure if you can see the Task you see the Custom Fields.

Testing to know for sure is the best way to go. And itā€™s even easier to test Guest accounts. Create or use an existing e-mail address for yourself that is outside your organization and join as a Guest. It doesnā€™t take up a license, so there is nothing to lose. I do it myself to verify how Guests see my Asana environment.

@Vince_Mustachio when I had first created the custom fields I quickly disregarded the ā€œGuestā€ issue in the help files because I had interpreted modify in a particular way. It would be helpful if the Help files made this clearer in each section so you donā€™t have to read the whole help file or page to understand what each thing means. Itā€™s a lot of different things to understand.

I do have a fake guest account with a personal email address but I donā€™t always trust the results from that. I often wonder if maybe Iā€™m signed in somewhere or Iā€™m forgetting some setting that is skewing what Iā€™m seeing. Whenever possible I prefer to test it with an actual user.

In our case, the second we made one of these Guests a member of that fake/test project, she was able to see the custom fields. So @lpb is right that Guest is not the issue.

This is not the ideal solution for us because this means giving access to the whole project - ideal for how we use Asana would be that an assignee of a task would be able to see and interact with (choose from the values) the custom fields. Giving access to the project gives much more permissions and information than we would like.

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Right, that makes sense - custom fields are made available in the appā€™s visual interface on a per-project basis. Meaning that while the underlying definition of a custom field lives across a whole organization/workspace, itā€™s purely at the project level that custom fields are exposed. So your Guests will have to be a member of the project in order to see those custom fields which youā€™ve said should be available in that project.

Clear as mud? :wink:

Actually I think thereā€™s a workaround - I havenā€™t tried it but think it should work (granted, itā€™s a bit more work when creating a task for a Guest but might be worth it):

First, donā€™t make your Guests members of the actual project.

Create a new project, letā€™s call it Guest Tasks; expose your desired custom fields in that project, and make your Guests members of that project.

Then whenever you create a task and assign it to a Guest, add it to both the real project and Guest Tasks.

If you do that, I think they should be able to see the custom fields without having access to the real project.

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@Phil_Seeman, this sounds familiar: :smile:

@lpb Oh, geez, hahaha. Well, as they say, great minds think alike!

@Phil_Seeman Iā€™m just amazed I could actually recall a post I made 13d ago!!!

@Phil_Seeman so are you saying that the Guest Tasks would be an ongoing place to add ALL tasks to.

Because we did try this idea when @lpb suggested it, and we did find it cumbersome, but we were also thinking we would have to add a ā€œdifferentā€ project each time.

Also - we are concerned with the screens getting cluttered with project names (since there are 2 projects we add tasks to now, aside from the actual project.)

I realize itā€™s all a matter of priorities though.

Correct! I see no reason that youā€™d need to create different ā€œfakeā€ Guest projects. Just one.