View only access to projects/tasks for clients

Great thread. Would love to see Private Tasks so that we don’t have to keep 2 projects for each client (internal & shared).

We need our clients to be able to add/edit tasks but we also need the ability for team only private tasks which the client (who the project is shared with) can’t see at all.

Hope this gets more votes!

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Is anyone else still looking for this as a solution? We have some dev time available and considering creating this as an app at least for ourselves. Would love to hear your wishlist for functionality.

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Yes, I’m sure many of your clients are looking for more granular control over their client’s access to the projects. It would be preferable to be able to add a client to an existing project, rather than be required to add a task to both the internal and ‘client-facing’ project. All of the suggestions in the above thread will be desired by many clients and hopefully could be setup as options per project. Another suggestion: a check box that allows comments to be set as internal only, so that internal users don’t accidentally comment on a thread that is client visible.

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Yes! I’ve been trying to find a similar solution for my business. I really don’t want my clients to be able to have access to any tasks. In addition they shouldn’t be able to add new tasks or projects, or really any access to any settings other than their own profile.

I’m imagining for each new client I set up a team under 1 organisation (which would be my business name) - or alternatively set up each new client as a separate workspace (to keep the left hand project navigation panel clutter free).

From there, I would like to set up a min of 2 projects for each client - 1 would be used purely to show a high level timeline overview which the clients could view only of what projects we’re working on and the duration of each.

The 2nd project would house any ongoing operations packages (social media management, website maintenance etc) my clients have purchased - client can’t see that when they log in.

Then other projects could be added as needed for one off projects (website build, product launch etc.) - not visible to clients.

ALL team discussions would take place in the projects/ task level (but not the timeline project).

ALL client communications would happen in the team discussion area of the high level team. That way a new discussion could be set up for each project/phase of the build etc. and the client only has to worry about looking at and responding to questions in the discussion area. They don’t have to get weighed down with all the granular task detail and communication going on with my team. Clients would only be notified by email about any new discussion topics/comments.

Maybe just a simple ‘hide from clients’ tick box on projects/tasks and then the ability to turn off a few platform permissions (adding tasks/projects etc. - so a little like the current workplace settings if you add someone with a different domain name email - but with additional limitations).

I’ve been using Asana for about a year for a different type of business setup - more day to day running of an offline business (so appointments to schedule, invoicing tasks, workshop tasks etc.). It’s been great and I love the look and features, and sooooo many other things about Asana which are super helpful for project management for a team.


But I have absolutely struggled to get my client using it. I think it’s too complex/time consuming for them. I’m also about to start projects for them related to ther online business and am going to be setting this up in Active Collab because it does offer this ‘hide from clients’ option, and other platform limitations. I’d love to stay in Asana for them and my other future online business clients, but I can’t see how it can just be a simple, straightforward platform for my client’s at this point.

Please, please, please make this happen! :grinning:
Happy to discuss this further in a Zoom/Skype if helpful


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I have the same issue. We are a consulting firm, so some tasks I want to share with clients. and some other don’t, also I want to let then see the general data of tasks (task name, description, dates, etc - but not comments). Another thing, how would that works in terms of licencing.

I would also be very keen for more granular user permissions. The comment-only functionality seems to be a step in the right direction, but I would love to have more tailored user permissions if that’s at all possible.

Some kind of check box system so you could select the permissions available to each guest would be great.

Or, rather than the catch-all ‘guest’, maybe it might be possible to create different external user profiles. It’s quite clear those of us using Asana to work with clients want to limit certain permissions, while allowing them to view and comment on tasks and conversations.

Many of us also want to use Asana and its workspaces to collaborate with other service providers on client projects, or even outsource work (like getting help from a virtual assistant) - we’d need users like this to be able to comment and have some editing permissions (eg to mark a task complete) without the ability to delete or add anything they shouldn’t.

I’m a sole trader so I would love a way to use Asana to work with clients and other service providers, while retaining ownership of tasks and workflows I create within it.

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I came here looking for this exact same solution: the ability to customize a client view of a project. Right now, we’re syncing up on high level milestones with one client via google docs, which is fine, but clearly inefficient. I appreciate the creative work arounds above, but our team works on 15-20 projects at any given time, and the thought of setting up two versions of the same project for all of those might be a bit overwhelming for our team (considering we just brought the whole team around using Asana just a few months ago).

Does the Asana team have these features in the queue?

Thank you!

I am in desperate need for this feature. What is the story here?

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I believe that we need an external tool for managing client interactions. We need to define a workflow and interactions for the project and we need to develop a custom solution.

Asana seem to have some kind of philosophical bent on ‘transparency’ which overrides any kind of need for good governance! For this reason I have removed all of my clients from Asana as it is totally unworkable to give clients free rein to create and delete tasks. I’m using Avaza for client project work now; it allows you to add clients and tailor what permissions they have. You can switch between calendar, board and list view and it even has invoicing and timesheet functionality built in. Game changer. Keeping Asana for internal business stuff, it’s a nice little organisational and productivity tool but totally unsuitable for the service business/client dynamic sadly, which is a shame as it would be so easy to fix.

I wholeheartedly agree with this feature. It would be hugely beneficial to allow clients to see a project, especially in Timeline view, but only allow them to look at it and nothing more. Otherwise they might totally wreck it by changing due dates and whatnot, thinking they’re being helpful.

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I’m currently evaluating the premium edition and found this while browsing around for a solution to stopping guests from creating projects, deleting tasks etc

Now I see that’s not possible I will have to look at alternatives.

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Dear Asana,

This is the solution:

This should be a feature:

on the user screen (or user type screen - which doesn’t exist yet - but keep reading :),

there should an option for “all users can see this user’s comments” - for developers, creative and other non client facing agency employees - the option would be “no” - for "account managers, the answer would be “yes” and for clients, the answer would be “yes” - this would remove all internal comments from a clients view when they log in
 it’s honestly a simple piece of meta data that can be applied globally.

a “client” would not be able to:
-delete tasks
-change due dates
-add projects to a task
-add tags to a task
-do other random “client stuff” lolz

I’ve been using Asana since 2012 and I’m basically positive this is “close” to the right solution
 I’m sure there are some features I’m missing
 but in the Admin of the Org, we should be able to set up “user types” and then segment individual users into one of these “user types”

Pro Tip: This is also a great lead gen tool for asana. If more agencies added their clients to internal asana projects
 more clients would stop using spreadsheets and email for project management and they’d probably sign up for a free account. (yes, I’m a marketer
 but I’m obv. trying to sell this hard :joy:

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We have some clients and our development team both in Asana. We don’t want to expose our entire team to our clients, and vice-vera. A lot of tasks and comments also don’t make sense to expose to our clients. So we end up with developer focused projects, and client focused projects. We end up having to do a lot of duplication of tasks, jumping back and forth, multiple tasks to complete, etc.

  • What would be AWESOME would be the ability to assign an user a “external only” or “internal only” status.
  • Each project, task, and comment would have a toggle to make it “external” with the default state being “internal”.
  • If a project is external, the default states would cascade to tasks and comments
  • Similarly if a task is external, cascade to comments
  • Users with external status would only be able to see external projects, tasks, and comments.
  • External content created by users with “internal only” status would be anonymous to external users, and they wouldn’t show up as collaborators.

With this setup, we could have all developers and clients in the same project, receive tasks from clients, discuss internally on the same task, ask client a question on the same task, have all developers see clients comment, discuss internally, respond and assign to client. Client would only see and receive notifications for applicable questions / comments, and only users (PM or lead developer) who are client-interfacing would show their personally identifiable info to the client.

THIS WOULD BE YUUUUUUGE

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Hi @Matt_Healy and thank you for taking time to share this great feedback!

I’ve gone ahead and merged your post with an existing thread in the Forum to consolidate feedback on this topic. I hope it’s OK.

Have a great Friday Matt! :slight_smile:

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Hello @Natalia -,

can you give us info about this feature?? We don’t want our clients to see all tasks / conversations/ . creating 2 projects (internal / external) isn’t an option since we work with more than XX clients


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Hmmm, I guess there are many people still want this feature.
Me too!

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Hi Natalie,

Was this feature implemented? We are researching different online productivity tools with Asana winning so far. But a big requirement for us is to have the ability to share the project timeline etc with clients. We don’t want them changing anything, just a view that updates for them to keep track of the project.

Has this feature been added to Asana now? :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Anthony

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@Chris_John would the app be integrated into ASANA to make a split function for internal vs external comments and task permissions? If so, then I wold love to talk more about his because I have been looking for something like this at my agency.

Competitors already have features for this issue. Most that I have seen simply have a way when you go to add a user to a project or team to say this person is a ‘teammate’ and this person is a ‘client’. Then on tasks, lists, etc. there is usually a checkbox to the effect of ‘Don’t show this to the client’. Its a really simple concept. We just moved from another system and we were very surprised that this feature didn’t exist already.

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