Giving the whole team "edit" permissions across dozens of projects

We just hit a snag with the way we’ve changed how we use Asana.

Long story short, I have a team with about 15 members, about 40 projects recently created, and I need ALL of them to have the ability to comment and add tasks across ALL projects in that team.

I need them all to have that sort of access, without also getting swamped with unnecessary notifications about “someone moved a task from this section to that”.

I need that to be the default setting across all future projects in that team, and also default for all team members that are added to it in the future.

If I understand the current situation, a team member that is not a member of a project that is set to “Public”, all they have to do is click to join the team and it will automatically add them. Correct?

Is there a way to add them all now so that they can skip this step?

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One way I could think of: create a portfolio with all the projects (you can use my tool to help) and then you invite them to the portfolio: you’ll have the option to make them members of those projects.

However it won’t work for future projects, you might have to do it all over again in a while…

@ambforumleader any idea?

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I can’t think of a more efficient way to add all of the team members to the current projects you have created without going to them one at a time and adding them (sorry!) but if you use a Project Template for all future projects you can make sure the team members are added to all future projects.

You can set up the template to include all of the team members you want on each new project created using the template and then you are all set. The only thing with this method is that you would have to update the project template each time a team member is added or leaves the team.

Hopefully these solutions help and maybe some of the other @ambforumleader have some additional ideas?

Cheers!
Matt

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Yeah those are the two solutions that just don’t quite work. We definitely don’t need one more thing to remember to do when we add a new team member.

There should be a global Team setting for Permissions such as the following

*All team members automatically have full access to all projects by default to comment/add tasks by default, and specific projects can be limited manually to specific people.

*All Team Members have “view only” abilities and require a team member to approve joining.

This is how I would approach this. I might be missing something here, so please correct me if I am wrong and remove the “Solution” status.

:one: Everyone in the Team to have full project access

If you create a Public project in the specific Team, all team members have edit access without the need to add them manually every time.

This will solve the below.

If they are NOT part of the team, you can set the Team setting to allow people to find and join the team independently.

:two: All Team members have by default, view-only access.

The first thought that come to mind is

  • Create a separate Team where you plan to put view-only projects
  • Allow everyone to join the team like above
  • Give the Team a clear identifying name (Team Name - View-Only)
  • Add to this Team only projects that you set as View-Only for the Team members
  • If a specific team member needs edit rights, you will add him to the project individually and give him edit rights


The above screenshot is from the Project specific Share settings

:bulb: Worth noting
→ There is a caveat. If you want all of your Team members to receive Project Updates or Project Messages notifications, they must be added (manually) to the project, and there is no bulk solution for that yet.

So, in this case, the internal team convention should be that the critical stakeholders for the project, those who need such project-level updates to be pushed to them, should be added (manually) by the project owner. This usually varies from project to project. Therefore this is usually the right approach; it is unlikely, in my experience, that all of the 15 team members will always have to receive for all 40 projects such updates.

I’d love to actually have the option “@ team name” in the Project Share module as we can do for assigning duplicates of a task and adding the entire team to the project like that.

→ In my experience, opening the Team up to the whole company reduces admin work (not needing, for instance, to add newcomers), but it might, of course, also have the side effect of “unwished” visitors. So you have to strike the balance there and decide what’s the priority: privacy vs reducing admin work.

Does it help?

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I have members of the Team who cannot comment on jobs that are obviously marked as “Public to Team”. They have to manually join the team to do that. It allows them to do that without someone else approving it, so it basically just becomes extra button clicks and isn’t the most intuitive thing at all. Especially for our users who aren’t exactly the most tech savvy.

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Is there an update in the works that will allow new projects to be view by portfolio members? It doesn’t make sense that a portfolio member doesn’t have access to all projects within the portfolio.

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