I’ve just been looking at adding collaborators (guests) but I can’t set them to comment only… meaning a ‘guest’ collaborator can change anything in a task? e.g. Name, description, dates, and anything in the menu (specifically making it public!). I was hoping the whole point of comment only projects would be so that people can only comment. Seems to me that this doesn’t apply to collaborators/guests.
Pls tell me I’ve missed something and I can make them comment only?
Thanks in advance.
Hi @Lins_Karnes! Thanks for reaching out. You can certainly set a project as comment only, but for an individual task you’d be able to set it as private or not private. So, I’d recommend that for projects with guest access, you either choose that the project will be comment only for those guests, or not, and update the guest settings in the project accordingly.
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Hey, thanks for reply, however this doesn’t solve it unfortunately.
Here’s the issue.
I am ASANA admin / project org owner running a creative business.
I have a Team, and inside that a project workflow.
I need to add a client (as guest) to the project so they can see all tasks.
I add them as comment only to lock them down to commenting only.
I have 5 separate creatives who are pitching ideas to this client - I want them to upload their ideas into the system to collab with the client.
I cannot have the creatives being able to the whole workflow (as its business with the client) nor can i more importantly have creatives seeing each others ideas.
So I can’t add at project level, so I add them as collaborators (or I could assign them the task, either way the same?) to only that task for which they should be collaborating in.
The problem is now they are added to the task, they have full access to do what they wish with that task (set public, add/remove people, blah blah blah…) its a hella lot of freedom for a guest collaborator.
I just found it weird you can have someone comment only for an entire project, but if you are locking someone down even further (to individual tasks) that you give them more freedom within that task…?
A simple ‘comment only’ or ‘edit’ switch (like in the project permissions) feels necessary. Allowing collaborators (who I guess could be seen as FYI) to be locked down to only comment and upload, or to be granted full access.
I’ve actually now seen some other posts where users are struggling with this too.
Its a real blow as I’ve been testing ASANA for a week now, and I got everything else running smoothly and just how I want it to - this was a huge curve ball.
I will 100% need to look for other PM software.
Please let me know if I’m missing something in how I’m setting up my permissions 
Hi @Lins_Karnes,
I appreciate how thoughtful you’re being! And I hear you on this. At this time, yes the comment only setting needs to be at the project level and a task will either be public, private, or viewable by collaborators.
Full details here:
I hope that we’ll be able to help you find a solution that works for you! I do recommend that you explore comment only projects as a solution. If that absolutely won’t work for you, then you might explore a combination of projects and/or multi-homed tasks. Tha might give you the balance you’re looking for with clients’ and creatives’ permissions.
Please let me know if you have any follow up questions!
Hi - I’m really struggling (read extremely frustrated and annoyed) with ASANA…
I spent a long time discussing the ‘collaborators being comment only’ on a few different threads (sorry no the reply from you Asana was no use then).
I got so much push back from ASANA that this was too complicated and hard, and blah…
it seemed impossible and a feature you weren’t going to implement
I’ve just recently had to radically re-structure how I had guests collaborators so I could effectively lock people down to restrict them changing whatever they wanted.
Now I’m going back in to do some config and I see you’ve done exactly as I needed… nothing in the release notes, nothing in the community updates, nothing I can see that says you made this change…
Too late for me, as I’ve just wasted so much time with my team to configure this to work without it… I had to add 5 more workflows to do what I needed… spent a tonne of time configuring with new workflows, producing training materials and made the system so complicated and admin heavy that its a massive administration burden every-time I create and manage a new project.
ಠ_ಠ
Hi @Lins_Karnes and my sincere apologies for the negative experience there. There is indeed an option to automatically set all tasks collaborators of a project with “Comment Only” permissions (See screenshot below).
This option was introduced when we implemented users permissions but reading previous replies on this thread, it seems that it wasn’t clearly outlined; really sorry about that!
Regarding your creatives, you could either add them to a task in which they can submit their idea to collaborate with your client or ask them to submit their idea via a form (which would generate tasks in the project in question)? Google Forms and Asana • Asana Product Guide.
I understand you have already re-organized your workflow and I don’t want to add any confusion here, but if you need any advice or assistance, please let me know and I’ll be more than happy to help!
Hi - yes was aware of that. I had that set already for certain users.
But for collaborators (that aren’t added to a project - just a task) this was what I was looking for.
No matter I’ve been forced into a different solution that may make is simpler for users (much harder for me to administer though)
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