Little confused about adding members to a project

When I click on the “Designers” in the “Teams” section, I see all the icons of the team. But when I click on a project, I only see my own icon. However, when I click on “Share” it actually says that “Members of [team-name] and task collaborators - can edit”, and everything works fine - so I was just wondering if it’s normal that we only see our own icon in a project.

My second question, which I think might be related to the above one, is when I start a new conversation in the team (click on the team and click on “Conversations”), it says “‘n’ people will be notified.” However, when I click on a project and go to “more\conversaitions” and start a new conversation, it says “0 people will be notified.” Why won’t anyone be notified when I start a project conversation?

Hello @Zvi_Twersky,
When you create project inside team with "public to [team-name] " option, all team members have access to it but they will not collaborating with this project (they don’t receive notification about status update, conversation, new tasks etc). If you want to do that, you have to add members directly to the project (use share option). After that, when you start conversation you will see proper number of people being notified.

You can read more about that here:

I hope it helps

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I read the article. Still not clear. According to what you said, I would have to add each member individually, even though they already have full access to the project. Do I have to manually add each member at a time for every project? Isn’t that cumbersome work? It seems that if I added the team as a whole, they should all be collaborators. Help me understand the logic here.

Is the only difference between how I have it now and adding each member individually just for notification purposes?

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I understand this is confusing. If a team is public, then you only need to add members to a project if:

  • you want specific permissions for them (Comment only)
  • you want specific permissions for others (everyone Comment only, the members edit)
  • you want them to be the owner
  • you want them to have specific notification settings (only status update for example)

Does that help clarify?

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The idea behind that is that members of a teams not necessarily have to work with all projects (and have to be notified) but they can (If they want) see what is going on in team.
If they should work with this project it is better to add them directly.

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I haven’t been so strict about this as that might require a lot of manual work to add people within projects. That is why I tried to articulate exceptions where you need to add them, and otherwise don’t. Do you agree?

Yes, I agree. I meant that if someone does significant part of project’s work it is probably easier to add him directly.

True. I found that the “it is better/easier” answer sometimes trigger a “why?” question from a client :sweat_smile:

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My project is public and my members DO get notifications, even though they weren’t added separately to the project (only as a team) and that’s why I guess I don’t see the icons of members on top of the project.

I don’t need any of the scenarios you gave - they can all have full permission.
However, it seems that there is one more thing missing from your list, that causes some limitation; and that’s project conversations.

As I said, When starting a project conversation I see “0 people will be notified.”
I of course want the team to get notified on project conversations so I guess I will to manually add them all.

Very good point about the Conversations! :heart_eyes:
I’ll work a post summarizing everything

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@Zvi_Twersky, in your example, I doubt that members of the Team the Project is in receive project-level notifications as specified in https://asana.com/guide/help/projects/people Member notification settings. That Guide article explains it.

I like to pro-actively pre-load anything I create with what I know to be needed, so if I create a Project I add members that I know should receive notifications, etc. If I create a Task I add Collaborators that I know should be there. Better not to leave to chance. And each person can adjust themselves too.

Larry

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I will show you screenshots that they do receive both emails and Asana inbox notifications about being assigned to a task, even though they are not a member of the project (only in the team). Is this a bug? If so, it might be the first bug that I actually would benefit from :slight_smile:

@Zvi_Twersky, That’s expected behavior. the Guide article I linked to explains what notifications project membership delivers. A notification for being assigned a task has nothing to do with either project or team membership.

Larry

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Ok, got it now. Thanks.

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Thank you so much for sharing your tips and clarifying the information @Charlie_Pilch, @Bastien_Siebman and @lpb! :star_struck:

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