New access level in projects: Viewer!

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Thanks Larry!

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I can not seem to find information on this, so I’ll jut ask here
if viewer is just a new level to project permissions, why does everybody get upgraded to editor or everybody downgraded to commenter?

In a specific Project of mine there is two people that have commentor permission. They dont need more, and if the new viewer permission is there they will get that. But on april 30th they will get upgraded to editor view, why is that?
Why do i have to choose for everybody else if the should get upgraded or downgraded?

@Marie maybe you can help here?

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@Marie - I’m excited about this new access feature, but I’m in the same boat as @DJ_Kie. We just started using “commenter” permissions for a few users who I don’t want to have full editor access, but also don’t want view only access. Why isn’t there an option to keep commenters as they are, if the view only access is an add-on to the current permissions? I don’t want to have to downgrade everyone, the re-upgrade everyone project by project. I appreciate any help to resolve this issue without excessive manual intervention.

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Hello @DJ_Kie,

My name is Melat and I am with the product team in Asana. I wanted to answer some of your questions directly.

  • With the new permission model all Asana projects will follow an additive permissions model, meaning that a member who has access to a project in multiple ways inherits the highest access level available to them.

    • This only impacts members of projects that have conflicting access levels. Other direct members of the project won’t be impacted.

  • In your project, it may be true that the two commenters are also a part of a team or the organization on that project that has editor access. If you want to keep their access level as commenter, you have two options :

    • Adjust Project Settings: Change the project’s access setting to ‘private to members.’ This setting allows you to specify individual access levels for each member directly.
    • Update the team or task collaborator access level: Change the access level setting on the team, organization, and/or “task collaborators” to commenter to remove conflicts.

  • Create Specific Teams: If members within the same team require different levels of access, consider creating smaller, more defined teams. In the coming months, we’ll be implementing team sharing on projects :tada: – this update will make it seamless to share projects with entire teams in one click

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Hello @Mandy_Sponholtz ,

My name is Melat and I am with the product team in Asana. I wanted to answer some of your questions directly.

  • "Why isn’t there an option to keep commenters as they are, if the view only access is an add-on to the current permissions? "

    • We are preparing to introduce a new access level for projects called Viewer. As we launch Viewer, the complexity of managing access permissions gets harder as customers will be able to introduce conflicts between access levels that are more significant-- for example, by adding a team with “project admin” access and a team member with “viewer” access. We want to create a better solution before launching Viewer. This proactive approach ensures a smoother transition and better user experience when Viewer is launched.

  • To keep commenters with conflicting access to remain commenters refer to my comment above

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Thanks for the response, Melat, but it doesn’t answer my question. My understanding is that Business legacy customers will have four access levels: Project Admin, Editor, Commenter, and Viewer. My question is why must we upgrade users or downgrade entire teams when one or two people have “commenter” access, when that access will continue to be available on April 30?

The process Asana has created to resolve the mismatches creates a huge administrative burden to:

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Hi @Mandy_Sponholtz

The permission change is designed to address and resolve access level conflicts within individual projects.

Lets walk through an example on how the permission change would work

  • For example:imagine this scenario

    • Let’s say John is part of a team called Marketing.

    • Let’s say John is part of Project X as an editor.

    • Let’s say the Marketing team is part of Project X as a commenter.
      Now, John technically has two conflicting accesses: an editor through direct membership and a commenter through team membership. As we launch Viewer, the complexity of managing access permissions gets harder as customers will be able to introduce conflicts between access levels that are more significant-- for example, by adding a team with “project admin” access and a team member with “viewer” access. We want to create a better solution before launching Viewer. This proactive approach ensures a smoother transition and better user experience when Viewer is launched.

    • If you choose the upgrade option, John will have the highest access level he is entitled to from the two conflicting access levels; here, he will have the editor access levels. This approach minimizes disruptions and keeps workflows smooth.

    • If you choose the downgrade option, everyone in the marketing team (including John) will have commenter access levels.

    • if you don’t take any action, on April 30th, Asana will automatically go with the upgrade option.

  • This change only impacts direct members of the project that have conflicting access levels, the rest wont experience any change.
  • April 30th, we will launch Viewer so you will have the ability to go in and edit access levels and give members Viewer access
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Thanks again, Melat. Again, I understand the mismatch between team member access and individual project access. But there is a business reason for us to have members of a team be allowed to edit some projects and only comment on others.

Forcing users to upgrade individuals to a higher level only to have to reduce their access back down to the appropriate access could create even bigger problems if you do not know which projects have the mismatch and leave these users at the higher access level. Again, there isn’t a list of projects with mismatches that I can find anywhere, only the purple bar across the project.

It doesn’t sound like there is any way to change Asana’s process for this change by allowing commenters to remain at that status, which means we will have to MANUALLY change our commenter users back to that access level on April 30.

So, I will ask for this: Where can we find a list of 1) projects with mismatches, 2) which users have the mismatch, and 3) what the mismatch is? We have THOUSANDS of projects in Asana across our organization and trying to find them one by one is not feasible or reasonable to ask of your clients.

Thank you,

Mandy

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Hi @Mandy_Sponholtz ,

I completely understand the stress the access mismatches can cause with so many projects. I would love to schedule a call with you to chat about this a bit further and how we can streamline this for you later on.

As for the list you have requested we will be able to get that to you. I will message you to get more info about your org!

Thank you again for being patient with us as we are going through this shift to deliver exciting features on our sharing and permissions roadmap that necessitate this change.

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Hello!

I’m fairly new to using Asana but helping to manage the use of the platform within my organisation. With the upcoming update including the new viewer permission we’ve received notice to clean up our permissions as part of this update either on our own before 29 April or Asana will do this for us.

I don’t believe we are using teams in the best way but my manager prefers we do not delete anything. I just want to confirm a few questions as it’s been a bit unclear based on the limited available information provided by Asana related to this:

  • the permissions in question are if a project has an individual assigned but also a team assigned to that same project that has that same individual included and their permissions are different is that correct?
  • can you confirm is the quickest way to address this to mark all teams as private so permissions don’t conflict or would we need everyone to go through and remove teams or individuals if there is both?
  • is there any way to archive a team instead of delete so they get removed from the list of teams active in a project? the last forum I saw related to this was 2018 so hoping by now this functionality is place??

Am I missing any other steps to ensure our permissions are set correctly ahead of this due date? Thanks in advance for your help!

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I’ve posted a video explainer to try to help with this:

Thanks,

Larry

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I totally agree with you @Mandy_Sponholtz …why Asana has decided to upscale permissions and not down scale permissions as default is mind bongling and has some security concerns for me.

Basically users who shouldnt have edit rights will now have edit rights after the 30th April which is wrong way round… @Melat_Begashaw is there any way to prevent users from having elevated permissions for 1000’s of projects we may have down to lowest at once? FYI …I dont have Super Admin controls only Admin?

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@lpb great video, thank you. Appreciate that you are just explaining the impact of change, however I’m not sure Asana are realising what automatically elevating peoples permissions on potentially 1000’s of open projects could mean for businesses from a security standpoint.

It should default to lowest permission, not elevate to higher permission as default, as this is safer option from a security access standpoint.

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Thanks for the nice comment, @Ben_Turewicz.

I sympathize, but I feel Asana understands the implications and has explained (including in this thread) their point of view.

My suspicion: It will have important implications for some organizations, but the vast majority will be minimally affected or unaffected. I’m not diminishing the impact (if I’m even correct), and in fact that’s the reason why I’ve taken time to notifiy my client organizations and to create this video and share with all.

Thanks,

Larry

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Hello @Ben_Turewicz ,

There should be a banner on home that will show you the list of projects you admin that might get affected and you are able to go through and make you selection for each project.

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Hi al! Quick update to let you know that the new Viewer project access level is fully rolled out and available to all eligible cutomers!

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