View only access to projects/tasks for clients

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We use Asana to internally track various tasks and projects. For some of those projects, we want to be able to let our clients to see certain information or tasks. For example, if we’re planning a client’s marketing calendar/schedule for the next few months, we want them to be able to interact with us in Asana, such as rearranging the schedule or leaving comments. Sometimes, the client just needs to be able to see the schedule without having editing access.

This presents two issues:

  1. Clients must create an Asana account to access our projects. We don’t want them to receive a swathe of emails every time we make changes, either. So it would be great if there was an option to invite someone to a project as a viewer only. This would take care of those “read only” projects.

  2. For clients with editing access, and in some other cases, we would like to be able to have some private tasks, descriptions and comments. For example, we might have a task which is purely for our own use, and we don’t want the client to see our internal conversations about that task. Secondly, there are some tasks which we DO want the client to see, but we don’t want them to see our private conversations. So having the option to write private comments somehow would also be hugely advantageous, as it avoids the need for duplicate projects and tasks.

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Sorry, I meant to finish by asking if there’s any way around those issues, and also whether it’s something other Asana users could utilise?

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I second that. It would be great if this could be granular so we can choose what the client can see in a project. On my end the most important feature is that the client can see the list of tasks, their due dates, labels, description, but not the task attachments, assignee and comments.

This would allow me to keep working with the internal team on the task and iterations without the client seeing the content. Then when the work is ready, I can let the client see a specific attachment, or a specific comment when I @mention him/her.

Right now, I have to keep everything in double projects, one internal and one for client and have to update due dates on client side every time something changes. This is something that Jira can do already. Would be great to have it.

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Hi @Grant_O_Neill
Have you read the meeting minutes template help in Asana?
They explain how to manage this kind of situation.

Briefly, you create a MAIN project with all of your task (share internally with your team). You create another project SHARED with your client. Then, to allow client to see a task, you have to add the SHARED project to this task. So, the same task will be visible in two project (MAIN and SHARED). It’s the same task not a duplicate, so all of the comments are accessible for either internal and client and you only have to complete task once. Once your done with your client notification of this task, just remove the SHARED project association for this task and it remains in your MAIN project as completed with all of the information shared. Hope this helps.
Seb

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On the back of this, we have some customers who delete tasks as they think we won’t charge them for the time spent but everything goes into slack anyway so we have full visibility.

It would be good to prevent certain users or non team members from deleting tasks and only be able to complete them or something similar.

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Thanks but that doesn’t solve the issue. I don’t want clients to see internal communications.

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This is a work-around, not a solution.

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Yes, absolutely. I found this thread because I was searching for an answer for the same issue.

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We have the exact same issue with Asana. My clients want viewer visibility into their projects at the very least. I would like to see the suggestions above so that I can come back to Asana. As it stands, we selected another vendor that offers some client visibility, which is a top priority on our selection process.

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I also would like to solve this issue!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.