Since it is a Friday, we decided to release a couple of updates at the same time. Today we also added the “Hide from Client(s)” flag to Messages and Files – now you can exchange private messages with your team without clients seeing them.
Besides this update and the new columns in the main view, a bunch of small fixes and performance improvements were also released. We hope you will like the changes.
Is there a setting that needs to be tripped to make this feature active? Is it only on new tasks created moving forward?
This setting works inside all the tasks – new and old.
Please note that this flag applies to Messages and Files, not Tasks.
Has anyone asked for and would it be possible to mark or highlight messages set this way? Looking at the master list of comments we can see the “Hidden from Clients” message next to the date, but it might be night if the entire line or item was highlighted in another color ?
This is a new feature, so we didn’t get much feedback yet, especially over the weekend.
The border of the message is a bit lighter, though it can be difficult to notice.
We may look into that if we get more requests about it.
Ideally, this flag should always be ticked so the default is to HIDE from the client . More specifically, the verbiage should be “Show to client” thereby forcing the user to click the box to allow access to the message.
Having a feature like this that relies on task team members to always remember to tick that box to prevent committing a crucial inside bit of information to a client is dangerous.
Any number of messages are daily being passed around in 5pm related to the client’s attitude or expectations that, as a PM, I don’t want the client to see. I can’t open my projects up to clients without better control of information.
That said, this upgrade has serious potential. I would open our projects up to clients (which we don’t do right now because of confidentiality issues) if there were three modifications made to the implementation.
1. This needs to apply to tasks as well. I would like to assign tasks to my client (I actually already do but I have to do it in email so it ends up not being tracked in 5pm).
2. As Carl said above, there needs to be a way to have the task, message or file flagged if it is viewable to a client.
2. The default state needs to be changed, as mentioned above, from show (current default) to hide. Better yet, the option needs to say “Show to client?”
Dan, thank you for the suggestions.
Everybody uses 5pm differently – some are more open with Clients then others.
Clients can not be assigned to Tasks, only to Projects.
Generally Clients are very limited in rights (that’s why they are free) and for more functionality you will have to use External Users – this way you can assign tasks to them and they don’t see anything outside those tasks, even inside the project they can see.
But you do see my point right?
The feature is dangerous as implemented. Changing it to require the team member to tick the box to show it to the client is a minor inconvenience for those who are “more open” with their clients. For those of us using 5pm to manage complex engineering projects, client access MUST be limited or not at all.
The PM tool should not have “features” that can result in losing clients.
Dan> We did not even have this flag before, so the clients could see it all for all the past years. You don’t have to use it if you consider it dangerous.
Please use support [at] 5pmweb.com for communication with support.
My point is that the feature is a good one and allows your users to implement client access but only if it defaults to “hide”. Until this is changed, then client access is to projects remains a bad idea for the engineering field.
It should default to shared, not hide. If you have that many issues that need to be hidden from clients, please let the rest of us maintain an open working relationship with our clients. I’d hate to have to check that box for the hundreds of updates our staff will be makin to a large project.
Maybe there needs to be a way to set which default state it should have. We would like to be able to have our clients have limited access to our projects but can’t right now given the current paradigm. We don’t want to have to abandon 5pm if we get a client that requires a portal to their project.
All it takes is for one team member to post a negative comment about a client (e.g. “The client failed to tell us that they needed to have HDMI capability in their video conferencing room and so an expensive redesign will be required. How should we proceed?”) The salesman responds by saying that he has had a similar problems with ignorant IT directors at other companies. Pretty soon there is a whole discussion going of the knowledge, or lack thereof, of the basics of IT management that starts making the client look like a bonehead. Fine for internal open discussions but death for future prospects of working with this client if they were to read such a discussion thread.
I welcome the addition of client access to 5pm. It’s something we need and were informed was coming when we signed up. But I also want to encourage open discussions of issues amongst project management teams. If there is a possibility that a team member will neglect to check the box and thereby end up losing us a $250K contract in the process, I think I need a way to manage the ticking of that particular $250,000 checkbox. Just one PM’s opinion.
Dan, we changed the defaults for your account only. I’ll follow up with an email about it.
I, too, would like to be able to hide tasks from clients. It’s not so much an issue of openness with the client. I would like to have one timeline for client and internal team to view so I know any changes are consistently communicated at the same time.
The tasks, notes, hour estimates, etc., however, that I provide my internal team would absolutely be an unnecessary information dump on our clients. If I could hide any item from the client, then I could provide clients a nice, clean timeline made up only of parent tasks and higher level subtasks while providing project team members a full timeline that includes their assigned subtasks including the nuts and bolts that the client does not need to read.