We've made some significant, oft-requested improvements to the Basecamp permissions system. These changes should speed up your workflow and make giving/removing access to collaborators simpler, easier, and more consistent.
- Administrators can now control which projects a specific person has access to from the edit person screen. Click the People tab, "edit" a person, and you can give/remove permission to multiple projects at once. Previously you'd have to go into each individual project to change permissions for a specific person. Not any more. This is a huge time saver!
- People with permission to work with to-do items now have full access to to-do functionality. They can assign to-do items to people from other companies, edit existing items, and check items off. This makes it much easier for people from different companies (or different "groups" or "departments" inside the same company) to collaborate on equal footing. No more confusing red dots, partial to-do functionality or "why can't someone assign someone else a to-do?"
- When you add a new company to a project, you have the choice of adding everyone in that company to the project. You no longer have to add them one by one. You can always remove someone's access to a project by either editing them on the People screen or clicking the "People & Permissions tab inside the project.
- By default, everyone you add to a project will have full permissions for messages, files, to-dos, and milestones. This makes complete collaboration much easier while still retaining the option for those who wish to restrict a person's ability to use Basecamp fully.
These changes are based on feedback gathered over the past year. The changes favor participation over non-participation. People can now do more by default. The onus of configuration has been shifted to removing access, not allowing access. Letting people collaborate no longer requires tweaking permissions before starting a project. Now adjustments are only required if you don't want someone to participate on a project.
UPDATE Dec 11, 2007: We've made some additional changes based on feedback.
- We've renamed the "People & Access" tab to "People & Permissions", and also reverted to more descriptive and familiar "permissions" language inside the tab.
- We've added "everyone | no one" shortcuts to the Permissions screen. Clicking a link will either give everyone or no one from a specific company access to the project. This will save you a lot of clicks if you have a lot of people in a company. For example, if you had a company of 30 people, and only 4 people from that company needed access to that project, you'd just click "no one" then click on those 4 people. This would save you 25 clicks over the previous system.
- We added a "Give everyone from this company access to this project now" checkbox to the new project and add a company to this project process. Clicking that checkbox will give everyone in that company access to the project. Unchecking the box will add the company, but no one from that company will have access yet. You can then customize the permissions on a per-person basis.
- We've improved the new project process so it's clearer if the project you are creating has a company attached or if it's just an internal project.
Thanks again for your continued feedback. We hope you find these improvements useful. Your suggestions will continue to help shape Basecamp over time.
