Hi,

I have a small starter problem. I gave my customer an account to add to-do-lists. But when he tries to assign (who is responsible) the to-do to someone he only gets his own name in the dropdown. Do I have to change anything, so that he can assign to-dos to our own staff?

Regards Tom

Clients cannot assign tasks to employees.

We will be revisiting this in a future release. We believe the tides may have turned on this particular feature. Originally people didn’t want their clients assigning them things, but over the past 6 months we’ve heard more feedback the other way.

I believe such a feature would be very useful. Here is how we would use it: we would like to create an employee called “Support”. This would be a user in all our projects. That would enable our clients to assign support requests and then we would be able to see an overview of all our support requests by project. You might also consider a checkbox to enable us to control whether or not a particular employee could be assigned tasks by clients.

You also have to consider that people from other companies may not necessarily be clients, they may be subcontractors. I plan on using Basecamp to handle subcontractors, so they would need similar rights as an employee in this situation, since they are part of the team for that particular project.

I would also like to be able to assign external people administrative rights for certain clients.

Having clients assign to-dos is a good thing. Especially if it helps to build up on the billable hours.

I am one of those of the beginning that are against this.

We have (had) experience with this. Not a good idea. I agree with an area where clients can post requests for (more) work.

But when a client starts assigning to-do’s to our team…... OMG !

Who is running the show then?

Just adding an option to the permission area would not cover the need. I don’t have the solution but it should be more clever then that.

Maybe this is more a need for the subcontractor collaboration.

Here would be my argument against allowing clients to assign to dos:

We work very hard to communicate with the client regarding all aspects of their project, which is why we use Basecamp. This is especially true in regard to what is and isn’t within the scope of a project.

When a client comes to us with a request that is not within the scope of the project, we immediately point out that fact, and let them know that we will create a change order and get sign off from them on it.

We are trying more and more to handle this through the Messages section, creating appropriate categories to handle the work flow of change order requests, approvals, etc.

I want to reiterate that we immediately point out when something appears to be out of scope. We’ve found that if we let an out of scope request linger, it can create a false sense of approval which can be a headache to deal with:

Client: “Oh, well when we asked for it you didn’t say anything about it being out of scope so we just assumed it was okay. I’ve already told my boss that we’re adding that feature and he’s already told the board and they expect that it will still be delivered by the project deadline.”

That is exactly the kind of scenario I am trying to avoid.

So, if a change is going to be made so that clients can assign To Do items to us, please have an option to turn it off. Globally by project (or by user/project) would be best, but by list at least.

I agree with Chris this is only one of the potential issues.

In another treat people asking for moving messages from one project to the another. Just imagine if the client is gonne create to-do’s then you can also add to the wish list moving to-do’s to another project or just a new one…....

I’m for an option to turn it on/off. Possibly by user & project.

It just depends on how you use each project. If it’s collaboration of sorts, then you would want your “client” assigning you to-do’s. Sometimes your “client” or other company is your partner, and you want to work together, but not be part of the same company listing. Other times, especially when billable hours are at hand, as mentioned above, this situation would not be ideal.

:)

Here’s how I see this solved the 37 Signals way:

37 Signals needs to agree on another universal paradigm. Such as a new menu tab called Requests. In this tab, in would work like a message board, but more simple. Requests would either be APPROVED (green) or PENDING (red). (APPROVED requests could be modified by Basecamp ower to assign to person, then would automatically show up in To Do page. Obviously, clients would recognize this as collection page for just that, requests. It does not imply acceptance by the Basecamp owner.

I agree with previous posts, a “to-do” is simply too powerful to let a client have total control over its authority. (they can literally change the scope of a project in a matter of seconds, and the word to-do implies an approved change order.

As far as avoiding Basecamp bloat, and having yet another TAB in the menu, how about letting the Basecamp account owner decide which TABS to show up on a project by project basis. (i.e. we never use Writeboards) Thanks for reading.

We handle the issue by giving each client an “Ongoing” project where they can post requests. It’s then our traffic manager’s responsibility to determine if it’s an ad-hoc task or the basis for a new project.

I agree that giving clients the means to directly assign tasks is a Pandora’s box.

Remember this a collaboration tool… and in our case, often that means collaborating with other companies, and having them assign stuff for us to do.

I posted about this issue in another thread recently. But basically our web development team and a separate web design team were collaborating on the one project, and it was frustrating that the web design guys could not assign things that we needed to do. I can understand the reasons why you would not want people assigning things for you in certain situations, hence the need to make it optional.

My general feeling tells me Basecamp was created by people doing web projects. As such, keeping your clients at arm’s length, being very strict on scope creep is essential to your profit. But, as we know, Basecamp is now used by companies with varying degrees of friendliness with their clients, even alllowing someone on the client side to project manage. This is where the To Do comes in, optional control needs to happen to reflect business reality. Thanks 37s for considering.

I agree with the general consensus, especially the last two posts.

I’m working on drumming up interest in Basecamp in a research university setting, but I am finding some of the “collaborative” aspects to not be collaborative enough. It’s a great tool for the “company-client” model, but may not be completely suitable for peer-to-peer interactions between institutions.

Can anyone in the know speak to this idea and paint some broad direction that the app may or may not be headed?

Having external companies assign to-do’s is essential for me personally. Currently I am forced to add subcontractors, partners, suppliers, and clients to my own company, which is not cool.

We can’t make the assumption of what sort of relationship a “company” has. There are many possible scenarios:

1. You are a large company with many people on staff, and you need tight control of resource allocation

1. You are a small company or a single subcontractor, and for some projects you have a closer relationship with other companies

1. A client who has hired your company for a project, and you want to keep at “arms length” in terms of assigning tasks and prioritizing items

1. A client with their own internal project manager, who has subcontracted some work out to you, and you have a pretty comfortable relationship with, and you want to give them direct access to the project.

1. A subcontractor or supplier you want to assign tasks to, but you don’t want assigning tasks to other team members.

1. A subcontractor or supplier who will also be managing some aspects of a project, who will need to assign some to-dos.

1. There are people in your own organization that you don’t want assigning to-to’s (Account execs)

Rather than restricting permissions on a per-client basis, I think there would be a significant benefit with an option in the individual user permissions that allows them to assign to-do’s and/or milestones. Perhaps for external companies, this option can always be off by default.

If this capability can be added without a significant overhaul, I think the majority of users would find a benefit at one time or another.

I have a small consulting company with several consultants working on multiple consulting projects each. I had to move all of our clients into our ‘company’ because of this issue. I must have the ability to have clients assign to-do items to their consulting representative. Frankly, the issue eliminates much of the functionality of the project management tool vis a via company by company management of multiple-projects.