Topic: To-Do lists vs Highrise Tasks...

+1. The lack of any true task management system in Basecamp is a glaring defect.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Woo Hoo.. Thanks

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Thank you, 37 Signals! It is fantastic that this feature has been returned. Working with your customers to resolve these issues and coming to an agreeable solution does not go unnoticed. Thanks so much!

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Okay guys, considering the feedback on this we’re bringing back the “Assign to all future projects” checkbox for firm employees. We’re going to have it on by default, but you can turn it off when you’re creating a new employee, or you can change it back and forth at any point like before.

This will ensure that people who don’t touch any permissions will still get the benefit of “collaboration by default”, but that people who have 70 employees in their firm get the control back on whether all these folks should be added in by default.

Thanks for all the comments on this. This update should be out by tonight.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

David,
Can we expect any changes to this functionality to resolve the outstanding issues mentioned above? If so, what is the time frame?

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Agreed that giving everyone in the firm (as the 37S admin refers to ‘our company’) is a bad idea. My company is also in the 60-70 person range and this is a major inconvenience. ‘Assign to all future projects’ would be useful to resurrect.

Another idea: have the ‘Give everyone from this company access to this project’ checkbox available for the firm, too, when creating a new project. If checked, assign all firm employees to project. Default to unchecked (only employees with ‘Assign to all future projects’ added to project). This satisfies the 37S requirement to blur the line between client and firm (since currently the checkbox is only available for the client dropdown); and also satisfies the requests from the majority of posters here to avoid having all firm employees added. If sub-groups/departments are added (a good idea, I think), you could have a series of checkboxes, one for each sub-group of the firm.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

This is possibly the worst update to Basecamp I have ever seen, I am absolutely gobsmacked. I understand how this may apply to client accounts, but to our own internal company account this is absurd when we have 40+ people using Basecamp who clearly don’t need the information overload of all the projects being visible. Simplicity is part of the your reasoning at 37 Signals, and this change has just done the opposite for us.

We now have to remove 30+ people for every project we add, we add on average 2-3 projects a day and will now probably be wasting around an hour a day because of this completely unnecessary update to a function that worked perfectly.

How can a feature which allowed us to choose who should or should not automatically be added to projects, which allows an admin to have full control over a repetitive task of adding projects, be removed with the assumption that users will simply remove the people who don’t need access.

I suppose we are now seeing how dependency on an external provider of a system so integral to our business ultimately exposes us to an inherent risk in that what we have bought into may not stand in the future if 37 Signals decide they want the product to evolve in a different way.

Matt

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

+1 support for the “Assign to all future projects” option on the Edit Person page.

Apart from this unfortunate removal of an old useful feature, the update works well for us. Thanks 37S.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

I think Danno’s idea about “sub-companies” would be great. We work in consulting teams, and it would be much easier to work with them as separate groups.

But regarding Stephanie’s issue above, I understand that the recent updates have reversed defaults from exclusion to inclusion – but it does seem to create a mess when new projects are popping up on our dashboards because people didn’t click the “no one” option in the new permission list.

The security issues are also pretty important; we run into a lot of situations where the extra step of making sure “no one” is included (and then picking who should be) makes things a lot more nerve-wracking.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

We also liked “assign to all future projects”...our management needs things as simple as possible.

But the “add everyone” default is the biggest problem. We have over 100 projects going at at time, and 100 staff, so adding everyone and being forced to uncheck all the boxes or overwhelm each staff member’s dashboard is a serious, serious problem.

Laura

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

okay, so first off, i do really like all the additional permissions stuff, like the everyone/no one checkboxes and the way you can edit peoples access to projects from the edit person page.

however, i’m a bit peeved that no where in the upgrade announcement does it mention that the new default is everyone in your company is added to a project. that is a huge deal (as you can see from the previous posts) and should have been mentioned in the Basecamp announcement.

and i agree with everyone else on this forum that the default needs to be NO ONE from any company, including your own. the issue is very much confidentiality. in the past, we’ve actually set up completely separate Basecamp accounts to avoid any possibility of security breaches internally, and that was with the old system that was much more difficult to screw that up.

not only does the default need to be NO ONE from any company, including your own, but we need the “Automatic access to all future projects” button back for individuals. as a few others have mentioned, there are management groups that need to have access to all projects and it’s easier not to have to add them all in.

please, please, please change the default to “no one” rather than everyone, for your own company and every other. it makes our lives and project security sooooo much easier and reduces the stupidity error factor.

thank you for listening to us!

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

I have to concur on the option to not add all people in our company to every project we create – we have about 60 people in our company, and clients typically only work with one or two people in a project – so now we have to remove almost 60 people from every project we create.

The old way was better for us, where we would indicate whether a person was assigned to every project or not.

Please fix. This has added a 1/2 hour to every project we set up at a minimum.

Thanks

Jack Miller

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

This still doesn’t solve our problem. All of our company’s employees are getting added to new projects. With this change, not all of our clients will get added to a project, but every one of our company’s do.

As a solution, promos’ recommendation above is one option. Or just add a global setting for each company whether the default is to add all employees at project creation. Or just add the original system of ‘access to all future projects’ and default assigning staff to new projects to none.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

I still hate the auto add of all people, but understand others may like it. However, why can’t we also have a tick box in the individual’s personal settings to opt out of auto add. I REALLY NEED this old feature back. We have many people we just do not want to add each time. Sure I can click on them once setting up a project, but its a lot of clicks every-time. I loved this old feature.

Cheers

Tony

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

This update is now live. You can read about it in the UPDATE Dec 11, 2007 section below the original post here:
http://37signals.blogs.com/products/2007/12/basecamp-permis.html

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

David,

Thanks so much. My producers are going to be so relieved.

Ironically, I had just figured out a way around it by creating yet another “company” that would be full of the administrators and then I was going to use the “XXXX can access” pane in People to add people one at a time into the projects.

Either way, this product rules!

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Thanks I just sent it.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

support@basecamphq.com

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

ok, but how do I write support?

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Hi guys,

We’re adding an option tonight to control whether you want to add all the employees to a project when you’re associating their company with that project. That should make it clearer at the time of adding how you want to control whether people get access or not. Thanks for the comments on this.

mikal, could you write support? We’ll help you figure it out.

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

I cant seem to add a new project and give another company that did not previously exist access – it makes it an internal project no matter what I do. Every other time I do this i get an error – this is a problem can someone fix this? TUESDAY DEC. 11th 07 about 3:00 central time.

Thanks
Mikal

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Could we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have the ability returned to us at the individual level to NOT add to all projects.

Topic: Comment emails on/off

Is there a way to know if the TPTB at 37Signals are A) aware of this issue; and/or B) have it placed somewhere on their priority list of features to add?

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

I agree with Mitch.

In our company we don’t want our staff to be able to browse all the projects. However our management team, to be able to assign people to projects must have access to everything, especially HR dept who needs to review time exports. Now our project managers have to assign each individuals manually.

Is it possible, at least, to have a feature that allows to automatically add people to new projects, what so ever?

And don’t misread me, I think Basecamp is great, but this update is really bad for many companies.

Thanks,

Mathieu

Topic: All people are getting assigned to new projects

Argh…

“Assign to all future projects” was a very important feature for us as well, as it automatically added the default management group to every new project. Now I’m going to have to create the project, add the company, remove everyone, add the default people back in and then add the assigned team.

Basecamp is supposed to be about simplicity and this isn’t simple. You all refuse to give us project templates and then remove the one feature that even remotely served as a template.

I do, however, like the new “XXXX can access…” pane in People. That’s useful and will be even more so if you add back a radio button there for automatically assign to all projects.

Thanks,

Mitch