Hide comments in project shared with collaborators

Hello,

One feature that is sadly missing for our team is the possibility to have internal communication Inside project shared with our client (collaborator license). Indeed, it's not possible to hide comments or have unshared tasks in projects that are shared with clients.

If you have any suggestion to bypass this, it would be appreciated

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Status: Not planned

Comments

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Marie-Pierre, welcome to the forums You're right, there's no way to hide comments or tasks from people who are shared on a task or Folder/Project. I would love to hear more about this use case and maybe we can figure out a workaround. Is there specific data that clients need to see vs. data that the team needs? For example, could the client have access to just one specific task, without having access to the entire Folder/Project?

Of course, we'll make sure to direct anyone with a similar request here, so that they can +1 your thread.

Cathy Coia

If it is with a external or internal user/collaborator that there may be conversation that relate to the project but should not be visable to everyone. For example...rather large project and within that project there is internal communication with operational personnel that provides no value for a sales rep or other type people. The communication is resolving an issue BUT is too much detail for some memebers to see. It would be fantaticif the task can be kept with a project but them flagged as Private and only certain memeber can see it.

Stephanie Westbrook

Great that helps! What about creating a private Folder that is a Subfolder of the main project Folder. You would then turn off inherited sharing to make sure that the Subfolder is only shared with some people (and not all of the people who have access to the main Folder). I would use naming conventions to help make it clear what Folder someone is in. For example, the main Folder would be something like "Website Launch" and the Subfolder would be "Private-Website Launch".

If you don't want to have a Folder with a separate Subfolder, then another option might be to create a client task within your Folder. You would share the main Folder with the internal team, or people who need access to the entire Folder, then create a task for groups that only need to see certain information. You would share those individual tasks with the necessary people and they wouldn't be able to see the tasks in the rest of the Folder.

Let me know if you think either of those would work and I can go into more detail about how to set up the Folder structure.

Cathy Coia

I think one of those would work. Could we jump on a call to discuss further?

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Cathy, yes of course! I'll create a ticket now and someone will reach out to you to schedule some time.

David Foster

I'd like to back up this thread. We have a communication issue with our large portfolio of clients that our small team handles. Now we have some key clients who are i would love to have live access to the state of their project, however where i'd like to give access to development sprints and sub tasks i'd really not like them to see the comments as it COULD cause issue with misunderstandings and the constant questions.

Alina Lushnikova

Hi everyone! I am glad to say that our Product manager for collaboration is Wrike is especially interested now in gathering your feedback regarding discussions in Wrike, I believe you will find this relevant! We will be glad to see your comments here and it would be precious if you took a moment to go through a quick survey to share more detailed feedback! Thank you in advance!

Paul Yoon

I also would like to be able to hide internal comments from external collaborators. We have a project that is shared with a client project manager so they know all the tasks and dates, but we would prefer if they didn't see any of the internal communication that is happening in each task among my company staff.

We initially shared Timeline snapshots but the client also wanted the ability to see a List or Table view since it’s easier to see task details like dates and subtasks altogether. Since the snapshot only had a timeline, we had to invite them as a collaborator and share our project.

Making an "internal & external copy" to share with specific members of the project is a no-go. I would have to maintain two copies of the project with every change that happens and that is more work than is necessary.

Jason Wilcox

Yes I just asked about this last week, this would be a great feature. My work around is to create a task and then a sub task and invite Clients tot he Sub-task only, but that is very hard to manage each task and you have 2 threads going on at the same time.

Permanently deleted user

Hi Paul and Jason, thanks so much for adding your insight here! @Jason I appreciate the workaround, and while I understand that it isn't ideal, maybe it will help some other users here in the meantime. I do think those are all valid points though.

Corinne Lehman

Agree that maintaining two sets of same tasks one for internal and external folks is a nightmare. We currently do this now, and because there is no easy way to connect and limit the conversation it has become a challenge to ensure the right tasks are updated. Perhaps a potential solution is with comments the ability to designate who they are shared with, not ideal and would need some more thought behind it; however could minimize the duplicate efforts.

Keir Johnson

We are also looking for similar functionality where, within one task, we can publish client-facing comments (seen by Regular Users and Collaborators) as well as internal comments (seen only by Regular Users).

Often we have very detailed notes and descriptions for the task that are helpful for our internal technical subject matter experts but are not relevant to our clients. We would like to be able to collaborate with our clients on the same task that our internal teams are using so that all the conversation and documentation is in one place.

It would be nice if this could be done using a custom field or if there was a specific client-facing (Collaborators) comments section.

Thanks!

Joel Shannon

Being able to post comments that are specific to a project that are important for our team members but not needed for collaborators would be a huge help. We would like to post comments about the project that help each team member with their specific task on the project. It would be best if these comments would be on the same task and not creating a "separate duplicate task" to talk internal.

If you could please keep us posted as to weather or not this is a feature that will be rolled out. It would be a huge improvement for our team.

Thanks!

Stephanie Westbrook

Hi Joel, this isn't on the short-term roadmap, but we'll definitely keep you updated if that changes!

Grant Keaton

Yes! Absolutely need this functionality. The power of a tool like Wrike comes from when the entire history of a project/task is visible on the record to the executing teams. Some of that history is not helpful or at times not appropriate for all stakeholders. We use it for Email campaign execution, and sometimes we need a record of roadblocks or problems and discussion of solutions, but that involves calling out and/or problem solving regarding working with the stake holders who are also watching the progress of the ticket. I need a way to ask for an update on a project and get a candid response from my team members without offending anyone. Lack of this functionality significantly erodes the value of the system. Record keeping on multiple tasks or in Wrike and simultaneously in email, etc. isn't practical.

I'm happy to provide more feedback or beta test!

Permanently deleted user

Thanks Grant. If and when we have more detail from the Product Team about this suggestion we'll reach out, especially if Beta testers are needed.

Ps. Your profile picture 👌

@all, you may be interested in this Webinar on Wednesday,11th April, about master collaboration and sharing 👍

Grant Keaton

Thank you! JIRA and Workfront are PM platforms that I've used in the past that both have this feature, so really missing it :'(

Permanently deleted user

Totally understand Grant. I'd recommend the above webinar with our Experts today if you can make it 👍

Peter Wyro

This is a feature in Teamwork.com that was really nice, being able to set permission levels of users and exclude some from viewing the task notes. This would make a huge difference in managing all of the supporting activities and keeping clients involved in the process.

Karel van Cromvoirt

We have also begun inviting clients to see some Wrike boards and I too would find it immensely helpful if we could manage visibility of comments by the @name that is used in the comments fields.

I am wondering if anything has progressed with this feature request?

I would like to just deny permission to see certain @names when comments typed by certain members. Meaning If my dev team types @Karelbefore a comment my client will not see it. But - if my client types @Karel before their comment they can see it but i can inhibit my dev team from seeing it with comment permissions.

Scenario

@karel is me
@client is my external collaborator "client"
@dev is my development team members
@staff is others within my organisation

For example if a folder has permission for all of the above to access and view tasks a conversation will go like this:

The conversation everyone will see:

@Karel Please make an update for us (a message from my client to me)

@client Ok no problem (a message from me to my client)

@dev Please start working on this update (a message from me to my devs)

@clientMy dev team are working on this now (a message from me to my client)

@staff I have moved the dev team to this task (a message from me to my staff)

@KarelWe have finished the code update but there is a bug we need another hour (a message from my devs to me)

@dev Approved (a message from me to my devs)

@client We will be one more hour (a message from me to my client)

@KarelOk that's fine (a message from my client to me)

@KarelWe fixed the code and deployed to staging (a message from my devs to me)

@client The update is ready for testing (a message from me to my client)

@Karel Thanks (a message from my client to me)

@staff We need to bill the client for an extra hour (a message from me to my staff)

Now if I were able to set permission so my client only sees @client and @karel comments typed in from them selves that conversation would look like this to the client.

The conversation my client sees:

@Karel Please make an update for us

@client Ok no problem

@clientMy dev team are working on this now

@client We will be one more hour

@KarelOk that's fine

@client The update is ready for testing

@Karel Thanks

The conversation my developers will see:

@dev Please start working on this update

@staff I have moved the dev team to this task

@KarelWe have finished the code update but there is a bug we need another hour

@dev Approved

@KarelWe fixed the code and deployed to staging

@staff We need to bill the client for an extra hour

Andrew Twigg

Internal comments would be great. My reasoning is much simpler; sometimes I just want to nag/remind my developers about a task without a client seeing this.

Michael Cassils

Adding a +1.

My ideal scenario is that I can limit collaborators to only see those comments which specifically @mention them. We use collaborator accounts for our clients and my goal would be to share the entire project with them. This way all communication about a task, whether internal or external, can be viewed by the project team while still maintaining a level of privacy to internal discussions.

We've also discussed running our customer help desk through Wrike and this is the main blocker in our mind to doing so, so if this feature came we'd get 2 cool things.

Jon Moakes

Collaborators should only see comments if you @mention them. I've used other systems where there is a toggle button to switch to exclude certain groups, but with some many variables in Wrike in terms of teams, this seems the simplest option. Suggest it is a global configurable option so organisations who don't want this can switch off. We would definitely like this option though

Rikard Karlsson

Hi. Agree, for us this is a showstopper of inviting our external clients to work together w/ us in Wrike. Especially since the timelog entries are shown as an update. Not a major problem if you work with a running account, but could become disaster if it is a fixed price. These updates should only be visibel for your internal team.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @All, thanks for your input here 👍 All the feedback is passed to our Product team. +1's of the original suggestion help us assess its popularity among Wrike users. For now, I don't have an update to share with you, but I'll get back to you when I have news. Once the suggestion hits 60 votes, we'll add one of the Product Feedback statuses to it.

Sally Brüning

Hello everyone, we would also very much appreciate the possibility of having internal comments within a task that cannot be seen by our customer (guest user). Please keep us informed if and when this is going to be checked.

Susan Howard

We also have a use case and need to hide some conversations/comments and tasks from our clients. We do not want the customers seeing all the communication around internal issues and errors with the projects. We would want to create "Issue" tasks and then assign them to QA and other teams to go back and forth to resolve without customer visibility. We need to avoid double work by tracking these in a separate space or project.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Great work, everyone, this suggestion now has 60+ upvotes! I've checked with the team, and they aren't planning this in the short-term period, but definitely interesting feedback, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this suggestion and passing on all your use-cases provided here.

Adam Glover

Hi Lisa,

This request was first made 3 years ago almost and has finally got the 60 up votes. I find it surprising after 3 years and 60+ votes that the team just say we have no plans for this. This make this community a joke and not worth any ones time. I am seriously considering another system now due to the responses from Wrike on here.

Elizaveta Bogdanova

Hi @Adam Glover, thank you for reaching out!

When a suggestion on this forum reaches 60 upvotes, we ask the Product team to add a status to it on the Community - here's the post about our statuses: /hc/en-us/community/posts/360014354593--Read-Me-Product-Feedback-forum-Guidelines-and-Statuses

We also pass on all your feedback constantly. At the same time, we cannot guarantee that all suggestions will be implemented, even though the team would love to implement many of them. The team has to prioritize based on various factors - here's a post on what happens to product feedback in case you're interested: /hc/en-us/community/posts/360019106654--Read-Me-What-happens-with-Product-Feedback-

Having said all that, some of the suggestions here do get implemented, so we continue to work with the team on each of them.