The new role - Externals

It's hard to believe, but three weeks of the new year have already passed - we hope that all readers have started well into it! As usual, we will start the new year with new features, in this case with a new role for organization participants: External.

Why a new / additional role?

So far, there have been three different roles for organization participants: Admins, Members, and Guests. All these roles have in common that they can see all the elements in the rooms and can also write messages in the chat.

However, there are often use cases in teams in which the cooperation or feedback of external persons is needed, but at the same time they are not supposed to see all the information / elements of a room. For example, when a customer needs to approve the progress of a project, or when a freelancer needs to upload files to a certain task. For those cases, we have now added the role of "External".

What can users with the role "External" do?

In essence, the external users are similar to the guests: they can not see the other users of the organization and the room groups, but they have access to rooms that have been shared with them. Within the rooms, however, the rights differ significantly: While guests can be equipped with all rights, external users have only very limited rights.

At first, external users can not see any elements or contents in the rooms - these must be explicitly shared with them. If, for example, a task is to be given to an external user for review, it must be shared manually. Once the task is shared with Externals, all external users of the room can see them.

Likewise, the editing rights to the elements differ: External users are only allowed to write comments, to add time entries, and to upload files, but are not allowed to change any further details or information. An exception here is the status that external users may set to the next status of a given workflow (for example, from "To do" to "In progress").

The communication module and the direct messages can not be used by Externals.

For more information about the rights of users with this role, please visit the following page: https://www.stackfield.com/help/user-roles-in-an-organisation-2005

How do I share information/elements with Externals and what do Externals see?

The process of releasing elements to external users is quite simple: once an External has been added to a room, a "Team Only" button appears on all the items that can be shared. By clicking on the button, the respective element can then be shared with Externals.

A guide on how you can work with Externals and how to display an overview of the shared items can be found on the following page: https://www.stackfield.com/help/working-with-externals-2006

How much does an External cost?

By adding one external user to your organization, a half user will be used from your booked contingent.

We hope that this new role will make working with Stackfield easier for customers, freelancers, or even external employees! If you have questions about this new feature, we are always happy to support you!