[Status: Investigating 🕵️‍♀️] User and Collaborator Permissions

Hi there! Thanks for sharing this - it sounds like the main idea is to basically have a permissions management solution available at the admin level, which would define processes for others in the account. Besides applying this to Folders/Projects, do you think a similar solution could be useful for Custom Fields?

We are not using custom fields, hence am not able to respond based on experience. The main idea, as you rightly state, is that admin should have control over how Wrike is being used in the organization. This will bring in proper controls that businesses need. (We have employees deleting tasks and there is no way to stop that unless we remove create and change access too). From that sense all aspects of Wrike, including custom fields should be brought under admin control. Hope Wrike will implement this capability soon. 

Thank you for clarifying, this info is helpful.

I agree with Sri. It would be useful to make user abilities costomisable by the Admin.  Eg. Able to restrict regular users from creating new projects. I know Stephen was explaining to me that users access to projects can be controlled (Folder and Project Permissions) but what I am indicating here is more user functional ability than folder/ project accessibility

Rafa "Even perfection has room for improvement"

Yes! Even custom fields should be able to have specific user permissions set on them. An admin should have the ability to define what fields, even custom ones, a user group can see/modify.  There is not enough flexibility with user permissions to properly control a project.  Support says to use folder permissions but unfortunately that will not accomplish the need to lock down specific project fields or actions (e.g moving or deleting a project).  This needs to get much more granular. 

Hi Stephanie, I just wanted to mention that while you can't control who can modify a Custom Field, you can choose to share the field with only certain people. We're continuing to monitor this thread and reading all comments!

As our small company grows, permissions is starting to be our biggest issue with Wrike.  If we are unable to lock down folders in a way that works for us, we may have to switch to another solution for those items.

I need to be able to protect folders and allow them to be read only in the source folder and allow duplication to a folder the user does have permissions in.  There the user should be able to edit freely.

Hello Scott,

Not sure how granular control you are after but I wondered if you have you tried to use the Folder permissions on Projects or folders created within Wrike?  If so, then please ignore the rest of my comments.

This basically will allow you to set access rights to this folder/project for individual users and user groups with three options:

- Full access gives users full editing rights to this folder/project and all the tasks/subfolders/projects withing them.

- Editor access provides users with full editing rights, except for deleting, sharing, and moving projects/folders/tasks.

- Users with Limited access can only change the tasks'statuses, attach files and leave comments on the tasks.

I personally only learned about this recently, so it may be a help to you as well. It can be accesses by right clicking on a folder/ project and selecting Share. Then on the left pane select the first option on the list which starts with "Selected..." Above "All Users",

Rafa "Even perfection has room for improvement"

Agreed. There should be the ability to customize permission levels, so I can have a "Viewer" who can't move around folders or check anything complete, but can view the project. Or any varying level of permissions (so someone can create and edit tasks, but can change or create folders/projects).

Hi everyone, I wanted to give everyone an update here - our team is really interested in developing permissions to better meet team needs. So please keep the feedback and descriptions of ideal scenarios coming. 

Hello everyone,

As I can see not only I reached a wall trying to make some stuff inside Wrike safe and let say controllable.

short but very important example:

While testing "approval" from marketing we found that after approval process some user with access (even limited !!) can delete approved file ( with all approved and suggested versions history ) 

1.Following the main idea of this Request User rights customization

Let's do it like workflows ,we have on the list limited number of selections and we can create not only full/edit / limited ,but also something that will more corresponds to our needs, 

 2.Following Sri

      5. An audit trail of permission changes should be maintained.

We call it WORKFLOW , so the process with dependencies where lack of approval affects later stages ( now decision maker is cancelling rest of implemented process) , OR process is going in the other direction 

"If yes do this If No do That or CANCEL "

example form competition  , it do the job ,but the interface... is not Wrike ;) ( if you don't recognize it PM me)

3. Approval  - it corresponds to 2nd point but to highlight it

To do something in big organisation you need to have approval from you managers to do so you need to have some "space" ( task or whatever) that can be approved but single defined person known by name or function ( John Doe or other member of the group "High Rank Product Managers" )

and you need to collect such approvals in some point of the process ( like milestone) 

now i'm making it as Approval Task with sub-tasks assigned to specified managers BUT every process member can change the status of CEO (example) 

And what is also important to have it Saved for life .While CEO click approved it is saved and can't be changed by no one.

Another capability we'd like to see is allowing more granular selection of the permissions between a Regular User and Collaborator. For example, we have some people where it would be great to have "Collaborator+" permissions, so that they could change descriptions, have dashboards, track time, change values in custom fields, create reports, etc. And we have others that are more like "Regular User -", where we don't want them to be able to make the wide-ranging changes and deletions that a Regular User can, but they should have most permissions.

It would also be nice to be able to remove some permissions globally. For example, we have a business rule to use SharePoint links, rather than attaching files in Wrike, but we can't actually enforce that rule.

Finally, I really like the idea of being able to lock down some actions permanently. For example, we'd like to use Wrike for a CAPEX approval flow, but we want to make sure that the decisions are recorded permanently. This doesn't need to be a full-blown 21 CFR Part 11 e-signature, but some uneditable audit trail. Same with changing due dates for key milestones, marking projects as complete, etc.

Hi Gregg! I completely understand where you're coming from with the request for more granular permissions. I wanted to comment on the attachment security settings though. On the Enterprise plan (which you're on!) we do have options to limit where people can attach items from. There are details on how to limit those settings on our Help Center page. I think that should help, but let me know if you're looking for something else. 

Hello,

As others mentioned before me, to use Wrike efficiently cross-functional within a large organization and involving different departments with destinct interests and needs, adjusting the permission levels in more detail than full/editor/limited would be more than needed. What about a check list where the admin can choose what an account holder or a group can do instead of you pre-defining three levels. It does not make sense to me, why e.g. a user with editor rights can create folders/tasks/projects but not delete or tag them. Sharing or editing folder permissions is a complete different topic...

Thanks,
Anna-Maria

@Stephanie

That sounds like it will work fine. I've got to get my overall account admin to update that (just a normal admin can't see that Security tab), but that should do the trick for the attachments.

@Anna-Maria

A checklist would be perfect for what I'm looking for. Maybe have 3 or 4 default access levels (preferably more can be added by admins, to make onboarding easier), and then be able to add/subtract specific permissions by checklist.

I'm a big fan of the idea of having a "viewer" for Wrike.

On my side I want my clients to be able to submit a request through Wrike, but afterwards only have the ability to review, comment and add items.

The issue is right now "collaborators" have the ability to move items thru the workflow and I would want to prevent that from happening as it's up to my side as the agency to move things through and prevent clients from potentially disrupting the workflow.

@Gregg awesome to hear that!

Hi All,

My specific issue is to remove the option to allow collaborators to change the status of tasks that are not assigned to them.

Val

I agree to Justin & Valerie strongly.

Although it is the best solution if the administrator can manage all abilities,
I want to ask Wrike to provide few simple features shortly if the development team has to spend many months for such solution.

I want to request that provide at least the feature to prevent collaborators and limited users to change the status of tasks that are not assigned to them.

Akira IT manager

Akira IT manager

I agree with most of this thread.  We really need some improvements in the customization of permissions.  We need the ability to control when someone can edit most features mentioned.

The idea that interest us the most is locking down statuses, tasks (in general), all fields (standard and custom), task titles, and even the ability to move tasks/folders/projects.  We would like the ability to apply it by user group, or user, for each of those items.  It could be similar to the user access levels right now, such as:

-Full access gives users full editing rights to this item

-Editor access provides users with full editing rights, except for deleting, (and if applicable) sharing this item/content.

-Limited access view only (OR it would be great to send the admin a request to change the item). 

I know this would be a challenge to apply it to all the above right away, and for that reason I agree with Akira: I would ask that Wrike make at least some improvements for now, while they work on the massive changes. 

What we have right now with the sharing options of a folder/project but being able to apply to a task level would be Great (though the ability to mass edit, like we have in list view, would be essential to this). Perhaps we could apply this concept to custom fields as well?  I know we can limit who the fields are shared with, but we'd like the ability to control who can edit the fields, while still allowing it to be visible to those we choose to share it with.

Also it would be Fantastic to get more auditing options in general.  Things like changes to fields and deleting of tasks/folders/projects.  I know you can look at stream but there is no way to filter the data to the type of change that was made.

If I think of any other ideas or comments, I will be sure to add them.  Thanks for all the hard work your team does and allowing the community to be so involved with the development!

Really need to be able to Edit User Permissions at the Account Management Level not by folder or project but at the account level.  Also, need to have custom field creation or description changed really locked down to admins but allow sharing for use to other groups.

I would also like to be able to limit collaborator access to the full change history. I would like to share with some clients that only need to see current task names, descriptions, and statuses, but not see every detail of when a name or date was changed - this gets very distracting

Everyday lately our user permissions change and they do not make any sense, based on the statement that are inherited from the parent?  When the parent level has 3 individuals and then next level down is showing 9 groups that can't be changed because they are inherited from the parent?????  There seems to be no stability regarding this feature right now as we are trying to adjust access and permissions.  It appears it might be better just to give everyone the enterprise level management control features and let us manage these permission levels as this now consumes a good portion of my day.

I agree with commenters asking for more ability to manage permission levels. At the very least, I need a Viewer (Read only) setting so internal/external clients can view project progress but not make changes to project status or other key information. I have two internal initiatives based on Wrike Requests that would improve our team's communication and workflow, but am hesitant to launch them because a user with Limited Permissions can change important aspects of the project/task that would be generated from the Request form. I like the idea of making those features, or at least some level of permission editing, available to Business class users. Thanks for looking into this.

I soo fully and extensively agree with you Angi!

Hey guys, thanks so much for sharing your feedback 🙂 I have an update for you - admins on Enterprise subscription can now create and customize Access Roles 🎊 Please check the new function out and let us now about your experience.

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Has there been any discussion on allowing a Read-only role for Business subscriptions? That seems like functionality that supports other Business tools like Request Forms; and is just good practice to limit external users or some internal users from being able to change project status or details.

Piotr, #3 is so important.  We are having to manufacture Approval Tasks to account for places where a higher level of approval or sign-off are required.   The other critical point to bring up, is that tagging a project cannot alter permissions.  Simply linking two projects together, for ease of moving back and forth, or for workflow cross-over, should not grant person(s) permissions they did not previously have or access they have not been granted by an admin.

@Wyatt Hey, the four types of Access Roles (Full, Editor, Limited, or Read Only) are actually available on Business and Enterprise accounts. The new feature I mentioned above (Creation and customization of Access Roles) is only available on Enterprise. I hope that helps 🙂

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover