Releasing Space Owner Grips on Custom Fields

Updated for clarity.

One of the best enhancements released in 2024 was the ability to lock the editing of individual custom fields within a single space. We all know how frustrating it is when we have space owners who hold onto control so tightly, they will not allow their spaces to be public. By doing so, they negate the benefits of transparency, collaboration, and others being able to quickly and easily see where tasks and projects are in the process of being completed. This causes time to be wasted when the submitter must email the team working on the task/project and then the team working on the task needs to stop working to reply to the email.

After the release of field locking, I knew it was time to change how we set up custom fields, so this is what I did:

1. Scheduled a meeting with one of my space owners who keeps their space private
2. Walked through the custom fields their team uses when tracking and completing tasks/projects
3. Determined the level of sensitivity of each custom field
   1. Very Sensitive: Should only be edited by the Manager and/or Supervisor of the team working on the tasks/projects
   2. Sensitive: Should only be edited by the team working on the tasks/projects
   3. Open: Can be viewed and edited by anyone in our organization
4. Updated the field permissions of the custom fields that were deemed “Very Sensitive” or “Sensitive” so that the Manager, Supervisor, and working team were the only ones who could edit the data in those fields
   
   
   
5. Changed the Space Type in Settings to “Public”
   
6. Showed the teams who submit tasks/projects how to set up personal dashboards to monitor the tasks/projects they submit for work

Most of the fields the space owner wanted locked were the custom fields that contained dates. In the past, the team would receive tasks/projects and determine different working dates that fit with the team’s current load and available workforce. Sometimes the person submitting the task/project would want them worked on in a different order and would go into the tasks/projects and edit the dates that had been approved by the working team. This caused confusion and stress for the working team. Tasks/projects were always changing on them without any discussion between the teams. The two teams would get frustrated with each other. That impacted collaboration and employee morale and caused the space owner to make the space private, negating transparency.

Now that we can lock permissions on individual fields within a space, we can eliminate pieces of the task/project that require discussion between the teams to be edited prior to discussing any changes.

While we are just starting to use the field locking capability, we have already seen three space owners open their spaces to the rest of the organization! Collaboration is increasing between the teams using those spaces. Not to mention there is much less confusion regarding who is doing what and when. The teams are understanding each other’s needs and loads much better since they are talking more!

Transparency and collaboration are expanding, and teams are working together better with this feature release! 

As an added bonus, you can see the permissions each field has been given if you look at the Custom Fields tab in the Space Settings!