Guest access to projects
Often there are external users from customers or freelance involved which should have access to a project or roadmap as well without the need of having a project license. This is possible in other project management solutions!
Fabrizio
shared this idea
Hi everyone!
I have read through the comments, and we have a new update that may benefit some on this thread.
We have just announced that we are supporting read-only access for Projects & Roadmaps with an O365 license within a tenant.
You can learn more here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/project-for-the-web/office-365-user-view-access-to-project-and-roadmap
~J
32 comments
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T
commented
Working with a collaboration tool, without collaboration within a project team (2 companies), although both are having the license, is very disappointing.
Is there any progress?Thank you very much in advance for your feedback!
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Anonymous
commented
Hi @Microsoft Project Team, can you give us an update regarding this topic? This is really poor unfortunately. We want to work together with an external company in project for web. Both have O365 license, both have Project license but we cant work together.
Are you working on a solution already? This would be really helpful!
Thank you!
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Anonymous
commented
unbelieveable. I guess Microsoft doesn't believe in consultants or collaboration. There has to be a way to collaborate in Project between consulting firms and clients. Otherwise it will remain useless. If the clients consent and if the client and consultant both have licenses and tenants there is absolutely no excuse for Microsoft to not support this.
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Nathan Zarnstorff
commented
Hey Microsoft,
I'm having the same problem - my team is geographically and organizationally distributed. My client prefers MS Project, but we can't seem to allow organizationally diverse users or even consultants/clients to collaborate in the MS software suite.
Both GoogleDrive and Asana allow collaboration outside of an established organization. Can you add this feature to Microsoft 365/Project Online?
Thanks!
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Anonymous
commented
I find it impossible to understand how this feature has not been included. We are working on a new project across 4 different firms each with their own tenant and decided we wanted better functionality than Planner, which otherwise was well integrated for inter - company collaboration. As a bonus, Planner has the new consolidation with To Do. Project for the web can currently neither if I understand correctly - you can't assign Teams Guests (or External) as resources, and those who do get assigned still won't get their new tasks added to the (ahem) consolidated Planner task view.
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Adam Crain
commented
Not being able to share with External Guest users as read-only is a failure of the product. Is it really so hard given we can do it with Planner?
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Ed
commented
External access would be very desirable, so I can share schedules with my customers without sending a project file or PDF
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Craig knox
commented
People need to start being more blunt with feedback. View only for O365 licensed people it somewhat helpful, until you look at the fact that a lot of people are working with EXTERNAL clients.
Other options not only allow view only to that population, but if that external client has tasks they are responsible for that are being tracked, they can update their status WITHOUT a paid license on most platforms these days.I am not going to request a licenses and pay for it for someone who might need it for a few weeks while they are assigned to deliver a one time work product to never need to do anything again. Then I have to have that license revoked after paying for them to be able to update thier status. Instead, this creates time consuming follow up via email for a Project Manager and manual labor to constantly update and follow up on everything. It is very counter intuitive to the whole O365 collaboration experience.
Yet, I can use a competing product that is lower cost, more feature rich, connect it to Team's and Power BI and accomplish everything above and be more productive and store file attachments and have comments on line items in a plan, plus collaborate on documents with a team, but not in the Microsoft world????
A year later and Project for the web is still a quarter baked product. The desktop app is still everyone's go to, and the SharePoint dependency for getting projects in the cloud with that route is awful.
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Stephen Atherton
commented
I'm trying to share a project with Microsoft to highlight and manage with my Customer Success and Strategic Account Managers.
They don't even have access. Please allow us to share with Guest users
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Anonymous
commented
The Admin comment does does not address the need as already stated. The need is to have a customer or external user view the project. If the guest doesn't have the license you are screwed for you can not give a guest a license as far as I know. Even worse, based on the comment, the license has to be on the same tenant. The post would be irrelevant entirely.
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David C
commented
Agree with the need, and although the admin indicating that Project is available to everyone with a license in the tenent for read-only viewing is good, it doesn't solve the need. A few different needs:
1) Need to be able to assign a task to an external person, or at least to a placeholder that is not an internal user, as we perform projects with many 3rd parties and need to be able to indicate tasks assigned to them. Even if 3rd parties can't see or interact with the plan, I need to be able to be able to track their tasks internally.
2) It would be great if they could be able to see the plan. My use case is I create a team for a project, and I list my project plan in a Project tab in the team. It would be great if guests to that team had read access to the plan in that tab just as the rest of the team did.
3) It would be even better if 3rd parties could update tasks assigned to them, but getting #1 or #1 and #2 above would satisfy the vast majority of my use cases.
2) I -
Anonymous
commented
Upping this requirement here. We are working with many external partners (freelancers, integrators, consultants) and we can't really understand why there is no way to include them in Project for the web. Please enable at least read-only access to all members in the Group - including Guests.
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Anonymous
commented
My need is simple. All I want to do as project manager is assign a task to an external person. I don't need them to access, update, or view the actual project. I just need to be able to assign them to a task and haver that listed as "assigned to."
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Nigel Greenahlgh
commented
I can't believe that Microsoft has developed a programme tool, Project Plan, that can not be viewed by external parties. I used to use the old Project and that could be saved in PDF and then sent out to stakeholders to review and comment.
We purchased Project Plan 1 and were told that we would have to upgrade to Project Plan 3 if we wanted stakeholders to be able to view the Project Plan. We are working on a reasonably large development project with a number of external parties, such as the Client, Architects, transport consultants, planners, landscapers etc and we need to be able to discuss and agree a programme of works.
I have sent out a new URL and it seems that the stakeholders can still not view the programme. What kind of a product is this?
Please confirm what i need to do to get external stakeholders to view and comment on my Project Plan programme?
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Anonymous
commented
... So when is the actual guest viewing access going live ??
Enabling members of own organization to view the project plan, is NOT guest access... :-)
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Anonymous
commented
This feature is a necessity and the latest development does not solve the problem.
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Silvian
commented
Coming back on below comment.
1 colleague can view this, but 2 others cannot..
They have the same office 365 licenses (E3).
What is causing them for not viewing this? -
Silvian
commented
I saw this feature was launched / updated the 2nd of July.
I test it with some colleagues and they aren't able to view my projects though they have an Office 365 E3 License. Are there any instructions / updates needed to have the view access granted? -
Craig knox
commented
We have started to look at Smart sheet and ditch Microsoft project because of all these pitfalls. Smart sheet lets anyone feel your project plan and update a task without having a license or review our report dashboard that it automatically creates without having a license. These are glaring shortcomings of the Microsoft solution and if you don’t do something about them you’re going to start to lose a lot of business. Those features might actually attract more business if you bother to add them.
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Anonymous
commented
For us as Service Provider, projects with customers is a daily business need. Allowing a guest to at least view or even better work in a project is a huge need!