Thoughts on nesting?
Answered
Is it possible to nest items as part of an organization or workspace? Ideally I'd like to have a single workspace for our team then additional child work spaces or projects under the parent. Access permissions could be applied on a granular level so that we can grant internal and external resources to a specific child workspace or perhaps even at the specific app level.
Thanx!
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I'd appreciate if anyone from Podio could respond to this. Having the option to create 'sub-workspaces' would be great in making order, especially with educational projects.** I'd like to group spaces together under one category. **Is this possible, or could it be made possible?
Thank you in advance,
Pascal
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Hi all and thanks for the feedback about this.
We will not have the option to create sub-workspaces, as we think that this would make navigation into a subjective tree structure and we would then be back to "Folders" and similar types of navigation. We don't want that.
But I definitely see your points about grouping and categorizing workspaces. I will take this further to the rest of the team.
/Gustav - Podio
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Thanks for the feedback, Gustav. I can see this done in a simple way that doesn't contradict your current structure too much
Concept 1: Offer gated apps (allow admin user to adjust permissions settings on certain apps. For example. we could have the entire client project in 1 single workspace, but "hide" apps like timesheets, project costing, and private team discussions from the guest user. See Projecturf to see how they do this. This would benefit users in the following ways:
1) users who want to bring clients in for pertinent parts of the project, but don't want the client to become confused with internal chatter (noise) and/or internal expense reports etc which are all part of the common project.
2) users, like us, who work primarily with subcontractors. We want each subcontractor to have full visibility of the work they are assigned, but not necessarily to other team members timesheet entries etc.
Permissions settings like this could be set at each user level, or at pre-set user-type levels such as you already have: "Light user," versus Admin user and guest user etc.
It wouldn't break or otherwise alter your current structure, while still offering more business types - including freelancers, contractors and agencies, the privacy their projects require.
See how Microsoft OneNote does this - they allow the user to password protect sections of his/her notebook. Brilliant!
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Thanks, Anthony! For the time being, we already have 2 workspaces per client project and that still doesn't work for us because the project manager needs to be privy to all timesheets and project budgets, while the subcontractors need to only manager the budget allocating to him/her, and the client doesn't need to see this end of it, unless we specifically grant him/her access, or create a report (another missing feature). Our biggest pain for the time being is that the project management features are far too limiting when it comes to structure and systematic workflows. It's nearly impossible to get a bird's eye view across all workspaces and know wheat projects are running at risk. Otherwise, Podio is pretty good as a place to collaborate on designs and ideas.
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I have the same needs as Summer: lots of contractors and external parties, each must see only items the Project Manager and the Client allow them to view. But also I need to run reports spanning all the projects, not only a single one.
With the current user permission mechanism - at workspace level only - I must use a workspace per project. But doing so, reporting is limited to the workspace itself, so I cant get a way to report a program of projects.
More, I have many cases where reports , or apps, or app items, should be visible only to a specific group of workspace members. Again, I cannot find a way to limit item visibility in Podio.
I think PODIO needs a courageous enhancements in user and item permissions: otherwise I cannot figure out how to use it, when contractual policies set constrains on the published items visibility - and this is the vast majority of my contracts.
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I am also experiencing these issues. For a consultancy managing client projects who I need to create multiple "levels" of workspaces for, management for both myself and my clients' with multiple levels to work through becomes cumbersome to navigate. Nesting would be unbelievably valuable.
Where there are people who are members of "higher level" spaces but also require spaces for the next level down, privacy can be easily compromised by going into the wrong space. Having the ability to password protect the entire workspace with a master password specific to that "group" would prevent this.
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According to Gustav's Linked in profile, he has "Broad experience with agency partner relationships." So, Gustav, how do YOU guys solve this visibility problem using Podio. Two work spaces, one for the internal team only and one for the internal/external team?
What's are the best practices evolving here when using Podio in a client/agency relationship?
As for the Podio's team very clear abhorrence of any kind of parent->child relationship that could solve the visibility problem we're all having, I think there are other solutions that won't automatically lead you into a solution that something that looks like nested folders. When you say you don't want anything that will lead "...to "Folders" and similar types of navigation" what DO you want?
It seems to me that Podio is structureless. . I'm assuming the idea is that users get to impose whatever structure they want on Podio. Is that right?
However, the only structure we can impose is adding apps to the primary navigation of a workspace. But that doesn't work too well because you run out of room.
I think there's a fundamental design assumption that the Podio team hasn't adequately articulated to us users, despite all the great training videos. It's clear we're hitting something near and dear to the Podio team's hearts with our requests. I think it'd be helpful if we knew exactly what that was. What is it?
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Hey Joel, feel free to add me on LinkedIn by the way :)
I work together with our partners on specific projects through shared workspaces, as an example I was doing a seminar together with a partner and I set up a workspace in the Podio organisation, invited the people from the partner company and we planned the seminar, tracked the invitees that signed up via webform etc.
You all have very good inputs, and we are working hard on something that I can't talk about just yet, but this will be a game-changer in how you and we will use Podio. Sorry for the cliffhanger, but I promise I will share more news as soon as I have them.
/Gustav - Podio
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Hi all, we have just released Podio Share, that will let you share specific items in apps (and tasks) with people outside of Podio.
Read more about it on this article or on our blog.
Hope you'll find this useful!
/Gustav - Podio
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