Branding in podio/external user experience
Answered
Has Podio ever considered offering more private branding options for organizations with Premium subscriptions? We are planning on creating workspaces for our clients with Podio but feel clients will be confused when we invite them and they have to set up a Podio account.
It would be nice to be able to invite external users and have them only see the navigation and UI elements for one particular workspace. That way they wouldn't be confused about what the options to "start your own organization", "create another workspace", etc.. are used for. Also, it seems that clients also see links to "invite other colleagues/employees" to a workspace, which we don't want them to be able to do.
It would also be nice to be able to brand Podio with our company logo in the upper-left, and then just have a "Powered by Podio" link somewhere.
-
Hey guys!
As communicated on our blog we just released the option to let you customize your Podio Workspaces and Employee Network using flexible tiles, which let YOU decide what is present on the Home page, what images and information to show etc. This mean that you can create a better experience for clients when inviting them to your workspaces. You can have your company logo present in top right corner of your workspace Home if you like.
You will still have the top blue bar and general Podio branding, but it gives you more freedom to customize your workspace :)Hope you like the change!
//Sara - Podio
-
Details can be found here John:
-
@Craig, Thank you :) I figured it might be that Blog post, but at first glance didn't see anything about the customized "client" workspace, or having your "company logo present in top right corner" of the workspace. Perhaps the article simply didn't go into those specific details/features. I will give the article a closer look this time, and/or just give the new experience an actual spin within our PODIO platform to test drive the new features.
Thanks again.
-
What a waste of the workspace, not to mention the redunacy of having to add it over again on every workspace... WHAT A MESS and a FAILURE at understanding what our concerns are... I would have been better off with you not even telling me that you made that change, as it was definitly not what I was looking for. My group will stay with Easy Projects until you guys get your act together, glad Easy Projects understands that THEIR LOGO is not important on OUR Workspaces, and Client Portals..
-
To be a bit more positive here, the new update is a move in the right direction. I like the ability to add/move things around more, but the boxes are quite large (taking up too much screen real estate), and could have more of a refined look, behavior and feel to them to be really useful. For example, I tried using this to brand an area, added an Image and it's not easily centered, sized or spaced.
We really DO need to be able to brand each individual workspace (so a project specific or client specific can be added), so please consider this an area where a lot of us are hoping to see this soon. This would not be in the movable panels area, but probably to the right of the Apps in the app bar. Again, either with a global setting, or a workspace specific setting & logo. Support for transparent PNGs, etc.
Also, to add to this, it would be great to have just below the app bar, a "Message of the Day" scrolling ticker for urgent messages. The Activity timeline is great, but I love tickers (with customizable fonts & colors so you could make it look like the NY stock exchange ticker or something, if desired) because they can call attention to something that is urgent, global or otherwise could get lost in the Activity stream.
Thank you for your consideration to these ideas!
-
Oh-boy, I hate writing these kind of reviews/feedback, I really do, but here it goes…
So, it's been a while since I have given PODIO a good honest look. My previous comments in the thread really capture the reason/s I have had to spend the last year working with other PM platforms, when i REALLY didn't want to. A few months ago, it appeared Podio had made some attempts to consider all the valuable feedback and true frustration painted in this thread from various users, by introducing a "Premium" feature called "Lite User" that was supposed to address the needs of Business to Client _collaboration Project Management culture. Without rehashing what that means (_everyone in this threat has expressed this well enough), I proceeded with alacrity to upgrade my Podio account to Premium to take advantage of this new feature, and here is what happened.
I created the Workspace, and invited a "Lite User" and here is what they get greeted with when joining the Workspace…
*------- START -------- *
Welcome to the (Workspace Name) workspace!
A workspace is all about communicating and collaborating with those you invite inside.
Good to know - If the workspace name isn’t quite right you can change it.
You can also create as many workspaces as you need.
The apps - Apps are the core part of a workspace.
You can use apps to add and structure your content. All apps can even be modified to suit your needs.
Good to know - You can find hundreds of apps created and modified by Podio users like you in our App Market.
*------- END -------- *
This is extremely extremely extremely disappointing!!!!!
“Sharing” a Project doesn’t solve this issue either, as once logged in, that user can completely edit the Project, including but not limited to…
- - Changing/Edit the Project Title
- - Changing/Edit the Project Definition,
- - Changing/Edit the Project Targets,
- - Changing/Edit the Project Resources
- - Create/Add Tasks,
- - Changing/Edit Project kick-off and end dates
- - And the list goes on…
And I’ll just add, I understand Podio’s position/need to bring all users of the service into a single platform, allowing them to access all their Workspaces (should they have others), I’m not here to shout that down… but there MUST to be a smarter way to limit what “Clients” see when they are actually invited to either an entire Workspace or Project by others – Yes, limit what they see, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, LIMIT WHAT THEY CAN DO as part of the invitation to that Workspace/Project, and then perhaps allow a way for them to switch to their full account view to access their entire Podio account (in some unobtrusive way) and they can then access their other Workspaces, etc…. This is just a suggestion to say you can achieve what everyone here is asking for, without “abdicating” your core visions for Podio… but its going to take smart people sitting down and truly listing to all this feedback, and genuinely trying to come up with solutions, and I have to believe there is one, of course there is.
I have badly wanted Podio to work for us (it has a clean flat design, its functional, mobile experience is extremely nice, etc...) but I truly have give up this time; it clearly is NOT for Agencies with B2C PM needs, agencies like us. There has been so much feedback one this issue, a synergistic cry for one thing, and chorus of consensus to address this one need. I just don’t understand.
Respectfully,
- John
-
Hey John
Did you know that you can set the "Interaction Settings" in each app to prevent light users and Guests from editing the item? If you do so only workspace admins can edit: https://help.podio.com/entries/22243728-Interaction-tab-in-the-App-Builder
It sounds like this is the feature you are missing to see the full potential of the light member. Please let us know here if you like further assistance.
//Sara - Podio
-
Need an option to add custom domain (domain mapping) as subdomain of company website. Something like Medium publication custom domain feature (Eg: http://blog.jaagastartup.in) - https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214110127-About-custom-domains. This will be really useful. Is there is any option for that? Looking forward to hear from the Podio team. Thank you.
-
Hi Farish CV,
No short-term plans but we are thinking about different options to potentially support this in the future.
//Sara - Podio
-
Sharefile, another Citrix product, has custom branding....why can't we?????
-
Hi guys,
Appreciate all the input and questions!
Hope our recent Podio Share release addresses some of the access questions above and makes it easier to get clients to just see what they need to see.
I just posted a short article on why we don't plan to do white-labeling over here: https://help.podio.com/entries/22572416-can-i-have-a-white-label-version-of-podio which explains our position overall so I just wanted to add a few comments on custom branding in relation to the discussion here.
First, let me say that I see how this could be useful and that I definitely know of use cases where custom branding would be a great idea.
When we don't plan to offer custom branding of the platform itself, it's because we think the disadvantages outweight the advantages and offers too little value for the end user. Ultimately we're responsible for the service including support, so masking who's responsible for what might cause quite some confusion and would be close to impossible for people using Podio for more than one organisation. End of the day, we're a tool, not a website and the single login-model is an important part of the project. Add mobile apps and it becomes even more tricky.
That being said, we'll keep working hard to make sure it's clear that your companies stand out when you ask customers and clients to join your workspaces and items. The signing up part is just there as a verification step to keep data safe and identities up to date. We'll keep working on improving that experience as well as look into whether we can make it easier to have your company identity present within the tool, especially on workspaces. Any input is most welcome!
Hope it makes sense - let me know what you think.
Cheers.
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
79 comments