The new policy (All members with admin permission) seems very bad

Henrique April 17, 2020

Sorry, but this is a very very bad idea.
Trello is not only used by tech teams, but also by a lot of other kinds of teams with users not so familiar with technology. 

Giving admin permission to all members of a team is a very bad idea.

Also, what about the unlike situation where a member is pissed of about something and starts messing up with the boards?

 

Please, reconsider it. At least, reconsider how it will be done.

12 comments

Blowa April 17, 2020

Agree here, we have people that don't want to manage that and also shouldn't be able to control that (not to break anything) because of that, we need to pay for such a basic feature ?

 

That's a d*ck move to do that, especially that people are starting to use Trello for basic remote work in this time of crisis.

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Henrique April 17, 2020

We also feel that. This seems to be a horrific move towards forcing people to pay for this basic feature.

Like Denis Rigotti likes this
1º DP Botucatu April 17, 2020

Lamentável a alteração anunciada. A nova forma proposta quebra a hierarquia nas equipes, deixando o administrador como uma mera figura decorativa.

Like Henrique likes this
JonS April 17, 2020

Agree here too.   This is very concerning and is really only about forcefully increasing their audience on the free side, or increasing their income on the paid side.   All about the bottom line.    The change is not fully documented clearly and will definitely drive us to look for another solution for any Atlassian products.

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Henrique April 17, 2020

Thankfully, there are other good products out there.

Sure it is not trivial to migrate, but it is surelly possible depending on the situation.

JonS April 17, 2020

Suggestions?   I am already starting to look.

Like Henrique likes this
Henrique April 17, 2020

I've used Asana and Jira in the past.

I just stayed with Trello due to a simpler interface, but the others are just as good.

JonS April 17, 2020

Jira is an Atlassian product.   I will check out Asana.   Thx!

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JonS April 17, 2020

Im really hoping that you get some traction on this post!

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Henrique April 17, 2020

I didn't see Jira was their product. 

If you google for Trello alternative, there are plenty. Payed and free.

Let's hope other people join.

Josiah_DeGraaf April 17, 2020

Wrike and Wekan are two alternatives to Trello I've begun to look into if this change goes through. I haven't used either yet. I'm hoping that Atlassian decides to reverse this decision so I don't have to switch softwares.

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Henrique April 17, 2020

Let us know what you think about these alternatives.

Like Josiah_DeGraaf likes this
Denis Rigotti April 17, 2020

Atlassian's acquisition of Trello was the worst thing that could happen. Only bad news for free users. They are insistently forcing the migration to Trello Gold, which has a very high price for small companies, mainly for markets with devalued currency, as is the case of Brazil.il.

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Henrique April 17, 2020

I am also from Brazil. Same problem here.

Dennis April 17, 2020

Current users of Trello should not be forced to upgrade in order to keep the same features. Trello grew because of its great free features as well as paid ones so this move is against its users.

At the least current users should get deep ongoing discount for the Business Teams.

This is what recent message on Trello board says:
"If you haven’t heard yet, Trello joined Atlassian back in 2017 (don't worry, it's a good thing)."

So how we should not worry given this recent change? 

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Henrique April 17, 2020

Which will likely not happen

Josiah_DeGraaf April 17, 2020

Hard second. I'm looking into alternatives to Trello at the moment solely because of this policy. While I trust my current team, having been in past situations where volunteers have left in a huff, I'm not comfortable with all current and future volunteers having the ability to delete everything on a whim if they decided to do so. As the co-owner of a small website that generates less than $10k per year, we don't have the finances to purchase Trello Business for our whole 12-volunteer team, so if this goes through, I'll be looking into other services that provide better safeguards on admin controls.

I do understand the need for businesses like Atlassian to make money and become more efficient, especially during times like this. But the ability for any user to add new users and delete entire boards without approval creates a security risk for current administrators. It's hard to see how lessening the security protections on free accounts is the best way to increase the number of paying customers, and I wish Atlassian would find other ways to generate more revenue than taking this approach.

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Henrique April 17, 2020

It has to be understood that:

1 - We have a boom of people migrating to Home Office. This huge increase in demand will also increase the number of companies creating alternative tools;

2 - Coronavirus will pass and the peak in the demand will go down. Costumers will remember who where at their side and who worked against them.

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Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
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April 17, 2020

As I understand it, and I've been looking at it all day, this is what the changed mean:

Long story short

Team members that are already admin on the team - nothing will change

Team members that are members (i.e. not admin) - will be made admin - if you don't want this to happen - make sure they're on the relevant boards and remove them from the team. You could even send out a quick IM or email to those people letting them know, remembering that their membership of the boards isn't contingent on them being members of the team.

Board members - nothing will change - if they're 'normal' members, this will stay the same - if they're 'admin' members of a board, this will stay the same.

That's just how I see it, Atlassian please let me know if I'm wrong!

I am a user - not a member of staff, so please understand that I don't have any more information than the email that was sent to all of us.

The other page this is being discussed on can be found here:

 https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Trello-questions/Roles-options-in-Trello-teams-will-soon-be-simplified/qaq-p/1352200#M24049

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Dennis April 17, 2020

Thanks for the clarification! Now that gives us more options i.e. assign certain users to board only not teams. A very good option that Atlassian should explain better.

Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
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April 17, 2020

That's just how I personally understand it after picking apart the email most of the day and answering the other post about it (that I linked above).

That's what I think it means but I could be completely wrong!

That's how I've taken it on board (no pun intended). I've got a couple of teams shared with my Mother and husband (mine not hers), and I've removed them from the team but they're still on the boards:

Screenshot 2020-04-17 at 15.32.42.png

I think Atlassian's timing is terrible, but if this has been in the works for a while, maybe there are things in the background that we're not aware of? 

JonS April 17, 2020

The solution is a PIA, but at least a workable solution.   I would love the Trello team @Atlassian to confirm this information.   Your time invested is certainly appreciated.

Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
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April 17, 2020

I agree @JonS - clarification from Atlassian would be really helpful!

The email they sent out could have been phrased better!

I'm literally just taking it word for word, and working out what it means, not necessarily what they explained (which wasn't a lot).

Erich Thaler April 17, 2020

I had added a team on my Trello, now I just left the company.

I was looking for a way to separate the boards, so my old employer and that team could keep their board.  I could keep all of my personal boards as my own and private.

Due to this feature, the guys at my old workplace locked be out, deleted my account and now when I try to log in, Trello said I don't even have an account, thus I lost all of my work/information.

I got one of those email ' your password has changed' but can't find out anything else as I'm not a paid user.  When I try to recover my password, Trello says no account exists.

So - beware - not only can others that now have become admins. can mess with your boards, they can completely shut you out and delete your account.

Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
Community Leader
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April 17, 2020

Hi @Erich Thaler 

Welcome to the Community!

I'm sorry to say, but your issue has nothing to do with the topic we're currently discussing. The new changes don't come into effect until 30th April, so if your whole Trello account was deleted, it's not to do with the impending changes to Free Teams.

If you used your work email address for Trello, this could be why.

If you're having issues accessing your account to this extent, I would suggest you contact the Trello Team, by using the 'Ask Trello Support' link on the Contact Page

Esme :)

Erich Thaler April 17, 2020

10-4

If I may - If I had used my work email why would I get notices on my personal email?

Also - I believe I had set this acct. up previous to this position.

Thanks for getting back - even though I was off base

Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
Community Leader
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April 17, 2020

No worries. I know users have been having problems if they have a Trello account and an Atlassian account when Trello decided last month (could have been the month before) to merge the two and loads of users lost their accounts. 

Might be worth reaching out to Trello Support and seeing if they can help?

:)

Josiah_DeGraaf April 17, 2020

I reached out to Trello Support yesterday evening before this discussion and heard back from them today in a response that confirms what @Esme Crutchley was already saying here. Including it below for the benefit of everyone else:

--

Hi Josiah,

I appreciate you writing in with your concerns, and thank you for your kind words about Trello. I would like to learn more about how team admin changes might negatively affect your workflow. Would you mind elaborating? I am particularly interested in understanding the security concerns you mentioned.

And just to clarify: The changes being made here are not removing any permission or admin control for boards within your team. What is changing is admin availability at the team level. As you may know, free team admins have no control over boards within the team—their capability only extends to team membership, along with a few team-level settings. The admin of a board within a free team controls who can access it, as well as its visibility and permissions settings. All members in a free team will now be team admins, but control over boards is something free team admins never had, and still don't.

This also helps teams in situations where the only admin is no longer available. As an example, say you were on a Trello team and the only admin of that team leaves your company or stops using Trello. If you ever needed to add additional members, you'd instead be forced to move all your boards and members to a newly created team. Now, you can add those additional members and don't have to go through the overhead of starting over and moving everything.

Hopefully that helps shed a bit more light, but if you do have any other questions or concerns you'd like to share, please let me know—I'll be happy to keep talking through this with you!

--

The new policy wouldn't be my preference, but it seems to have a workable solution (remove everyone who you don't want to have admin powers from the team and just add them to the individual boards) and it doesn't seem as bad as I originally worried it was if they don't have admin access to all the boards.

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JonS April 17, 2020

Thank you for posting that Josiah.   It does help.   I still think the change is negative and their reasoning holds no truth.   First, any admin worth their weight would make sure that there is at least one other admin.   In my case, we are a small company and it is my company.   So there is no need for a second admin, because without me, there is no board.   At least for now. :)  I really think that is a poor excuse.   Sorry, just my two cents.   If that is truly the reason, then I don't see the point in the change.

But again, thank you, and it does make the whole thing easier to swallow and work with.

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Tiffany Yue
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 21, 2020

Hi all,

I’m Tiffany, a Product Manager at Trello. Thank you for expressing your concerns - we certainly understand, and we want to hear your feedback so that we can help any teams that may be negatively impacted.

I’m happy to clarify what this change means for free teams. Esme’s explanation above is completely right. This change only affects adminship at the team level, which is different than board adminship - control over boards is something free team admins never had, and still don’t. In other words, while free team admins can view team-visible boards, they can’t do things like change board visibility, delete the board, or remove board members. That is reserved for board admins, who are usually the board creators. You can learn more about what team admins can do here: https://help.trello.com/article/1215-team-admin-permissions.

Similarly, members of your boards who are not a part of your team will not suddenly gain more abilities - they will continue to be limited to their current board capabilities. 

If you are still concerned about certain team members having additional abilities at the team-level, you can always remove them from the team but keep them as members on any relevant boards. 

I hope this was helpful. As mentioned above, we encourage you to reach out via support if you have more questions or concerns about this policy change’s impact on your team. We’d love to understand and help you find a solution.

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Henrique April 22, 2020

Hello Tiffany,

 

Thank you very much for your comment regarding the issue.

In my point of view, as we are managing a company, Trello is a tool among others we use. Because of that, we are assigning people to diferent tasks everytime.

 

As a manager of my company, and having admin capabilities over Trello team, I have to foresee possible future risks and act accordingly. If I understand that there is an admin problem within my Trello team, I have to do something about it.

Now, If Trello just makes everyone in my team 'admin', I have to reassign everyone according to what I feel is better.

This is like Trello is saying: "Hey admins, you don't know how to manage your teams, so we are giving everyone your capabilities"

 

While I know this is not the case, this surelly seems that way to me.

I don't want that my people automatically have more power and than I have to remove it, making me a bad leader for not "trusting" my collegues. Rather, I want them to have automatically less power and than I give them more, as a reward for their improvement inside the company.

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Anton Kozhin April 23, 2020

Nevertheless, I see at least following problems:

  • Team admins can delete the team, which will convert all boards to private ones and available to all members
  • Team admins can delete other admins / team members (not from the boards, although)
  • Team admins can delete a board from the team (also converts board to a private)

You won't loose your data, but... your Slack team could loose a connection to the board, if I'm correct, so your workflow is broken. It really feels like a leverage to an account upgrade, because you do lose the control.

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Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
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April 23, 2020

Hi @Anton Kozhin 

Welcome to the Community!

I agree, some of the new changes could have negative effects on your workflow (depending on the workflow that you have).

The help page on Team Admin Capabilities, explains what these changes to the free teams will mean, and it was updated on 20th April, so it reflects the new changes.

I've said to others, that it might be worth having a single person in the team (or two), everyone else can be added to the specific board that they need to be on. It's not ideal, but it would save a lot of hassle with those who are less knowledgable about what they can and can't do, clicking the wrong button and changing things that you'd rather they didn't. 

By having a single (or two) person/people in charge of the team, it would mean that you know these people know Trello enough to not delete or upgrade anything without you knowing about it, if you were one of the team members. I suggest having 2 people, in case of sickness and holiday etc, rather than one person who might not always be around. We don't like to think that things can't go on without us, and this might mean checking the team when we should be relaxing on a beach somewhere, just to make sure that it's still running! If you have 2 people, this shouldn't happen. 

When you remove someone at a free team level, they still have access to all the boards that they were previously on (I tested this out), however they will get a notification that you've removed them from the team. Personally, if I were in this situation, I would send a quick message to those you were removing from the team (everyone you don't want to be admin and have the new rights) and say something simple; "Trello have changed how they handle free teams, you're still on all the boards that you were previously in, with the same permissions as you previously had, but we're having to remove people from the team (rather than boards) to ensure the workflows we've set up still work."

That way, you're not telling them that they can't be trusted, you're not telling them anything negative about their abilities, you're placing the blame squarely in Trello's court, if that's what you need to do.

Personally, I don't think that this is Trello's way of getting more people to join Business Class. Of course, that's always an option, but if you were to decide you wanted BC and wanted 5 people in the team, that would be 5 x Trello's monthly or annual subscription, which, I don't mind telling you, is a LOT! (Over $600 a year in some cases I've seen).

A simple email or IM to colleagues (members of the team that you don't want to have admin rights) telling them that Trello has changed how they handle free teams and that you're removing people from the team but they will still have access to all 10 free boards (if that's how many they're on), letting them know that this isn't your decision (even though it is), should stop any problems.

Sorry I can't give good news. But I'm a user, the same as everyone else, and I'm having to come to terms with this as well, and this is (based on my experience) the easiest way to make sure that no one can do things that you don't want them to do.

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Anton Kozhin April 23, 2020

Hi @Esme Crutchley , nice to meet you and thanks!

Yep, you’re right. We have to work a few things out to make it work and your suggestion is a good one. I also look after the same approach - having two members in teams:

- a common admin, who creates teams (that would be a Trello gold user) and provide boards from our templates

- a project admin, who creates additional boards (maybe public for client), and backs up a common admin

We all may need a new structure relevant to our needs, and as we do, hopefully we will forget about these new rules after awhile.

Esme Crutchley
Community Leader
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Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
April 24, 2020

Hi @Anton Kozhin, nice to meet you too!

I will admit that I have BC and use it with my husband because I literally live in Trello, on a single board I have 10 PowerUps, and believe me, I use all of them! I made the decision to go to BC out of necessity, long before this issue came up (January 2019), and for me it's been brilliant, but it's not for everyone. I had BC for 16 months before I added Hubster, so I've got everything just the way I like it (which probably explains why he doesn't touch it!).

I still have free teams as well. Specifically a 'family' team, shared with Hubster and Mother, neither of which I trust to not do anything at a team level that they shouldn't! Mainly because they don't use it like I do, and therefore don't understand it!

I removed them from the 'Family' team purely because I know that if they knew about the changes they would be even less inclined to use it than they are already (if that's possible!).

Because I understand that neither of them are up to speed on Trello (read - I'm lucky if they open it once a week), I know that they don't know what they're doing!

Moreover, I know fully well that Mother has a habit of pressing buttons because 'it's ok if I do something wrong, Esme will sort it' - which, if she'd upgraded to BC for all 3 of us, would be expensive!

I messaged Mother and told her that Trello were making changes and that she was still on all the boards but that I was taking her off the team as changes that were being made would make it too complicated for her.

After the usual 'I have a simple mind child, make it easier for me' comments, I removed her from the team and made sure that she was on all the boards within the team. For her, nothing has changed, for me (as the only remaining team admin) nothing has changed.

I told Hubster about the impending change, he asked what that meant to him, I explained it, he asked me to remove him from the free team so that he couldn't 'bugger anything up' and checked that he would still be on the boards he was originally on - I confirmed - removed him from the team - problem solved!

For us personally, I manage the whole of Trello both the BC and the free Team, there's no point in adding either of them back to the free team purely because if I wasn't here to manage it, neither of them would bother with it at all!

Tanya C May 25, 2020

I love that your family is using Trello.  I've tried to get my husband away from yellow sticky notes but no go.  I've tried to get my 18yo daughter to track her classwork, especially due dates, as well as college preparations but also no go.  I will continue to gently nag and hopefully they will come 'round to the best free tool (free for me so far) for tracking so many things clearly and effectively.

And ... I don't want them to have Admin as they would likely remove me.  ;o)

Jeff Tomband May 26, 2020

I tried doing the same with the house renovation, I suggested we track all the material orders, contractors etc.

Whenever someone asks you something or you need information from them. Get them to do it on trello.

Someone asks you "Do you know when X is happening?", "Can't remember from the top of my head, I think i put it on trello tho", you need info from them. "Could you put it in a trello card, I'll forget it otherwise" or such

inkfish78 May 28, 2020

Guess that solves my question then.

: /

Jeff Tomband May 7, 2020

This is quite worrying.
Permission control is always a sensitive subject and such a ham fisted approach is not good.

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