Collaboration Connect: Internal User Guide

Once the setup Collaboration Connect feature is completed, users can start assigning tasks to external collaborators.

In this article, we outline the process of using Collaboration Connect to assign tasks to external users. 

Assign Tasks to External Owners

When assigning tasks to external owners, you have the ability to assign tasks individually or in bulk. Whenever a single task is assigned, the external owner will receive an email that will contain details about that task. If tasks are assigned in bulk, the external owner will receive a summarized list of all assignments.

Assign a Single Task

1. Locate the task that you would like to assign to an external user and open its Task Detail modal.
2. Within Task Details, you should see a set of new fields for this feature:
   
   
   Note: If you do not see these fields on the layout, reach out to your internal admin to get them added. Alternatively, you can leverage these fields as columns in Spreadsheet View or Plan View.
3. Using the External Collaborator Name field, provide the name of the external user.
4. Using the External Collaborator Email field, enter the email address of the external user. This is the email address that will be used to notify the external user about the assigned task.
5. To trigger the email notification and assign the task to the external user, select the Send External Collaborator Notifications checkbox.
6. Click Save.

Once these steps are complete, the external owner will receive an email that they can use to manage the assigned task.

Assign Tasks in Bulk

If you need to assign multiple tasks to an external user at once, follow the steps below.

1. The best place to assign tasks in bulk is in Spreadsheet View. Navigate to Spreadsheet View and open a project on which you would like to assign tasks to external owners.
2. Add the following fields as columns to the board by clicking on the Gear icon in the top right of the view and clicking on Select Fields to Display:
   1. External Collaborator Name
   2. External Collaborator Email
   3. Send External Collaborator Notifications
3. First, multi-select the External Collaborator Name cells and enter the name of the external user. In the Update records modal that appears, click Update Records.
4. Next, multi-select the External Collaborator Email cells and enter the email of the external user. In the Update records modal that appears, click Update Records.
5. Finally, multi-select the Send External Collaborator Notifications cells and set them to true/selected. In the Update records modal that appears, click Update Records.

Once the steps are complete, the external owner will receive a summarized email with an aggregate of all tasks that are assigned. The email can be used to manage assigned tasks.

Collaborating with External Owners

With default configurations, external task owners will have the ability to update External Collaborator Comments and External Collaborator Complete fields. If you would like to oversee externally assigned tasks, you could consider setting up a custom Board Filter with that criteria to make those tasks easily accessible within TaskRay.

For a summary of what the process looks like for external collaborators, refer to this article: Collaboration Connect: External User Guide. We also recommend sharing this guide with your external task owners for reference.