The Kantata Client Experience

Overview

In Kantata, Providers (designers, contractors, or consultants—to name a few) can invite external Clients (such as customers) to collaborate on projects without compromising sensitive information. This article will examine how privacy, access, and data visibility differs between Clients and Providers. Keep in mind that a client’s ability to access certain functionality or information in Kantata OX may depend on a few of the following factors:

• Account and Project-level permissions
• Individual Additional Access settings
• If the project is financial or non-financial
• If the client is a member of your account
• If the client has been invited from an external Kantata account
• Task privacy settings

For example, a client with Edit Tasks project permissions may not have access to the same areas as a client with Edit Financials or Project Administrator project permissions. You can adjust Provider and Client permissions on a project-by-project basis on the Project Permissions page, which can be easily accessed via the Team tab of the Project Admin box.

In the following examples, Lesley Ward will be our Project Administrator on the Provider side of the project and Michael Lee will be our Project Administrator on the Client side of the project. For the reasons stated above, the client experience reflected in the following examples may differ from your own or that of your members.

Project Workspace Header

Similar to participants on the Provider side of a project, a client can see the project name, interact with the Actions menu, and mute or unmute notifications from the project workspace header.

Clients are not able to view the project status or open the Project side panel. Instead, an Info icon appears in place of the Side Panel icon. When clicked, a Project Information pop-up opens that shows only the project description.

Project Activity Feed (Public and Private Posts)

Similar to participants on the Provider side of a project, a client can post to a project's Activity Feed.

• If the post is Public, it will be visible to everyone in the project and all participants will receive a notification.
• If the post is Private, you can choose who will see your post and receive a notification.

Any Private posts shared by participants on the Provider team will not be visible to the client; in addition, any files that are privately shared with the Provider team will not be visible to clients.

You can also use @mentions to alert specific people of your post and if you want to add some flair, use emojis.

Files

All the files uploaded to a project can be found in the Files tab. Here, you can Preview, Download, or Delete (“   ”) project-related files using the associated action buttons on the right. Please note that only files uploaded or attached to Public posts will be visible to all project participants, including clients.

Project Schedule

A client can view a project's Schedule (start and due dates), as well as propose new dates. If Project Settings require that changes to the schedule be approved, a team member must first submit a date change proposal. These requests will appear in the project's ;Activity feed and under the Schedule tab of the Project Admin box. From here, a client can either Approve or Decline the request. If there are no clients with the appropriate permissions, a Project Administrator on the Provider side of the project can approve schedule changes.

A client with View Financialscan request a schedule change for a project by clicking Propose New Date in the Schedule tab of the Project Admin box. The Schedule tab also provides clients with a history of submitted and accepted date changes. 

Project Budget

Clients with View Financials permissions (or higher) have access to the Budget and Payment tabs in the Project Admin box. However, Edit Financials or higher is required to make specific changes to financial information. Clients can see the total budget, the original budget, and any deviations resulting from proposed budget changes. However, an external client cannot see burn against the budget anywhere in the project.

Lesley Ward, our Project Administrator on the Provider side of the project, has access to different information than Michael Lee, our external client who is a Project Administrator on the Client side of the project—as illustrated in the Budget tab of the Project Admin box (above) and the Project List tab (below).

Invoices and Payments

All invoices submitted by a provider will appear in the Activity Feed. A client can view the invoice, which includes the statement of services rendered and the dates, hours, and rates. A client can pay an invoice by clicking Pay this invoice from the post in the Activity Feed.

The Payment tab in the Project Admin box will show the total budget for the project, amount invoiced, amount paid, and budget remaining.

Task Tracker / Task Side Panel

Task Tracker and the Task side panel provide visibility into a project. Clients rely on the Task Tracker to monitor project timelines, review deliverables and milestones, track issues, and filter views to stay aligned on overall progress.

Through the Task side panel, clients can see information for an individual task and complete specific actions if they have the following Project Permissions:

• View Tasks—Review descriptions, assignees, task statuses, and other task data

  Note: An individual task's status is visible to a client, but the overall project status is not.

• Edit Tasks—Change the task type, follow tasks to receive updates, and add or complete checklist items

  Note: We recommend not giving Edit Tasks, Edit Time & Expenses, and Edit Financials permissions to clients unless you are comfortable allowing them to complete actions like updating descriptions, changing task statuses, deleting tasks, archiving tasks, and so on.
• Edit To Dos—Add or complete to dos
• Post to Activity Feed—Collaborate and upload files via public activity posts

The following task functionality is not available to Client-side members:

• WBS, Task Privacy, Resource Estimated Hours, and custom field columns in Task Tracker
• Private tasks are not visible in Task Tracker
• Custom fields, Time & Fees, and Scheduling sections in the Task side panel

Local Gantt Chart

Clients are limited in terms of what they can see in the Local Gantt Chart. Unlike the Provider team, a client cannot see the Gantt's baselines or progress against the budget.

Related Articles

• The Kantata Client Experience
• New Client Walkthrough

Kantata OX API

• Kantata OX API  
• Workspaces (Projects)  
• Stories (Tasks)