Keeping clients apart: client teams and join links for agencies with several clients

An agency with several clients has a quiet worry: one client seeing another. A name in a member list, an avatar in a thread or an email address in a notification is enough to tell a client who else you work for.

This article sets out how to run several clients in one workspace and keep each of them to their own people, and how to bring a client's whole team in without typing every address yourself.

Why clients end up seeing each other#

Most of the time the project is the wall. A guest in Skybase only sees the projects they belong to, so Northwind's people never open Atlas's board. If every client has their own project, that alone keeps them apart.

The trouble starts where clients meet:

• a campaign two clients sponsor together
• a shared project for partners or suppliers
• the member lists, mentions and notifications inside a project that more than one client is in

In any of those, a guest from one client can see who the other client's people are. Nobody did anything wrong. The tool simply had no idea which guests belong together.

Give each client a team#

Client teams tell Skybase exactly that. An administrator sets them up in Account settings, under Client teams, and the page states the promise in its own words: guests in a client team only see their own team and your staff. Guests without a team see each other, as before.

Setting one up takes a minute:

1. Choose New client team, give it the client's name and a colour, and choose Create team.
2. Use Add guests to put the client's people in it.
3. Use Add to projects to put the team in the projects it works on.

The third step is the useful one. Add a team to a project and all its guests join it, now and as the team grows. When the client sends a new colleague next month, you add them to the team and they arrive in every project the team is in.

Your staff still see everyone. Administrators and team members see every guest, with a small badge showing their team, and the People page can Group by client team, so you can see each client's people at a glance.

What a guest sees once teams are on#

Inside a project, a guest in a client team sees your staff and the people in their own team. Anyone else shows as "A guest from another team", with a plain grey avatar: no name, no initials, no email address and no presence dot.

That holds wherever a person appears:

• the project's members and the people you can @mention
• comments, activity and the inbox
• notification emails and digests
• Reports, including the CSV export
• Slack posts, where guests are never named once your workspace uses client teams

Teams don't change which projects someone can open. That's still decided by who is in the project. A team keeps people apart inside the projects they share.

Teams also make life easier for your staff. You can @mention a whole client team in a comment, add a client team to a job with Add a client team, and filter the board, table, calendar and Reports by Client team once your workspace has one.

Bring a client's whole team in with a join link#

Inviting a client's people one at a time works, until the client has eight people and keeps adding more. A join link lets them ask to join instead.

An administrator creates one in a project's Project settings, under Members. Choose Create a join link and set it up:

• Only addresses at: the client's email domains, so only their people can use it. Leave it empty to let any address ask.
• Put them in a client team: everyone who joins through the link goes straight into that team.
• Works for: no end date, or 7, 30 or 90 days.
• Limit uses: a cap on how many people the link can bring in.

Then choose Create link, Copy it and send it to your contact at the client.

Nobody gets in on the link alone. The person opens it, enters their name and email address and chooses Ask to join. They confirm their email address, and only then does their request appear under Requests on the People page. An administrator chooses Approve or Decline. Approving sends them an invitation, and they sign in to their project from there.

A join link only ever brings in free single-project guests, so a link sent to a big client never adds to your bill. For the same reason, it only offers a client team that's in that one project. If you need a fresh link, Make a new link replaces it, and Turn off stops it working.

Inviting people yourself#

When you know exactly who's coming, invite them directly. From the People page, choose Invite People:

• Paste several addresses into Email addresses at once.
• Under Invite them as, each role is tagged: Team member and Guest (several projects) show as a paid seat, Guest (one project) shows as free.
• Administrators can pick a Client team for the new guests, so they arrive already walled off.
• If someone would become a paid seat, their row says so before you choose Send invitation.

Invitations last seven days. If nobody has accepted after three days, Skybase sends one reminder, and you can Send again from the People page at any time.

A worked example at Harbour Studio#

Take a small studio, say Harbour, working for two clients: Northwind, which is mid-rebrand, and Atlas, which is launching an app.

Maya Chen, the studio lead, starts in Client teams. She creates a Northwind team and adds Tom Becker, Northwind's contact. She creates an Atlas team and adds Nina Alvarez. Then she adds the Northwind team to the Northwind Rebrand project, and the Atlas team to Atlas App Launch. Tom and Nina are each in one project, so they stay free.

A week later Tom says three colleagues need to review the brand guidelines. Rather than asking for their addresses, Maya opens Northwind Rebrand's Members and creates a join link. She sets Only addresses at to northwind.co, puts joiners in the Northwind team, lets it run for 30 days and limits it to five uses. She sends it to Tom.

His colleague Jess Moreau uses it the same afternoon. She confirms her email, her request appears under Requests, and Maya approves it. Jess joins Northwind Rebrand as a free guest in the Northwind team.

Then the two clients meet. Say they co-sponsor a launch event, run in Harbour's Q4 Campaign project, and both teams need to be in it. Maya adds both teams to that project. Before she confirms, the Review step shows that Tom, Jess and Nina will each become a paid seat, because a guest in two projects counts as a user. She decides it's worth it, or adds only the people who need to be there.

In the shared project, Tom sees Harbour's staff and his Northwind colleagues. Nina appears to him as "A guest from another team", and he appears to her the same way.

When a client really is two clients#

Sometimes one company behaves like two: a parent brand and a sub-brand, or two departments that shouldn't see each other's work. Give each one its own team. A guest can be in one team at a time, so decide which side each person belongs to when you add them.

If you'd rather they could see each other, leave them in one team. Teams are walls, so only put them up where you want them.

A checklist for agencies with several clients#

• Give every client their own project where you can. It's the simplest wall there is.
• Create a client team for each client, add their people and add the team to their projects.
• Use a join link with Only addresses at for clients who keep adding people, and approve each request.
• Keep other clients' names out of job titles and comments in shared projects.
• Check the Review step before adding a team to a second project, because it can turn free guests into paid seats.

The details of what a guest can see and do are in the client portal overview, and the guide to inviting your team and clients walks through each invite screen. If you're deciding what clients should see in the first place, start with sharing work with clients. And how each plan bills guests is set out on the pricing page.