Projects, Teams, and Notifications

Contents

Projects

  • Overview

Teams and Notifications

  • Overview

  • Share files with a variety of professionals

  • Define permissions

  • Work collaboratively

  • Track file history

  • Receive and view notifications

  • Stay informed with the activity log

Projects

Ratio.City has introduced Projects to the platform as a means of supporting the organization of project related material. A project acts as a hub to store your sites, massings, reports, and stories. You can access each of the tools from within projects, so your workflow can now centre around project related needs.

The project summary page will show all of the projects you are part of and opening a project will show you an overview of the project activity, including any files that were created, modified, or deleted. In order to access the Develop tool or Stories tool, you will need to have a project open. This will save you the hassle of trying to find your files later and support better project management. In addition to files, projects also includes a Teams and Notification feature which has been built to support improved collaboration between you and your project partners.

Through extensive user research, we heard from countless industry specialists that collaboration was of the upmost importance. After exploring some of the specific hurdles within existing collaboration processes, Teams and Notifications provide a foundation for improved collaboration.

With Teams and Notifications, you can: 

  • Share files with a variety of professionals: Adding new team members to your project to share, monitor, and track progress and changes made on Ratio.City files

  • Define permissions: Manage control over who sees what with the ability to assign invited team members as admin, editor, or viewer (review the ‘Define Permissions’ section to learn more). Files can also be set to remain private to the organization that created the project

  • Work collaboratively: Files can be accessed by multiple users at the same time. With one editor making changes at a time, other team members can watch as massings or stories change in real time

  • Track file history: Keep track of changes made to a document, understanding who made changes and seeing a visual of it. Save a copy of older versions if needed

  • Receive and view notifications: See major project updates at a glance in our new Notifications hub that sits in the top tool bar. Notifications will link to the referenced file when applicable, making them easy to access  

  • Stay informed with the Activity log: Keep tabs on what’s happening and who’s doing what within each of your projects with a log that summarizes all activity (no more scrolling through long email chains)

Use Teams to build a group of people to share Ratio.City files with. You can add anybody to your team! With our new Guest user type, anyone can login and view project-related material, so there is no need to worry if one of the organizations you’re working with doesn’t have a Ratio.City subscription (yet). 

  • Guest accounts are a free Ratio.City account that allows users who don’t have a subscription to view files within the projects they’re invited to. They cannot edit files or access other Ratio.City tools on the free tier.

  • Access the new ‘Teams’ section in the project summary page; click the ‘+ New member’ button and type in the email of the person you would like to join your team. 

    • If they already have a Ratio.City account, they will be emailed a link directly to your project. 

    • If they do not, they will be emailed a link to register for an account, which will trigger their free trial. Don’t worry, they are not obligated to pay for a license after the free trial is complete. At the end of their free trial, their account will be switched to a Guest account, which will still provide them with viewer access to project files. 

While adding team members to your project, you can assign a permission type to each person: viewer, editor, or admin. 

  • Admins have the highest permission level for a project; if you create a project, you’re automatically assigned as admin to start. Admins can create and delete projects and project files as well as manage the team

  • Editors can can create, edit, and delete files within the project but will not be able to change any information related to the project itself (like deleting team members) or move files to other projects

  • Viewers are read-only users who can view the files within the project and comment on stories, but they will not be able to make any edits

Admin permissions can be assigned to team members from within and outside of your organization.

If you assign admin permissions to someone within your organization, they will be able to add, delete, and manage the permissions of team members from ANY organization. They will also be able to rename, delete, restore, and modify thumbnail for the project. 

By assigning admin permissions to someone from an external organization, you are granting permission for that team member to add, delete, and modify the permissions of team members ONLY within their organization.

Private files

When you create a project and start creating massings and stories, the files will be automatically set to public—visible to all team members. By clicking the eye icon beneath the file, you will make the file private, visible and accessible to only those team members that are part of your organization. This provides some control for the project creator, allowing them to define the files that are shared externally. 

The graphic above illustrates a default setting whereas the graphic below illustrates what it would look like make a file private and visible only to those within your organization.

The following graphic highlights some of the potential user flows for a user with a paid Builder license.

With teams, multiple users can open a file at the same time. This applies specifically to stories and massings.

All team members who are active in the file will be shown in the top toolbar. The first creator, editor, or admin user to open the file and make a change will be designated as the ‘active’ editor, which will lock the input fields for all other users. Only one user can make changes at a time. When the active editor closes the tool, editing control can be taken over by another editor, creator, or admin. Or, if there is 10 minutes of inactivity, editing control will also be up for grabs. The first editor, creator, or admin to make a change to the values will be assigned the new ‘active’ editor role.  

While the inactive users will be unable to make changes, they will be able to see the live changes being made by the active user. In Stories, everyone in the file will be able to make comments or add stickies including viewers. 

The Stories tool has additional collaborative features within the top toolbar. When you open a story, you will see two buttons: ‘Preview’ and ‘Live present’. 

  • ‘Preview’ is a feature for users to view the story in a full screen mode, with a more focused view on the content. 

  • ‘Live present’ will only be available to the ‘active’ editor. By clicking this button, you will pull all users active in the file to your view in a follow mode. It’s a great feature for meetings and presentations to ensure all users are following specific content being discussed. Users can choose to navigate away from ‘live present’ view if they want. 

With the introduction of Teams, we heard a lot of concerns during user research and testing about people losing or overwriting files. People were very worried about their work being deleted or changed without the ability to restore it. 

The file history feature is available for both massings and stories. Each session with an active editor will log a file version within the history. By accessing the file history, you can see: 

  • Various versions of your file 

  • Time and date each version was created 

  • The editor who created the version 

  • A screenshot image of the file (when you click)

You can navigate through the file history and save a copy of any version. That way, if something was accidentally overwritten or you want to iterate separately on an older version, you can do so easily. 

The Notifications hub (bell icon) lives in the top right of the main toolbar and will provide an alert to users if: 

  • An admin has added you to a project 

  • An admin has changed your permissions for a project 

  • An admin has renamed a project 

  • An editor, creator or admin has renamed a file 

  • An editor, creator or admin has deleted a file 

  • An editor, creator or admin has restored a file 

The Notifications hub is intended to provide high-level notifications at the project level. Referenced files will be interactive (where relevant) to ensure easy access for users. For specific details on project activity within files, you should review the Activity log. 

While the Activity log is not a new feature, users will notice the addition of the activity of their team members as well. The Activity log will provide an update when: 

  • A project has been created 

  • A new admin has been assigned 

  • A new teammate has been added (and their permissions level) 

  • A teammate has been removed from the team 

  • A project has been renamed 

  • A file has been added 

  • A file has been modified 

  • A file has been deleted 

  • A file has been restored 

Reach out to our team at hello@ratio.city if you have any questions, feedback, suggestions, or to book a training session for yourself or your team.