This meeting was Basecamp Office Hours, led by Customer Success team members Kimberly, Laura, Ashley, and Rodrigo, focused on Basecamp feature walkthroughs, best practices, and Q&A.
Topics included managing projects and clients, privacy settings, tool customization, reporting, third-party integrations, and new features like message scheduling.
Key decisions and clarifications were provided about permissions, sharing, and tool usage; all attendee questions were addressed in detail.
Attendees can access the meeting recording on the same link, and future office hours will be announced in about six weeks.
Kimberly/Customer Success Team: Process and post the webinar recording to the original access link (post-webinar).
Attendees: Use Basecamp help guides or contact support via the in-app question mark for follow-up questions.
Getting Started and Team Introductions
Team introduced themselves: Kimberly (host), Laura (Customer Success Lead), Ashley (Customer Success, demo expert), and Rodrigo (new CSM, demo support).
Aim is to provide actionable Basecamp guidance, answer live and pre-submitted questions, and demo recent features.
Managing Multiple Projects and To-Dos Across Clients
Demonstrated how to change and customize project tools: add/remove tools, rename for clarity, add multiple to-do tools.
Advised using separate to-do lists within one project for work with multiple clients.
Showed use of to-do list templates to standardize recurring tasks, especially for industries like construction estimating.
Privacy, Permissions, and Working with Clients/External Users
Explained user roles: employees/collaborators (full access), clients (restricted/project-specific access).
Clients can be shown only specific to-do lists; all other lists/tools can remain private to the team.
Role-based visibility applies to tools such as doors and documents.
The client role is flexible; can be used for any group needing limited access.
Email Forwarding and Internal Discussions
Walkthrough of the email forwarding tool to bring external communications into Basecamp.
Email forwards support internal team discussion before external responses, keeping all context in one place.
Guidance offered on finding help and documentation for email forwards within the app.
Scheduling, Dependencies, and Calendars
Basecamp does not support true task dependencies but card tables offer workarounds by visualizing stages and notifications as work progresses.
Schedule tool aggregates to-do items/cards with due dates; supports multi-day events and external calendar subscriptions (Google, Apple, Outlook).
Multiple schedule tools/calendars can be added to a project and renamed for clarity (e.g., specific client content calendars).
All project members can edit calendars; activity log shows who makes changes but cannot restrict edit rights (except for clients).
Linking Documents and Internal References
Demonstrated adding and linking documents to cards, comments, and messages—recommended using Basecamp docs for easy referencing.
Creating public links is possible for documents, but comments are kept internal; this feature is for paid accounts only.
Reporting and Activity Tracking
While Basecamp does not offer downloadable reports, the activity tab provides an overview of to-dos added/completed and other account-wide activity.
Suggested using card tables per person for individualized task tracking.
“My Stuff” and “My Assignments” show tasks assigned to and by a user across projects.
Third-Party Integrations and Advanced Features
basecamp.com/extras lists third-party tools; Ganttify for Gantt charts, Zapier for automation and broader integration (e.g., Calendly).
Doors feature allows linking to external services (e.g., Google Sheets, Help Scout, other Basecamp projects) within a project.
Anyone except clients can add doors; clients cannot see or add doors unless made visible by a project member.
Permissions and Editing Restrictions
Except for clients, Basecamp users can edit almost everything in projects; no granular permission controls for following without edit ability.
Strong recommendation to set expectations clearly with collaborators if certain items should not be modified.
Lineup Tool and Project Timelines
Projects with start/end dates appear on the Lineup (timeline view); only projects a user is invited to will display.
Lineup provides a high-level overview, separate from detailed project schedules.
New Features and Updates
Demonstrated the new message scheduling function: users can compose messages and schedule posting at a specified date/time.
Draft and scheduled messages are managed from the “My Drafts” section for easy retrieval.
Upcoming features and Office Hours sessions will be announced in about six weeks; feedback is requested for future improvements.
Decisions
Clients have restricted access; team members can edit most content — To maintain a culture of transparency and collaboration, Basecamp permissions are broadly open, with client roles providing exceptions when limited access is needed.
No granular calendar editing restrictions — Calendar tools are editable by all project participants (except clients), maintaining simplicity over fine-grained controls.
Activity and reporting through in-app views, not exports — Users are guided to utilize the built-in Activity, Schedule, and My Stuff functions for monitoring work.
Open Questions / Follow-Ups
Office Hours scheduling for future sessions will be clarified and announced in about six weeks.
Attendees are encouraged to share feedback or additional industry-specific needs to inform upcoming Office Hours content.