A few pointers

[Vizioen]

Hi there, love the idea. But it's probably more as an internal tool not for clients?

All in all I think it would be better if we were able to:

- Select multiple files after upload so we can move, delete,... in bulk
- Have more options to make comments (shapes, pen, marker,...)
- I'm working together with a freelancer who has his own license, so ability to add members to a certain workspace or something would be nice. So I think a member list (admin, employee/freelancers, clients,...) with their respective contactdata, so we can quickly send updates and assign roles based on projects.
- Would it be an option to provide clients with a unique link so they can comment but not have it necessary to create a chaos account?
- Will there be an option for video as well?

Is there a limit to the amount of renders or size?

[Vizioen]

Sorry. i see most of my questions have been answered in the announcement thread.

The question about being able to comment on a public link still stands, I wouldn't want to ask my clients to make an account.

[kalina.maneva]

Hi Vizioen,
And thanks for taking the time to send us detailed feedback! We will be working on some of the things
you request.
As to commenting without creating login, our major concern was that if users are not required to
login, it would be hard to verify who posted the comments in the first place. Currently, users can login seamlessly with their google accounts. Do you thing that would be useful enough?

It would be interesting to know more about your collaboration use cases. In your experience, what is more problematic, collaborating with external or internal stake holders? What are some examples describing a typical collaboration interaction for you? What software/tools do you use to
solve that problem today?

Thanks again your comments!

Regards,

[Vizioen]

Hi Kalina,

I think if it's possible to work with unique links send to their respective email addresses, it would be possible to distinguish who commented what. Not sure if that's possible though.

Internally we use slack and/or screensharing to comment and discuss our images, this works pretty well.

Externally is a different story, there are some proofing tools out there like for instance proofhq (which is now workfront), which I used a couple of years ago with another company. I don't remember but I thought it wasn't necessary for the clients to make a useraccount, but not sure anymore and not sure with the new workfront what the status is. There's also https://cageapp.com/ which I wanted to use at some point but if I could stay in the Chaos environment that would be great of course. Some clients are still pretty old school though and they still like to print, draw and scan their remarks, so that's not always something we can push on them. That's why I like to keep the bar quite low (no user account necessary) so they aren't reluctant to use a digital platform.

[trick]

I have been trying out a few proofing tools in the past and they mostly fail on the need to have a login. Specially large companies prefer making comments over mail than over a tool that needs them to create an account. So I certainly don't think they make a Chaos account!

I am about to start using WeTransfer which now also has reviewing capabilities, without the need for a login. Also a lot of companies already have a WeTransfer Pro account to show their work when downloading files, so they know what they are getting in to

[kalina.maneva]

Hi all,

I understand your concerns, it seems like a hurdle to require users to log in. Note, that we allow users to login with their Google accounts, so the process is quite frictionless.

In a Collaboration scenario, a lot of the discussion happens over email (for new edits, comments) and we rely on users logging for this to work. Also, it is important to identify the user who made a comment/approved a design and for that, again, we need users login.

So there are scenarios in which login is absolutely needed. However, we will consider ways to make this process even less demanding on the user.

Any further ideas are welcome!

[philip_johansen]

Hi there, exciting new addition to the Chaos family!

I'd also like to highlight the need for easy login options for clients. The way Filestage handles this might be an option:
When adding a comment you are asked to input a "name/nickname" and an "email". This is saved in the browser for next time and you will receive notifications by email if any images in that project receives any further comments.(with options to set how often you get notified daily)
The only drawback I've seen with this solution is that if you use a different browser or say a phone instead of the computer you used the first time, you have to do this again. And if you use a different nickname the second time you will then have two users with the same email.(The client won't really notice this)

I'm sure this is a very early draft of this solution, so basic things like a pan and zoom function is probably coming(?) Looking forward to seeing how this develops, and hopefully I can stop using Filestage when this is more fleshed out

[VelvetElvis]

I was going to create a thread about client or guest access, but it seems like it has been covered. This is my +1 to having the ability for people to comment without the need for a full account or using their Google account. I'm testing this out as a way to get away from the verbal firehose phone calls from clients and team members when reviewing visuals. In the first run, I got phone calls saying that they are not going to create and account and it is just easier to call me.

Would it be possible to something similar to allowing someone to access this tool via an email link? I'd even be happy if I had to manage that. Where if I input their email and name, it would generate a shareable link that as long as the client clicked on that link, they'd be sent to review and their name would show up. We currently use Miro and while it can be annoying to try to see who Guest Contributor 55 is, at least we're able to get comments quickly and visually. If I had to choose, I'd rather be able to get feedback and not necessarily know who provided it. I can't speak for others, but we typically have a small pool of commenters on our work so even if the names were generic, it'd be pretty easy to know who is doing the commenting. On the flip side, with everyone with an account it does seem easier for them to track follow-up questions from the team. Especially in the case of the classic comment, "Change this color".

I just don't see the long term viability of this tool if it forces everyone, especially external clients/collaborators, to have an account. There is already a lot of accounts our clients and project leaders have to deal with, they generally do not want to have to deal with another one. From an internal review aspect, could it be possible to tie the login into the user's Windows credentials? We have a lot of this at our firm and it makes bouncing between apps really easy since it just uses the user's windows information. I know that's probably a much bigger ask than they way I've just over simplified it.

When I did use it just for myself or team members who already have chaos accounts, the tool has a great start to it. I'd love to be able to just have to deal with all Chaos based tools/reviews for all visuals generated by our team members, be it from Vray or Enscape. It would make things a lot easier and get us away from getting purely verbal feedback.