Guides
Sharing a board with an external partner: how to do it without leaking what you don't mean to
Accountants, freelancers, contract designers, finance partners - all reasons to share your board with someone outside the team. Five steps to do it cleanly.
Decide the smallest scope that does the job
Three levels in {PRODUCT}: per-card share (one card, single URL), per-board share (the whole board, with role), and full-tenant share (the whole account - rarely the right answer for an external person). Default to the smallest. An accountant looking at finished jobs only? per-card or a filtered read-only view. A freelancer working three cards? per-card, three of them. A subcontractor running an entire phase? per-board read-write. The reflex is per-board because it's easiest; the discipline is to start smaller and widen only if needed.
Send the invite via the share dialog, not via copy-paste
Open the board → Share → enter the external person's email → pick role → send. The invite generates a single-use sign-up link tied to that email; the recipient can't forward it to anyone else. Don't copy the URL out of the address bar and email it manually - that path bypasses the per-recipient binding and turns the share into a public link. The dialog exists to enforce the binding; use it.
Set an expiry where it fits
For project-bound external work (a freelancer's contract for one quarter, an accountant's review for the year-end), set the share to expire on the contract end-date. {PRODUCT} auto-revokes at the expiry date and notifies the recipient one week ahead. For ongoing partnerships (a permanent contractor) leave the expiry blank but set yourself a quarterly reminder to audit who still has access. The audit is two minutes; not doing it for two years is how leaks accumulate.
Tell the recipient what to expect
One short message before they receive the invite: "You'll get an invite from {PRODUCT}. You can see [the X cards / the whole board] in [read-only / read-write] mode until [date]. The board is hosted in Germany; if your organisation needs a DPA reach out to /sales." The message takes 30 seconds to write and removes 90% of the "what is this?" emails recipients otherwise send.
Audit access on a recurring schedule
Once a quarter, open Account settings → Sharing → Audit. The screen lists every external share, who has it, what scope, and last-used time. Revoke anything past its useful life - finished projects, departed contractors, an accountant whose engagement ended. The audit is two minutes; not running it is how five-year-old shares quietly stay live.
Why this matters more than it looks
Sharing a production board with an external person feels like a tiny operation - one click, one email invite. The reason it's worth a guide: the wrong setting at minute one becomes a permanent leak. Read-write where read-only would do, full-board access where one-card access would do, no expiry where a 30-day window would do. None of these recover gracefully later. Spend the four minutes up front.
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Written by
Julia Yukovich
Co-Founder + CEO
Julia is one of the Co-Founders. She handles design, product direction, and most of the support replies that arrive in the morning.
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