⭐ New Feature: Collaboration
A common feature request that we have received is to allow multiple users to work on a single client. This is now possible on Houndify with a new feature called Collaboration.
Collaboration allows you to:
- Share your clients with other Houndify users.
- View clients created by other Houndify users.
- Assign specific permissions to users who are able to view your client.
- View changes made to your client by collaborators.
This is a great way to share your client with other members of your team. Read on to find out how this feature works. If your teammates aren’t on Houndify, adding them as collaborators will give them invitations to join.
After joining Houndify, any user can access clients that are shared with them.
Getting Started with Collaboration
When you log in to your Houndify Dashboard, you should now see a modified User Interface denoting your personal and shared clients.
- My Clients: This section lists clients created by you. They may be private, or you may have shared them with other users.
- Clients Shared With Me: This section lists clients that have been created by other users and shared with you.
Adding a Collaborator
To add a collaborator, click on a client that was created by you. You should see a new Collaboration section in the sidebar.
You can manage Collaborators here. Let’s Add a new Collaborator:
When adding a new collaborator, we provide three high-level permission levels.
- Read Only: This collaborator will be able to view information for this client, but will be unable to make any changes.
- Develop: This collaborator will be able to view and make changes to this client, but cannot delete the client.
- Try-Api-Only: This collaborator will be able to try out the client through the Try the Houndify API but won’t be able to make changes or view domains.
You are able to customize these permissions after creating the collaborator. We mention how to do that below.
Updating Collaborator Permissions
Any collaborators that you have created will be displayed on the Collaboration Management page.
Pressing Edit allows you to change the permissions for the collaborator.
Let’s go through the available permissions:
Collaborator Permissions
- Domains: The collaborator can view a list of enabled domains for this client.
- Can add or remove domains: The collaborator can manage domains.
- Can view analytics: The collaborator can view the analytics page for this client.
- Client Details: The collaborator can update the client name and platform information
- Can view custom commands: The collaborator can view created custom commands, if enabled for the client.
- Can edit custom commands: The collaborator can create and/or remove custom commands, if enabled for the client.
- Can make text/voice queries: The collaborator can make text/voice queries via the Try API page.
- Debugging tools: The collaborator can view the Alerts and Debugging pages, if enabled for the client.
Viewing a Collaborated Client
Any clients that have been shared with you will appear on your Dashboard under the Clients Shared with Me section.
Clicking on one of these will take you to the familiar Client Overview page. From here your view of the client will be different depending on your collaboration permissions.
Refer to the Collaborator Permissions section above for more information.
⭐ New Feature: Viewing Client History
One of the problems that arises whenever multiple people work on a single Client is keeping track of “who did what”. To solve this problem, we have an accompanying feature to Collaboration called History.
Each client now has its change history accessible through the History section in the sidebar.
History lets you view many different types of events, such as:
- Adding or Removing Domains
- Editing Custom Commands
- Editing Client Details
- Adding or Removing Collaborators
Importantly, if you have a client that is being worked on by many people, History will denote changes made by each person.
We hope these new features help you build great products with Houndify!
