Allow Admin to see and manage ALL teams, not just the ones they are on

So excited for expanded admin controls!

Please dont forget delete in this.... I have a private channel that is "stuck" as the user is deactivated and I cant delete it as I'm not creator...

It would be great to also have full compliance exports... Some customers as well as some countries' laws will require it... (standard disclaimer to users fully understandable and normal IMO)...

Is there a timeline on when this might be implemented? Right now we have an Admin account we use to create all teams - we relegated our users to Guests pending this feature.

Perhaps different admin levels; one for groups and one global admin.

I think for all users it is important to be able to 'see a team' apart from 'join a team'. So then everybody can see which teams there are, which is I think very normal! (like the normal procedure in granting rights to file folders...).

6 months "Planned"... Is there a current status of this? This is not a feature that would take more than days to complete, let alone 6+ months, so just curious.

if (auth == CREATOR || auth == MEMBER || auth == ADMIN)

there is your solution. If it is anymore difficult than changing the if statement that controls the display/checks, then it was not well written to begin with :(

If implementing this feature, I'd like it done in a way that still allows teams to exist that an admin can't see the content of. Allowing people to work, collaborate, disagree, and discuss without concern that the admin or their boss might be monitoring what's going on, is important.

Think i will have to disagree with the previous comment. This is a tool provided by an employer, this is not a personal area to chat. If people conduct themselves in a way to get in trouble because no one is looking, that is not a valid reason to allow it to happen. If people use business tools for business reasons, there should never be a reason an admin or manager couldn't have the right to monitor it. That is the point of their job anyways so taking that tool from them is actually hurting them in doing their job properly. I'm sure you have reasons (not sure what valid business reasons though) so i wont keep going, i'll just disagree and move on.

@Austin Best

I don't necessarily agree with this.

The people administrating Ryver within a company would be the IT staff, and I don't think that the IT staff should be able to snoop around in HR's discussions about hiring/firing or other employee's medical care. They also shouldn't necessarily have access to private discussions between company executives. There are definitely examples where people and groups should be able to have actual private conversations.

In addition to that, company's aren't the sole users of Ryver. Yes, they're the largest chunk of the userbase, but they aren't all of it. I'm a mentor on a high school robotics team and we're using Ryver as our organization and communication platform. As a volunteer who's formally unaffiliated with the school, I shouldn't have the right to read through the student's messages with each other and more than the student Ryver admin(s) should be able to read my messages with other mentors.

How about HR issues the admin has no reason to see? Or performance evaluation discussions about the admin or his peers? Or executive discussions that I don't want my IT staff to be privy to? Lots of valid business reasons. Allowing the admin to see all teams that exists seems reasonable. Maybe different levels of admins is a better solution. Now that I've shared my opinion, I'll let Ryver figure out the best implementation.

I agree with Matt and Kevin. As an Admin, I need to see 1) what teams exist 2) who is in those teams 3) be able to add/remove people from those teams and 4) archive the team as appropriate. The content of the discussion is immaterial to the job I need to do.

Any update on this? My team assumed it would be part of the new admin controls that rolled out today. As great as that it, it's only half of what we need to be effective.

We have been getting different opinions from customers on how this area of administration should work. At the moment, we're leaning towards having our free product include the ability for an Admin to:
1. See a list of all existing teams, and who created them.

2. Archive and/or Delete those teams

Then in our premium enterprise/pro tier coming in 2017, make it so a "super admin" can also access all of the content, even in private teams they did not create. This is something that an IT staff can already do with their corporate email systems. We would likely want to add something to the UI to let people know that an Administrator is/was looking at the content, so that people know if they are being "spied on".

For the first round of work, we are first going to finish up a significant chat server update that will allow us to improve notifications, and introduce Webhook integration support, likely taking us to the end of 2016, then we will begin another round of Administrative improvements, which this will be part of.

The solution you propose would be acceptable for my group and I think most groups. As the admin, I need to be able to fix problems - see what team exist, manage those teams to add/remove people, modify who the team admins, archive teams, and manage guests and forums. I do not want or need to view content of a team.

While the arguments made below are valid, that any communication done on a work machine could be considered visible by the company, that is not a helpful argument to have with end users. In fact, being unable to see content - and being able to show where on the Ryver website it says that the admin cannot view content - would be helpful in my particular group.

I can agree with all of it as well, i just wanted to give insight to this whole "privacy" & "spy" talk from a different perspective.

I think however it doesn't all have to be done at once, maybe add all the basic controls until a good solution for the "Super Admin" is decided upon? Or have a "Super Admin" status that does everything above and an "Owner" status once the other stuff is figured out (if it ever is of course)?

Jeff, It's not that simple to have an option to see all/archive/delete in free version, and super admin accessing all content in enterprise version.

Organisations are diverse in structure and permissions hierarchy; and are corporate, community, and collaborations of both, for three common structures that exist. Setup options for choosing the type of organisation and its admin structure would be highly beneficial for the millions of non-corporate structures out there in real life, for the way they operate and the safeguards they need to have...

SuperAdmins that can see content of private teams are a disaster for team collaboration and deletions can wipe out years of work for a private team. Whole organisations can be destroyed in minutes. Continuity of organisation content is paramount for security of asset management.

Ryver is based on the transparency of open forums with the co-existence and integrity of private team communications, and I for one cannot believe this proposal has not been thought through clearly enough.

Transparency, openness and oversight are wonderful attributes in organisations, but they come up against the natural antagonist of privacy. And privacy for individual communications usually wins.

In my country the current proposal would institutionalise the facilitation of contravention of federal and state privacy legislation.

In addition, sensitive personal, health and financial information, are being placed at risk through admin access to content.

However a baseline argument would be this; compare this:

a) seeing content/archiving/deleting a private team of 3 people,

to,

b) a direct message conversation of 2 people

Are you proposing a different approach between a) and b) ?

Why not go the whole hog, and allow admin access to content of direct messages as well?

And are you really validating spying by letting people know that they are being "spied on”??

How about a UI guarantee that teams can determine a block for being spied upon!!!

I’m shocked Jeff, and Pat, if you see this, we are a million + membership of a community organisation in partnership with an corporate organisation in final trials of Ryver. Our needs are not met by this current proposal.

Who guards the guards?

All of that and yet you didn't take into consideration work policy. The software is used on a computer owned by the company. It is not a personal computer, the chat system is not used in a personal setting. It is used in a business for business reasons. So with that said, it is perfectly feasible for the OWNER of said company to have access to everything related to THEIR business.

All this talk about privacy and spying is absurd in a business setting. There are policies for using a business computer and the chat software being used by said business. If you are that concerned about it, dont do personal things on business time (that is pretty much common sense anyways)

If i own a company, there wouldn't be a single employee who could tell me what i could/couldn't do in MY company. If i sign the checks, i make the policy. If you dont like that, then move on. This is not something out of the ordinary at all. I have worked for MANY companies that are like this and for good reason. Someones feelings are irrelevant when it comes to the company as a whole.

Now on the flip side, i can see how this could also be abused for situations not like the above scenario. This is why it has to be thought out and not just thrown in there.

Who guards the guards? If i own the company, no one is going to monitor me, simple as that.

Think about more situations than just one.

Austin,
You missed 2 out of the 3 organisation structures specifically pointed out in that post.
Your comments are only valid from perspective of your company/other companies like yours (SMBs, SMEs, and corporates).

Community organisations don't operate that way, and neither do collaborations. No need to impose your world view on the millions of organisations who don't operate like that. Think about more situations than just one, yourself.

In a collaboration there is joint ownership, not just a single business owner/corporate entity like yourself. So OWNER control is often held by 2 equal representatives, and OWNER access is limited to their respective sections, with a safeguard that a joint decision is required for an intervention like a team deletion. Exactly like the twin-key system activating the nukes – no single person with power and control issues can destroy a large number of innocent targets.

There are many more structures in the real world than a 'one key to rule them all' type.

Hello,

Any update on what this might be implemented? My organization's Admin account is part of most teams; no one wants that. Every time I login to the admin account to create a new user, a new forum, archive a forum, deactivate a user, there's  billion @team messages I have to ignore. It's clunky, cluttered, and needless. All the admin needs to be able to do is see what teams exist and manage those team, not be part of the team.

Thanks

Any update on this?  I would also like to see a feature where the admin can delete the team rooms of people who left the company. I also would like to create a room for certain members of my team without joining that room.

This is in internal testing and will be a feature that is available to people on the Enterprise Ryver tier within the next week or two (pending any issues popping up in testing).

Any update on this? Ryver sure feels slow in implementing features, most requests are now 3 years old. This is now "started"  2 years after the OP, and feature does not appear to be available even though "this is in internal testing and will be a feature that is available to people on the Enterprise Ryver tier within the next week or two"... 5 months ago.