Can Observers Invite Board Guests? No, but... [Edited]

[Nils Geylen]

(An earlier version of this post was too confusing so I redacted it.)

I went ahead and tested this and the answer is: No, observers have no share button, so they obviously can't share--makes sense.

However!

There seems to be no clear cut documentation about this, and if there is, I'd like to know where that's at. 

Additionally, the support bots were contradicting each other. One said:

Currently, Trello does not offer [...] permission to allow guests/observers to be added to boards but prevent them from inviting others.

So that's a) wrong (?) and b) confounding guests and observers. It's not clear to me at least.

Adding to all this, is this setting:

"Sharing boards with guests: Anybody can send or receive invitations to boards in this Workspace"

Is "anybody" anybody in the Workspace, anybody who's a guest? What about board admins only? If observers indeed cannot do that, it's not 'anybody'.

So I made a confusion more confusing but here we are.

[Sakshi Verma · Accepted solution]

Hi @Nils Geylen  , Welcome to the community!

You are right, the observer does not have a share button, and they cannot invite users to boards. Observer is a board-level member permission.

Observers are board members who can view a board and the cards within it, download card attachments, comment and vote on cards (if enabled for the board), and export the board. 

I am sorry for the bot's contradictory answers and the confusion they caused. The documentation on the observer is here.

https://support.atlassian.com/trello/docs/adding-observers-to-boards/

Can you help me point out where it is? Is it somewhere in the documentation? I will have a look once.

"Sharing boards with guests: Anybody can send or receive invitations to boards in this Workspace"

Thank you so much for pointing this out. I really appreciate your time.

[Nils Geylen]

Sure, thanks for your clear response.

That phrasing ""Sharing boards with guests: Anybody can send or receive invitations to boards in this Workspace" is right in the workspace settings

I've always found that 'collision' of terminology confusing: "sharing and send" vs "receive invitations"...

Sending is what a board manager would do, receive is what a guest would get. It's a POV mindset that probably doesn't compute in my brain, dunno.

Since we can't choose 'Only workspace' because we share with observers, then if it's called 'Anybody' I suddenly start doubting are those observers part of Anybody then?

Hence the confusion. I know now, but I always come back to that setting and hit that ambiguity there.

[Sakshi Verma]

Hi @Nils Geylen, Thank you for pointing out the phrasing and sharing your opinions about it. I will check internally whether we can make the phrasing clearer.

Thank you 

[Nils Geylen]

No thank you, that's kind.

It's no biggie, but even after ten years on Premium I sometimes don't get it :haha:

However, I do get a lot of questions from non-technical board members and observers who sometimes struggle with nomenclature.

Cheers!