How do I configure Trello to allow partial access?

Question

We would like to set up a Trello board to track feature ideas and progress of development activities for several software applications. This would be very similar to the Trello on Trello board. However, we would prefer to not make the board public (initially, we want to limit visibility of the board to users we explicitly invite).

So we have the following groups:

1. our internal users, who need to be able to do anything with the board (create and re-organize cards, invite members, etc...).
2. Our invitees, who need to be able to comment and vote only
3. The rest of the public, who shouldn't have visibility to the board at all

Is this possible to set up? I tried playing with putting our internal users into an Organization, but that doesn't seem to be helping me achieve the goal.

Answer 1

You could get this behavior right now by creating an organization and inviting everyone you want to be able to vote and comment to the organization, then creating a board within the organization and making your internal users the members of the board. Then go to board preferences and make the board visibile, votable, and commentable to organization members. It's a slight abuse of organizations, but it'll get you the behavior you want.

The side effect, right now, will be that the organization's existence, and its memberships, will be public-visible. Private orgs are in test right now (https://trello.com/card/board/private-organization-profile-option/4d5ea62fd76aa1136000000c/4e7206a8ec4fdc00003e63e7) so if the organization needs to be completely invisible to the public, you would want to wait for that.