To give you the opportunity to prep each planning tool before making them visible to your client, we created Preparation Mode (aka Prep Mode). Each tool in each new project starts out in Prep Mode, so you’ll want to be sure to release each tool so that the tools are visible to your clients.
While you're more than welcome to release ALL the tools out of Prep Mode as soon as you create a new project, here's some of the reasons you might want to use the Prep Mode option:
You might still be working on customizing certain tools, such as the checklist, budget and timeline for a client when you invite them into their project, but still want them to have access to other tools, like the guest manager and design studio, so they can get started without having to wait.
You might not want your clients to see your preliminary budget until you've completed all of your estimates.
You may not want to overwhelm them with all the tools, so you might want to introduce tools to them when the time is right.
How To Release Tools out of Prep Mode
Once you’ve prepared each tool and are ready to share it with your client, click on the RELEASE button, located in the gray and white candy stripe bar towards the top. You’ll need to do this for each tool. While they won't receive a notification, this tool will now be visible to your clients once they log in to their project, so be sure to include an intro to each tool as a part of your regular planning process.
For your Notes tool, you will find this notice on the right side of your page.
For a quick status update on which tools you’ve released and which tools have yet to be prepared and released, visit the project dashboard for that project or event and review the gray PREPARATION box towards the left. Tools that have been released will have a checkmark towards the right, while tools that have yet to be prepared and released by you will be marked PREPARING...
Once you've released a tool out of Preparation Mode, you won't be able to go back. However, you can use the privacy and permission settings for each user within each project to restrict access for each tool in your project tool kit.
To learn more about privacy and permission settings, click here.