Run confidential work like any other project
Redundancies, litigation, an acquisition: keeping work like that out of the project system costs you dates, effort and history - and means doing it twice. In WORKSPACE.PM you run it with everything a project brings. Only the circle the project manager defines can see in.
How a confidential project runs
You decide who belongs: your team, your outside advisers, entire departments. Change the department and the circle changes with it.
Why the most sensitive work is usually the one missing from the project system
Not out of carelessness, but because the choice used to be: everyone sees it, or nobody maintains it.
The work runs alongside
Acquisition, restructuring, an unfair dismissal claim: where too many people could read along, a side folder of spreadsheets and local directories appears. Dates slip, effort shows up nowhere, and when the person in charge leaves, the knowledge leaves too.
A ticket decides who is in
Who may look in is settled by administration - days later. Until then the work is either unprotected or standing still. Neither is affordable.
Hidden is not protected
A filter takes the work out of the list. Through search, an analysis or a data export it shows up anyway - usually in front of exactly the person nobody meant to show it to.
The promise cannot be proven
"Only we can see this" is quickly said. When the works council, data protection or the auditor asks, the evidence is missing - and trust is no substitute.
From the first participant to evidence that holds
This is how WORKSPACE.PM carries project "Kompass" - the acquisition of a competitor, run by eight people plus outside counsel. Five stations, one project, no second tool.
You set the circle - and it maintains itself
Who is part of "Kompass" is your call: your eight project participants, the two lawyers from the instructed firm who need no access to the system for it, and finance leadership as a whole. Whoever joins finance leadership is on the project; whoever leaves is out. There is nothing to keep in sync anywhere - and that is precisely how you avoid the classic gap where somebody keeps reading along long after they stopped being responsible.
Leave the department and you leave the project - without anyone having to remember.
The decision belongs to whoever owns the work
Confidentiality is not an IT setting, it is a leadership decision. That is why the project manager flips it personally: no ticket, no waiting period and no third person who has to learn about the work before it is even protected. And because a decision like that must not be undone in passing, only the project manager or the deputy can lift it again - not everyone holding edit rights.
"Confidentiality" tab
Operated only by the project manager and the deputy
Manager and deputy were added to the circle automatically
A step of its own with a prompt, so the protection does not fall again in passing.
Your promise holds on every route to the data
When you promise the works council, the other side or the board that only a certain circle has visibility, that has to hold even when somebody arrives not through the project list but through search, a report or a data export. That is exactly what the barrier is for: for everyone else "Kompass" appears nowhere, not in portfolio analyses, programmes or scenarios - and not for controlling and management, who may otherwise read every project. Not even a figure in an analysis can give the work away.
Routes in for those not entitled
Not hidden but absent - on every one of these routes.
Able to act in an emergency, without breaking the trust
When an audit comes knocking or the project manager drops out for good, protected work must not paralyse your organisation. System administration can get in - but it has to know the work already, it has to say why, and the project manager finds out the same moment. The silent full access administrators hold everywhere else turns into an act somebody owns.
Project number
Reason
at least 20 characters
Even an attempt that misses leaves a trail. Working through numbers does not pay.
Confidentiality you can prove
In an audit what counts is not whether the work was protected but whether you can show it. Inside the project everyone entitled sees who took access, when and with what reason - and whether it still stands. It can be ended by the project manager, the deputy or the affected person themselves. So that nothing stays quietly open, the system reminds the project manager every month of everything still outstanding.
Access to this project
Your team sees for itself who looks in from outside - with no need to ask IT.
Around all of this the work carries on as normal: tasks, dates, hours, files and reports hang off it like in any other project. Your team notices nothing of the protection - except who shows up in the project. And where work happens without a project frame, the same applies to teams: a workspace is a closed room only its members enter.
What your team keeps behind the barrier
Confidentiality costs you not one capability. The work keeps everything that makes a project in WORKSPACE.PM.
Administration & permissions
Portfolio & analytics
Platform & security
One project instead of a shadow process
No second tool, no side folder, no knowledge that walks out of the building with one person. The only difference is the circle that can see in.
Three questions that come up before rollout
Confidentiality is a matter of trust. That is why here it can be verified - not merely promised.
You wait for nobody
The circle is set by the project manager, not by IT. Protection exists the moment you need it - not when a ticket has been worked through.
It holds the promise, not just the view
Search, analytics, portfolio figures and the data export leave confidential work out alike. Even the tenant-wide read permission held by controlling and management does not get past it.
You still stay able to act
Work with an absent lead paralyses nothing. Administration can get in - with a reason, within limits, and visible to the project manager the same moment.
Related use cases
Where the same question of circle, visibility and evidence returns.
Frequently asked questions
Confidential projects
Confidentiality applies to the whole piece of work, not to individual files or cards. That is deliberate: a per-object exception creates exactly the gaps you were trying to avoid, and in the end nobody can say what is protected and what is not. Everything attached to the project sits behind the same barrier. For workspaces without a project frame the same principle exists at team level.
Not without further ado - and never unnoticed. Confidential work is missing in administration too, and there is no directory of such projects there. Anyone who needs access has to know the work already, state their reason, and accept that the project manager and deputy hear about it at once. That makes emergency access an act with a name on it rather than a free pass.
Deliberately not - a deadline passing in the background creates a false sense of safety. An access ends when somebody ends it: the project manager, the deputy or the affected person themselves. So that nothing is forgotten anyway, the system tells the project manager every month which grants are still open. Ending one deletes nothing; the whole act stays readable afterwards.
For those entitled, everything adds up as usual - you lose no analysis. For everyone else the work is not part of a single figure: not in reports, not in the portfolio graph, not in programmes or scenarios and not in the full export. That way no total and no curve can reveal that the work exists at all.
No, and we say so plainly: confidentiality is an access barrier inside the application, not separate encryption with its own key. What matters for your case is that it acts on every route the application knows to the data - lists, search, analytics, export. You need no additional licence for it; the capability is part of the project module.
Bring back the work that today runs alongside your system
Try WORKSPACE.PM free for 30 days - with a circle you define yourself and evidence you can produce at any time.