Through a recent support investigation, I was informed that the previous behavior, which allowed Private Custom Fields to be shared with specific Guest users, was not intended and has now been updated to function according to the intended permissions model. Under the current design, once a field is marked as Private, Guest and Limited Member access is completely blocked, and only Members can be added as exceptions. While the rationale behind the updated permissions model is understood, the previous behavior had been available for a long time and was actively used in established production workflows. A few examples: • Internal approval workflows • Employee, contractor, or supplier evaluation fields • Sensitive commercial or financial information • Client-specific operational notes However, the recent change created a significant gap for workflows that require confidential Custom Fields to be visible only to a small subset of designated users, including designated Guest users (external collaborators), while remaining hidden from anyone else. Following the permissions update, the only available alternatives are: • Making the field visible to all Guests • Promoting affected users to Members • Restructuring workflows around separate Lists and permissions models None of these options provide an equivalent level of control without introducing additional licensing costs, governance concerns, workflow fragmentation, or ongoing administrative overhead. More importantly, Workspace owners and administrators are now forced to choose between: • Exposing confidential operational data to a broader audience than intended • Removing the affected Custom Fields from their workflows • Redesigning existing workflows, SOPs, permissions structures, and operational processes around less efficient alternatives This change therefore impacts existing production environments that were already relying on this level of permissions granularity, while also removing a practical and proven access-control pattern that could otherwise be applied to future implementations. Requested enhancement: Reintroduce Guest exceptions for Private Custom Fields, enabling Workspace administrators to grant access to specific Guest users (or Teams) while keeping the field hidden from all other users. This would restore a practical and scalable permission model for confidential workflow data without requiring broader Workspace access, additional Member licenses, or workflow fragmentation.
