Big Feature Request - Sharing

Michael Tennes
Michael Tennes
Community Member
edited February 2012 in 1Password 3 – 7 for Mac
I would like to submit a feature request for all versions of 1Password (or just the one I use). I have a large family (eight) and although 1Password goes the distance for making passwords, logins, and software licenses easy to manage for ME, it could go a lot further in helping me manage passwords for my family. Let me explain...

What I would like to see is something analagous to a Unix Administrator (super-user) / User environment. Where I, as King of my House (dad), could set up 1Password databases for my wife and children. Then I could administrate passwords for my family. My wife should have login info for Amazon, Sears, JCPenny but not my daughters. My children have access to their Facebook accounts, but when they change their passwords, 1Password would update my master database so when they forget it I can help (also so I can spy on them). I could choose which passwords people have access to and whether or not they can alter it.

Right now, it's a real mess, individually managing 8 databases (one for each family member) for our three Macs and seven iOS devices.

I can imagine that this type of functionality, would also would have huge applications in businesses, schools and other environments where a team of people need common access to websites and web services, with a administrator that can manage it all.

Comments

  • Thank you for bringing this up. I wanted this feature for a long time as I have similar needs for both business and family.

    The trick is to make it possible without making the whole app overly complicated and this is something we are still figuring out.
  • Michael Tennes
    Michael Tennes
    Community Member
    I would be content with the UI interface being a shell's command line. Then you could figure out the sweet GUI later. eXtreme programming man!
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Who said anything about UI? :P

    I tease a bit, but I think the key phrase is "without making the whole app overly complicated." It is possible to have very complicated command line interfaces as well as GUI ones, but as far as I know no one else has ever tackled the problem we're looking at tackling because it really isn't a simple one. We want to make it is simple as possible for users, but that takes a lot of very complicated work behind the scenes — even if it is "only" CLI. :)
  • driblet
    driblet
    Community Member
    I posted a request similar to this one a few weeks ago here: http://forum.agilebits.com/index.php?/topic/10004-feature-request-support-multiple-password-files-at-once/. I definitely second this sort of feature and is the reason I am having to look for alternative products when team situations are required.
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited February 2012
    Thanks for the additional feedback, hjoelr.

    The concept of sharing and multiple data files within 1Password has been suggested a number of times and it's certainly a very interesting and useful idea! We are considering this for the future, but it is quite a substantial change to how 1Password works right now which means a lot of time and testing is required to add this feature.

    So with that said, I really can't make any promises on a time frame for when we may be able to bring this to 1Password, but that doesn't mean we won't. We've always believed in trying to be as honest and realistic with our users as possible rather than making lots of empty promises.

    I'm sorry I can't give you a more positive answer right now, but thank you so much for letting us know that you would find this useful. We do take the number of users who request a feature into consideration when we decide on our feature lists.

    In the meantime, importing and exporting 1Password Interchange Files is a great way to transfer information between different installations of 1Password (File > Export). It is not automated, but for my purposes it works well since I am not constantly changing the passwords I share with others. This way each use can have private 1Password data and import only the items they need from the rest of the team.

    (Please be aware that the 1PIF information is not encrypted and should be handled with care while in transit and securely deleted once the information is safely imported into an encrypted 1Password data file.)
  • driblet
    driblet
    Community Member
    Khad, thanks for the reply. I'm not trying to force your hand into doing something quickly and buggy. I just wanted to show that this is a highly sought after feature and to also link similar posts together.

    Thanks!
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    And we really appreciate it! :)

    I am advocating for this as well.
  • Hi,

    I'm sure this has been covered somewhere else in the forums, but a quick google search did not yield my exact question. So:

    my workplace (where I'm part of the IT support team) is considering switching to 1password from our old, not-that-well-functioning password manager. We would like to use the same 1password file for all the work-related passwords, logins etc. This seems to be covered by the dropbox syncing, right?

    However, since we also use our laptops personally, there would be other passwords to save which are not work-related (facebook etc). Is it possible to sync just a portion of the saved passwords, but not others? Seems like a hassle to have two separate password managers installed on my computer.

    We're using macs, so 3.9 would be the version to acquire.

    best regards,
    Aron Ambrosiani
    The Nobel Museum
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited September 2012
    Welcome to the forums, Aron! Thanks for asking about this.

    The concept of sharing and multiple data files within 1Password has been suggested a number of times and it's certainly a very interesting and useful idea! We are considering this for the future, but it is quite a substantial change to how 1Password works right now which means a lot of time and testing is required to add this feature.

    So with that said, I really can't make any promises on a time frame for when we may be able to bring this to 1Password, but that doesn't mean we won't. We've always believed in trying to be as honest and realistic with our users as possible rather than making lots of empty promises.

    I'm sorry I can't give you a more positive answer right now, but thank you so much for letting us know that you would find this useful. We do take the number of users who request a feature into consideration when we decide on our feature lists.

    In the meantime, importing and exporting 1Password Interchange Files is a great way to transfer information between different installations of 1Password (File > Export). It is not automated, but for my purposes it works well since I am not constantly changing the passwords I share with others. This way each use can have private 1Password data and import only the items they need from the rest of the team.

    (Please be aware that the 1PIF information is not encrypted and should be handled with care while in transit and securely deleted once the information is safely imported into an encrypted 1Password data file.)

    I hope that helps you make an informed decision. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. I'd be happy to address them. :)

    Cheers,
  • +1 for sharing a subset of passwords with my business team. HUGE time savings and the constant annoyance of asking for latest password for some account and sharing that info through totally unsecure methods! (email, skype chat, back of napkin etc..)

    Please hurry! (but of course make it awesome too).
  • +1 for this feature!
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited January 2013
    Thanks for the vote(s), jeffree, although we only count one per person. :) Welcome to the forums! I merged the two directly related threads into one.

    In the meantime, iMessage is a very widely used communication channel that is encrypted. You can also notify the recipient via a separate channel what password you are sending to them so no identifying information needs to be send directly alongside the password. There are other options, but iMessage is the simplest and most ubiquitous. :)

    We'll keep working to make 1Password even better for you.
This discussion has been closed.