No executive recruiter wants to share the rapid-fire notes they took during an interview with their team before getting a chance to polish them. This tendency to hold back limits the institutional knowledge that can become your team’s competitive advantage.
Thrive is designed to encourage internal collaboration by making shared content broadly visible by default, while providing clear options for privacy and external sharing.
What is the Default Visibility of Notes and Scorecards?
1. Private (Drafting)
When you create a Note or Scorecard and Save or Close it without hitting Publish:
Visibility: It remains private and is only visible to you, the creator.
Intent: This allows you to use the platform for drafting ideas, capturing quick-formatted thoughts, or conducting initial assessments without immediately sharing them. It's intended to replace external documents for note-taking and assessment preparation, streamlining your workflow.
2. Published (Internal Sharing)
When you create a Note or Scorecard and click Publish:
Visibility: It defaults to being visible to everyone who can see the associated project, and more broadly, to your other internal team members. In most cases, if a project is visible to the entire company, publishing a note or scorecard associated with that project will make it visible to all internal users who have access to the project.
Intent: The primary action for notes and scorecards is publishing because it's assumed that most of the work is intended to be shared and collaborated on internally. This prevents critical information from remaining hidden and fosters a culture of transparent information sharing within your organization.
No published notes or scorecards are shared externally by default. Keep reading to learn how to do this in the next section.
Note: How related projects appear on notes and scorecards
When a note, outreach, or scorecard is linked to a project, Thrive shows a single chip with both the project name and company name together (for example, “CFO Search, Acme Corp”).
This keeps related context clear without separate chips for project and company.
How to Share Notes and Scorecards
Here’s how to change the permissions on your note or scorecard after publishing:
On a published Note or Scorecard, click the kebab icon (three dots)
Select "Share" from the drop-down menu
Adjust the internal visibility to Editor, Viewer, or Restricted
Adjust the external visibility to Viewer or Restricted
Click Save
Restricting Internal Visibility: By default, internal viewers will be able to see published notes and scorecards. You can further restrict who internally sees the note or scorecard by changing the Internal general access to Restricted.
Sharing with External Users: By default, Hiring Managers and other external stakeholders will not see private notes or scorecards. You specifically have to share them unless you specifically share them by changing the restriction from "Restricted" to "Viewer" for that group in the sharing settings. This allows you to differentiate between internal job preference notes and official status updates. Remember, you can always preview what the Hiring Manager can see by clicking View as Hiring Manager on the kebab menu of the project page.
Troubleshooting Sharing Permissions
If you encounter issues with sharing or viewing Notes and Scorecards, consider these common scenarios.
"I don't see the 'Share' option when I create a Note or Scorecard."
If you are creating a Note or Scorecard, you should always have the "Share" option to dictate its permissions. After hitting publish or close on a note, you will see the note appear under the Notes tab of the person's profile. Click the kebab menu (the icon with three dots) and select Share from the drop-down.
"I can't create Notes, Scorecards, Outreaches, or Events."
These actions are tied to the "View People" permission within the system. Contact your administrator to confirm your role has the "View People" permission enabled.
“A user left. What happens to their private notes?”
Currently, if a user leaves the team and their Notes or Scorecards were saved as "private" (not published), they become hidden and are not accessible to others. At this time, there is no automatic transfer of ownership for private content, but this is planned for future development.
"A note I thought was private is visible to my team."
Private notes will have a blue “Private” label next to the title of the note or scorecard.
If you do not see this and wish for your note to be private to internal team members, change the visibility by clicking on the kebab menu (three dots), selecting Share, then editing the Internal general access to Restricted. Click save, and you should see the blue “Private” label appear.