Who can do what: roles and permissions in Planpad

As soon as more than one person uses a board, you need to decide who can change what. Planpad keeps this simple with four roles. This post explains each one and how to change roles for your team.

The four roles

Owner. Every workspace has exactly one Owner: the person who created it, unless ownership has since been handed over. The Owner can do everything an Admin can, and three things nobody else can: delete a project, delete the whole workspace, and transfer ownership to another Admin.

Admin. Admins look after the team. They invite people, change roles and remove members, and they manage workspace, project and board settings, such as renaming or reordering columns. Admins can manage everyone except the Owner.

Member. Members do the day-to-day work. In the projects they belong to, they create, edit and move cards, tick off checklists, attach files and comment.

Viewer. Viewers can see boards, open cards, read comments and watch cards to get notified, but they can't change anything. This role suits clients, stakeholders or anyone who needs to follow progress without editing it. A Viewer sees a "View only" label on the board, and the controls for editing simply aren't there.

Roles in projects

Workspace roles set the limit for project roles. Someone who is a Viewer in the workspace stays a Viewer in every project; they can't be given a higher role in a single project. Projects that are visible to the whole workspace can be read by every workspace member; to change cards in a project, a Member needs to be added to it.

Changing someone's role

Owners and Admins can change roles from Settings → Members:

1. Open the workspace settings and choose the Members tab.
2. Find the person and pick their new role from the list next to their name.
3. That's it: the change is saved straight away and applies to their next action.

The Members page also has a short "What each role can do" guide and shows your own role, so everyone can see where they stand.

Safeguards

A few rules keep a workspace from getting locked out or taken over:

• The Owner is protected. Admins can't change the Owner's role or remove the Owner. The option isn't offered, and the server refuses such a request with a clear message.
• There's always an Owner. To step down, the Owner first hands ownership to another Admin with Make owner.
• There's always an Admin. The last Admin can't be demoted or removed.
• Deleting a workspace takes care. Only the Owner sees the option, and they must type the workspace's name to confirm. Deleting removes every project, card and file for everyone, and can't be undone. People's accounts are kept.

Checked on the server, not just hidden

Hiding a button is a convenience, not a security measure. Every change in Planpad is checked on the server against the person's role before it happens, so a request that skips the screen is refused in exactly the same way. Each permission is covered by automated tests for every role, and those tests fail if a new feature that changes data hasn't been given a permission rule.

A sensible starting point

For most small teams:

• one Owner, usually the person who set up the workspace
• one or two Admins to share the setup work
• everyone who works on cards as a Member
• clients and stakeholders as Viewers

You can always change a role later, so start simple and adjust as the team grows.