As an admin you hold the highest level of access in your organisation's ChangePlan. You look after the settings everyone works within, the people who can log in, and what they can see.

This guide explains what the admin role covers, what lives in each Settings tab, and the user tasks you'll do day to day. It assumes you have already used ChangePlan as a regular user. If you are brand new, start with Welcome to ChangePlan.

In this guide

What admins can and can't do, compared with other users
How your settings flow into everyone else's screens
Each Settings tab, one by one
Adding and removing users, and setting their access
Fixes for the problems admins are asked about most

The idea behind the admin role

Change managers make choices for one initiative. Admins make choices for the whole organisation: the impact types everyone picks from, the colour thresholds on every heatmap, the checklist on every initiative. One change in Settings reaches every user.

That is why ChangePlan recommends no more than one or two admins. Admins get separate, deeper training beyond the standard user guides. Always check with your team before you change critical settings.

Most Settings tabs were set up by the ChangePlan team during onboarding, so you won't need to change them often. Your regular work is mostly about people: adding users, removing leavers and sorting out access.

Key terms

Term	What it means
Admin	The user type with the highest access. Also called Company Admin or System Administrator.
Full licence	A user type that can create initiatives and edit those they have access to.
Read-only licence	A user type that can view what they have been given access to.
Portfolio access	An access level that applies to every initiative in a portfolio.
Initiative access	An access level that applies to one initiative.
Hidden	An initiative status that hides the initiative from everyone who doesn't have access to it. Admins see every hidden item.

What an admin can do

Only admins can:

See all initiatives and portfolios across the organisation, including hidden ones that no other user can see
Create hidden initiatives and portfolios
Open Settings, which is hidden from all other user types
Add new users and remove leavers
Create and delete portfolios (Full Access users can't do this)
Change system-wide configuration, including turning AI features on or off
Edit any initiative or activity
See when each user last logged in, which is useful for auditing platform usage

Admins can't do these from within ChangePlan. Contact support instead:

Add or remove another admin
Delete all data or export all data

Action	Admin user	Full Access user	Read-only user
Open Settings	Yes	No	No
Add / remove users	Yes	No	No
Create portfolios	Yes	No	No
Create initiatives	Yes	Yes	No
Edit any initiative	Yes	Only if granted access	No
View all initiatives	Yes	Only if granted access	Only if granted access
View all reports	Yes	Yes	Yes
Delete individuals from the company	Yes	No	No
Change org chart / system configuration	Yes	No	No
Create / see hidden initiatives and portfolios	Yes	No	No
Add or remove other admins	No (contact support)	No	No
Delete all data or export all data	No (contact support)	No	No

Add or remove an admin

Only ChangePlan can add or remove an admin.

Email support, or use Feedback/Support at the bottom of the left menu.
Say which person should be added or removed as an admin.

ChangePlan usually actions this within a few hours.

Go to support site and Feedback / Support sit at the bottom of the left menu for every user.

How your settings reach everyone else

Most settings don't have a screen of their own for other users. They show up as lists, colours and labels inside the screens people use every day.

What you set	Where users meet it
Impact types and impact level helper text	The Impact type list and the hover text for High, Medium and Low when adding an impact
Risk categories	The Category list when adding a risk
Change phases	The columns on the activity board, and the phases a pulse check reports against
Custom activity types	The list of interventions when adding an activity
Heatmap colour logic, weighting and thresholds	The colours on the Change impacts heatmap and the Change saturation report
Activity burden heatmap sensitivity	The colour bands on the Activity burden heatmap
Checklist items	The checklist on every initiative
Key dates	Grey bands on timelines, and a warning when an activity is scheduled in a blackout period
Logo and email sender name	System emails, such as pulse checks, and PDF and PowerPoint exports
Custom individuals fields	Extra columns on individuals tables and people pickers

This is why changes need care. Renaming a risk category renames it on the risks already filed under it. Changing heatmap settings changes how past and future reports look, which makes comparisons over time unreliable.

Open Settings

After you log in you see the same Initiatives page as other users. Your admin tools are in Settings.

Click Settings in the left menu. Only admins see this option.
Use the tabs across the top: General settings, Users, Initiative, Impacts, Org chart, Key dates, Assessment, SSO setup and Integrations. Scroll right if you can't see them all.

Full Access and Read-only users don't see Settings. If they go directly to the Settings URL, they are sent back to the Initiatives page.

Settings, open on General settings, with the nine tabs across the top.

The Settings tabs, one by one

General settings

Organisation-wide display options and field names.

Organizational logo: added as a link (Your logo URL). It appears in system emails and in PDF and PowerPoint exports.
Date format: dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy, for everyone in your organisation.
Email sender display name: the name on system emails sent to your stakeholders, for example pulse check emails.
AI suggestions: turn AI features on or off for your organisation (Enable system-wide), and separately for the Initiative setup dialog, which analyses documents to suggest change effort and initiative brief answers.
Initiative hierarchy field names: rename the Portfolio and Hashtags fields. Hashtags is multi-select and can be renamed to match your terminology, for example "Function" or "Theme". We recommend keeping "Hashtags", because it reflects the multi-select nature of the field.
Hashtags fields: turn on or off, and manage the tag values available on initiatives.
Initiative types: turn on or off, and manage the initiative type options. This field may appear as "Project type" in some parts of the app.
Activity burden heatmap sensitivity: the hour thresholds at which the heatmap changes colour, for both average hours and total hours (Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple).
Custom Individuals Fields: up to three custom fields on individual audience records, for example "Representation" or "Worker Station".
Change effort assessment heatmap axes titles: rename the two axes on the change effort chart (default: Readiness Risk and Change Magnitude). Larkfield's report shows Stakeholder readiness and Scale of change, so the names you see may differ.

Burden sensitivity in a demo company: each colour has a maximum in hours per person per week. Click the pencil to edit a value.

Users

Add, remove and manage licensed users. The ChangePlan licences summary at the top shows how many Full and Read-only licences are In use, Available and in Total. ChangePlan usually provides the same number of Read-only licences as Full licences, but your organisation may differ. See Add users and manage their access and the steps below.

The Users tab in a demo company. The list shows each user's licence type and last login, with Import and Add above it.

Initiative

Fields used in every initiative.

Initiative checklist: the deliverables in every initiative's checklist. There are 10 by default, such as Stakeholder analysis, Change canvas and Communications planning. Add, edit, delete or reorder them. Adding an item adds it to every existing initiative; deleting one removes it, with its dates, progress and notes, from all of them.
Change phases: the five stages of the stakeholder change journey, shown as columns on the activity board. Rename them to match your methodology. The defaults are Awareness, Eagerness, Know-How, Understanding and Sustainment.
Custom activity types: add intervention types under Communication, Learning or Custom.
Risk categories: the categories available when people add a risk. Renaming a category renames it on existing risks; deleting one leaves those risks as they are.
Custom Groups: the "Allow Full Access users to manage Custom Groups" toggle. It is off by default; turn it on to let Full Access users manage custom groups without an admin.

The Initiative tab: the 10 checklist items, then Change phases, Custom activity types and Risk categories.

Impacts

Impact types, what each level means, and how the heatmap is coloured.

Impact types: the categories of change impact, each with editable helper text. The defaults are Customers, Organizational, Structural, Technological and Environment.
Impact magnitude helper text: what High, Medium and Low mean for your organisation, shown as hover text.
Heatmap color logic: choose Dominance Rule (a group takes the level that a third or more of its impacts share) or Weighted impacts score (each group scores the sum of its weighted impacts).
Impact Weighting: points for Low (fixed at 1), Medium and High. By default, Medium is 5 and High is 10.
Aggregated view color thresholds: green, amber and red thresholds for each org level, so heatmaps aren't skewed at higher levels.

The Impacts tab in a demo company. Each org level has its own thresholds, because higher levels add up more impacts.

Here is why per-level thresholds matter. A Level 1 group's score adds up everything beneath it, so it will always be higher than any one team's. In the screenshot, Level 1 turns red at 75 points but Level 2 at 35. See How the Change saturation report works for the full explanation.

Org chart

Your organisational structure.

Org chart tiers: rename the levels of your org chart. The defaults are Org Level 1 to Org Level 5.
Org chart browser: a multi-column view of your hierarchy. Click a group to see its child groups. Use + at the bottom of a column to add a group at that level.
Update Org Chart (top right): upload a full org chart with the XLS template. ChangePlan flags differences and asks you how to handle deleted groups and reallocate project data.
Delete All Individuals (bottom right): removes all individual audience members. Licensed users are not affected.

Child group inheritance. A new child group added under an existing org group inherits all of the parent's initiative, impact and activity data, unless the parent was only partly added to those items.

For large or frequently changing organisations, contact your ChangePlan Customer Success contact before an org chart upload. It is easy to create duplicate records or mapping errors.

Key dates

Dates and blackout periods that appear on every user's timeline. To add a key date:

Click Add.
Enter a Description. This is the label on timelines, so use it to explain why a period is blacked out.
Set the Start date and End date.
Turn on Blackout period? if users should be warned when they schedule an activity in this range. This only warns; it doesn't block scheduling.
Save.

Assessment

The questions in pulse checks and change effort assessments, and the sections of the Change Canvas.

Pulse checks. Readiness questions: one question per change phase. Phase names are configurable and follow the stakeholder's change journey. Adoption questions: three questions on adoption criteria, by default Uptake, Proficiency and Usage outcome. Configurable.
Change effort. Export All Assessment XLS downloads all assessment data for your organisation. Questions: 12 questions on scale of change and stakeholder readiness; click a question to edit its answers in the right-hand panel, and give each answer a point value. Assessment result text: the explanation shown with the change effort result.
Change canvas. Turn sections on or off and rename them. Default sections include Vision, Benefits, Implementation approach, What's changing?, What will teams do differently?, Change Approach, Change Governance and Change Success.

SSO setup and Integrations

These tabs show your single sign-on and integration configuration for reference. Contact support before changing them, and we'll connect you with the ChangePlan tech team.

Manage users

User management is your core admin responsibility.

Licence type	What they can do
Full	Create and edit initiatives; view activities and reports for initiatives they have access to
Read-only	View initiatives, activities and reports they've been given access to

Add a user

Click Settings in the left menu, then open the Users tab.
Click Add.
Enter First Name, Last Name and Email Address. Each email address can only be used for one account.
Choose the User Type: Full or Read-only.
Assign Portfolio Access and/or Initiative Access. Tick the checkbox next to each portfolio or initiative; choosing a level from the dropdown alone doesn't save the permission.
Click Save.

The new user receives an email invitation to log in and set their password. The user list also shows when each user last logged in.

Access levels

Portfolio access applies to every initiative in the portfolio:

Full Access: add initiatives to the portfolio; view, edit and delete every initiative in it; and add other users to the portfolio and its initiatives.
Editor: read and write, and add initiatives to the portfolio by choosing it in the Create dialog.
Viewer: read-only.

Initiative access applies to one initiative. On Edit initiative, under Initiative access, the fields are:

Full access: read/write access, and can add users.
Editors: read/write access.
Viewers: read-only access.
Change managers: a title that shows who leads the change in reporting. It doesn't give access by itself.

When portfolio and initiative access differ, the higher level wins. Full Access on a portfolio overrides Viewer access on an initiative inside it, while higher initiative-level access still holds. When in doubt, assign access at initiative level only.

You can also assign initiative access from inside an initiative: Initiative setup › Edit initiative › Initiative access at the bottom of the page. See Give people access to an initiative.

Remove a user

In the Users tab, click the user.
Click Delete User and confirm. To verify: button label in 2.0

This removes the person's login only. Initiatives, activities and other content they created stay in ChangePlan, and their licence can be given to someone else. Consider whether disabling their SSO or Microsoft account achieves the same goal while keeping the audit trail.

Hide an initiative

Open the initiative.
In the initiative's left menu, click Initiative setup › Edit initiative.
Set Status to Hidden, then click Save changes.

Hidden initiatives are only visible to admins. They never send pulse checks or activity emails. See Who can see hidden initiatives and portfolios.

Worked example: a joiner and a leaver at Larkfield

Larkfield is the demo energy and water utility used in this help centre. Here is a typical admin request, with illustrative people.

Larkfield · Settings › UsersIllustrative

The request	Say a contact centre trainer joins the Customer billing platform replacement team, and a billing analyst leaves.
Joiner	The admin clicks Add, enters the trainer's name and work email, picks a Full licence, ticks Customer billing platform replacement under Initiative Access and chooses Editor, then saves.
What ChangePlan does	Emails the trainer an invitation to set a password. The initiative appears on their Initiatives page when they log in.
Leaver	The admin opens the analyst's record and clicks Delete User. The impacts and activities the analyst created stay on the initiative.
Check	The licence summary at the top of the tab shows whether a Full licence is free for the next joiner.

The initiative name is from Larkfield; the people and steps are an example.

Troubleshooting

"I can't log in after a platform update." ChangePlan is hosted on AWS. A server migration can change the app's registration so your enterprise app allowlist blocks it. Ask your IT team to re-add ChangePlan to the approved list.
"A user can't see an initiative." Check that you ticked the checkbox next to the initiative or portfolio when assigning access, not just chose a level from the dropdown.
"Portfolio access is overriding initiative access." This is by design, but only upwards. For fine-grained control, assign access at initiative level only.
"The org chart or stakeholder list is out of date." Use the XLS template for bulk updates, but contact your Customer Success contact first. For ongoing accuracy, ask your IT team about the SFTP integration for automatic HR system syncing. See Setting up automated org chart & employee updates.
"The heatmaps are all green (or all red)." Go to Settings › Impacts and adjust the Impact Weighting or the aggregated view colour thresholds. Use Restore defaults if needed.
"What happened to a deleted user's work?" Their login is removed but everything they created remains. Check audit trail requirements with your Customer Success contact if you need them for governance.
"I need to raise a support ticket." Use Feedback/Support at the bottom of the left menu (available to all users). It creates a ticket and sends you a confirmation email with a ticket number. For org chart uploads and data setup, contact your named Customer Success contact.

Common mistakes

Giving several people admin. Every admin can change settings for everyone. Keep it to one or two.
Deleting a checklist item to tidy one initiative. It disappears from every initiative, with its dates, progress and notes.
Treating Change managers as an access level. It is a title. Add the person to Full access or Editors as well.
Uploading an org chart without help. Talk to your Customer Success contact first, to avoid duplicates and mapping errors.

FAQs

Can I make someone else an admin?

No. Only ChangePlan can add or remove an admin. Email support or use Feedback/Support, and it is usually done within a few hours.

How many Read-only licences do we have?

Check the licence summary at the top of Settings › Users. ChangePlan usually provides as many Read-only licences as Full licences, but yours may differ.

Does removing a user delete their work?

No. Only their login is removed. Everything they created stays, and their licence can be reused.

Where do I turn AI features on or off?

In Settings › General settings, under AI suggestions.

Can I change the SSO configuration myself?

No. The SSO setup and Integrations tabs are for reference. Contact support before changing them. See Set up single sign-on (SSO).

Can I export all of our data?

Not from within ChangePlan. Contact support to export or delete all data.

Related articles

Next stepFind your way around Settings

Start here for admins
Import data with Excel templates
Understand user types and permissions
Log in to ChangePlan
Welcome to ChangePlan

Still stuck?

Email support@changeplan.co with a screenshot of what you see, and we'll help.

Last updated: 22 October 2026