Invite your team

The role you pick when you send the invitation sets the access ceiling for that person across every project in your organization, today and in the future. Demoting someone later is awkward (they notice access disappear from features they were using); promoting later is trivial. So when in doubt, invite at the lower role and bump up; do not invite everyone as Admin “just to keep things simple.”

Send invitations

1. Open People from the navigation.
2. Select Invite and enter one or more email addresses.
3. Choose a role for the people you are inviting.
4. Send the invitations. Each person gets an email link to join your organization.

Who sees Invite depends on the plan. On the Free plan, any member who is not a Guest can invite people, at a Member or Guest seat. On a paid plan, inviting needs the Invite & manage org invitations permission, Portfolio Manager and up by default. You can also ask ChatGPT, Claude or Onplana’s own assistant to send the invitation; see Invite a teammate from your AI assistant. To bring in a whole group without typing each address, make one reusable link from the members menu instead; see Share a workspace invite link.

Inviting a teammate by email from the People page, choosing the Member role, and the invitation then appearing under Pending Invitations with its expiry and resend and revoke actions

The invitation does not vanish once sent. It lands in Pending Invitations at the foot of the member list, with who sent it, when, and how long the link has left, so an invitation nobody acted on is still findable a week later.

As you pick the role, the dialog states the seat consequence before you send: Guests within your plan’s free guest allowance cost nothing, and every other role is a billable seat, priced per your plan. The allowance counts guest invitations still pending as well as guests who have joined, so the line reads, for example, Free guest seats: 3 of 10 in use or invited. Under it, one line says what a guest cannot do: Guests see only what they are invited to, with no workspace-wide views, and by default cannot invite anyone. Roles above your own tier render locked in the list, with the reason on hover: nobody can invite at or above their own level, so only the Owner can invite Admins, and an Admin tops out at Portfolio Manager.

People who already have an Onplana account join instantly; new people create an account from the invitation link and land in your organization ready to be assigned work. The invitation page works out which of those two applies and shows the recipient a single path, so they are not asked to remember whether they signed up before. What they see is documented in Join a workspace by invitation, which is worth skimming before you field questions about it.

The first-week reminder on the dashboard

A new workspace on the Free plan gets a reminder on the dashboard while you are still the only person in it. It reads Bring one teammate into workspace, and its button, Invite a teammate, opens People with the invite form already open.

It shows only when all of these are true:

• the workspace is less than 7 days old and you are its only member;
• no invitation, to the organization or to a project, is waiting;
• you can invite people, your email address is verified, and the plan has room for one more member.

It appears at most once a day on a browser, and it never shows in a demo workspace. Dismiss for two weeks hides it for longer than the first week lasts, so once dismissed it does not come back. It also goes away as soon as a teammate joins. A workspace on a paid plan or a trial sees a different reminder instead, You are still the only person in workspace, with an Invite teammates button.

Roles at a glance

• Owner: full control, including billing and permissions.
• Admin: manages people and settings, but not billing.
• Portfolio Manager: manages projects, teams, and reviews across the organization.
• Member: works on the projects they are added to.
• Guest: limited access, typically an external collaborator.

The exact abilities of each role are configurable in the permission matrix, which an Owner manages in Organization Settings.

Tip

Guests use a separate, often free, pool of seats so you can collaborate with clients and contractors without using a full member seat. The number of free guest seats depends on your plan.

Inviting from inside a project

Project owners and managers can invite people straight from a project’s Add Members dialog, choosing a project role for each. When the list includes someone who is not yet in your organization, the dialog says so: those addresses appear in a highlighted block with a seat choice, Member by default or Guest, and the billing consequence stated before you send. What happens next depends on whether you can invite people to the organization yourself (the Invite & manage org invitations permission, Portfolio Manager and up by default):

• You can, or your organization is on the Free plan, or everyone new is a Guest inside your free guest seats. Sending asks you to confirm, because those people will join the organization as well as the project when they accept. The invitations then go out.
• You cannot, and a new seat would cost money. The button reads Send request and there is no confirm step, because nothing is sent yet. You can add a note in Why (optional), and the request goes to your organization’s Owners and Admins on People & Teams → Access Requests. You are notified when they decide; if they approve, the invitation goes out in your name at the seat and project role they pick. See Requests to invite someone new.

When such an invitation is accepted, every organization Owner and Admin gets a notification and an email naming who joined, at which seat, and through which project, so a seat never appears on the bill unannounced. For an invitation that went through a request, the Owners and Admins were also asked before anything was sent. Accepting also lands the person directly in the right workspace with the project open.

Track pending invitations

Inviting from People creates an organization invitation. Inviting to a project, from its Add Members dialog or from a task’s assignee picker (Someone missing? Invite them), creates a project invitation. Both kinds show up in two places:

• People → Members → Pending Invitations lists both kinds, with an Invited to column that reads Organization or links to the project. The N pending count on the Members tab includes both. This section is shown to people who can invite to the organization.
• A project’s Team card, on its Overview tab, has an Invited, not joined yet list of that project’s pending invitations. It is hidden when nobody is waiting.

A person with a pending invitation is not a member yet, so they cannot be assigned work until they accept. Who sees which project invitations: if you can see every project in the organization (Owners, Admins, and Portfolio Managers by default), you see them for every project; anyone else sees them only for projects they own or manage, so an empty list for someone who leads no projects is expected.

Every row has two icon buttons, Resend invitation and Revoke invitation:

• Resend emails a fresh link and pushes the expiry out by a new window, so it also revives an expired invitation. The link in the earlier email stops working, and the new email says it replaces it. Resending a project invitation is refused if it was already accepted or the person is already on the project, and one invitation can be resent at most 5 times an hour.
• Revoke asks you to confirm, then cancels the invitation, and the emailed link stops working immediately.

The person who sent a project invitation can always resend or revoke it, and so can anyone who could see it in the lists above. Clear expired on People clears expired organization invitations only; resend or revoke an expired project invitation one at a time.

See whether the email arrived

A pending invitation whose email did not reach the person says so, ahead of its expiry. The same label shows in Pending Invitations on People, in a project’s Invited, not joined yet list, and in a share dialog’s list of invited people. Hover the label for what to do.

Label	What happened	What to do
Email bounced	The address rejected an earlier email from Onplana, so nothing is sent to it.	Check the address. Resend is off, because it would reach nobody. Revoke the invitation and invite the right address.
Email blocked	The address does not take email from Onplana, for example because the person unsubscribed. The reason is not shown.	Resend is off. Reach the person another way, or invite a different address.
Email not sent	Onplana could not send the email this time. The address may be fine.	Select Resend.

A row with no label means the email went out. The label is read each time the list loads, so it clears once the address can take email again.

When an invitation email bounces after you sent it, you get an in-app notification, An invitation email bounced, naming the address and the organization or project. It links to the pending list where the invitation sits. You get it once per invitation, and only while the invitation is neither accepted nor expired. It is never sent by email.

Inviting or resending to an address that bounced before, or is blocked, says so straight away: the invitation is saved, but the dialog tells you no email was sent, and only the invitations whose email went out count as sent. Invitations are never deleted because their email failed; revoke one yourself if you no longer need it.

Best practices

1. Default to Member; promote on demand. Member is the right role for almost everyone: they can create projects, see and act on projects they are on, and view dashboards. Promote people to Portfolio Manager or Admin only when they have a concrete responsibility (run portfolios, manage roles, etc.). Most “we made everyone Admin” organizations regret it the first time a permission tightening lands.
2. Send invitations in named batches. Inviting your eight engineers separately produces eight little notifications; inviting them as a batch sends one welcome experience and gives you a single line in the Invitations list to monitor. The bulk invite is also faster: paste the eight emails separated by commas or newlines.
3. Use guest seats for external collaborators. A client reviewing your project plan, a contractor on a single milestone, an auditor checking financials, all of these are guest-shaped. Guests don’t count against billable seats up to the free guest allowance on your plan, so reserve them for external scope rather than burning a full member seat.
4. Re-check role assignments quarterly. People change roles inside companies; an organization chart from January is not the organization chart in October. A 10-minute quarterly review of the People page (filter by role, scan for “this should be different now”) keeps the organization clean and the permission matrix honest.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• The invitation email never arrived. Check Pending Invitations at the foot of the People page. If the row reads Email bounced, Email blocked or Email not sent, see See whether the email arrived. Otherwise the email is in flight (most arrive within 60 seconds; some IT systems delay external email by minutes). Check the recipient’s spam folder. If still missing, Resend issues a fresh link with a new expiry window (21 days for an Owner, Admin, or Portfolio Manager invitation, 7 for other roles), and the previous link stops working, so point them at the newest email.
• I invited the wrong email; how do I take it back? Open Pending Invitations, find the row, and select Revoke. The link stops working immediately. If the recipient has already accepted, remove them from the People list instead.
• The role I want to invite at isn’t in the list. Owner role is only assignable by an existing Owner. If you’re an Admin, you can invite at Portfolio Manager, Member, or Guest; a second Admin has to be invited by an Owner.
• The invite dialog says “Member limit reached.” Your plan has a member limit, and it counts the people already in the workspace plus the invitations still out. Guests inside your plan’s free guest seats don’t count toward it. To make room, upgrade your plan (see Change your plan or billing cycle), remove someone who no longer needs access, cancel a pending invitation, or invite an external collaborator as a Guest if your free guest seats have room. On a Microsoft Marketplace subscription the message reads Seat limit reached and the limit is the seat count you bought, so add seats in Microsoft instead. See Your member limit.
• The accepted invite landed at the wrong role. Open the People page, find the person, and use the role dropdown to change it. The change applies immediately and they are notified via the live role-change push so they don’t see stale UI for the next 30 seconds.

How this combines with other features

• Invitations + Custom roles. On Business and above, you can define custom org-level roles beyond the five defaults (Finance Reviewer, Procurement Lead, Customer Success Lead). Define the custom role first in Create custom roles, then invite the right people directly into it instead of promoting them later.
• Invitations + Permission matrix. The role you pick at invitation is the floor; the matrix configures what each role can actually do. If a particular permission feels wrong for an entire role (e.g., “Members shouldn’t see budgets by default”), tune the matrix once and it applies to every member you invite from then on. See Understand roles and permissions.
• Invitations + SSO. Enterprise organizations using SSO (SAML or OIDC) can configure auto-provisioning so signing in via the IdP creates the account in the right role automatically. Invite-and-link mode is the legacy path; SSO auto-provision is cleaner once it’s set up. See Configure SSO.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Asana	Organization member ≈ Member; team admins ≈ Portfolio Manager; organization admins ≈ Admin
Jira	Site administrator ≈ Admin/Owner; project lead ≈ Portfolio Manager on the relevant projects; team member ≈ Member
Trello	Workspace member ≈ Member; workspace admin ≈ Admin
Microsoft Project Online	Portfolio Viewer ≈ Member with read-only filtering; Project Manager ≈ Portfolio Manager; Administrator ≈ Admin/Owner
Slack-only workspaces	Slack guests ≈ Onplana Guests; member ≈ Member

FAQs

What is the difference between a member and a guest? Members are part of your team and can be given broad access. Guests are external collaborators with limited access and their own seat allowance.

Can I change someone’s role later? Yes. On the People page, an Admin or Owner can change any member’s role, within the last-Owner safeguard that stops you removing the final Owner.

Do invitations expire? Yes, and the window depends on the role you invited them as. An Owner, Admin or Manager invitation lasts 21 days. Every other role lasts 7, including a custom role you have defined yourself. The longer window is for the roles usually invited to evaluate Onplana rather than to use it, where the reply cycle runs in weeks rather than days. A project invitation follows its project role the same way: Project Manager lasts 21 days, every other project role 7.

After that the link stops working and the invitation shows as expired under Pending Invitations, where you can resend it (which issues a fresh link with a new window for that role) or revoke it. Clear expired removes every expired organization invitation in one click; expired project invitations are resent or revoked one at a time.

You do not have to watch for this yourself. For an organization invitation, Onplana emails you twice about an invitation nobody has accepted: three days before it lapses, while the link still works and a nudge from you can still save it, and again once it has lapsed. Both go to you rather than to the person you invited, who has had one email from us already and is not ours to chase. You are the one who can.

Someone says their invitation link is dead. What happened? Almost always a resend: resending mints a fresh link and the previous one stops working at that moment. If they are looking at the original email after a resend, the dead link is expected, and the newest email is the live one. Ask them to open the most recent invitation email, or resend once more and have them use that.

Do I get anything for inviting a colleague? On a Free or trialling workspace, People may show Invite a colleague, get an AI lot when they start working. While it does, your workspace gets one lot of 200,000 AI tokens for each colleague you invite who joins as a member (not a guest) and works on a project you share on two different days within 14 days of accepting. Each inviter earns one lot, a workspace earns at most four, and you are notified in Onplana when a lot lands.

Can the invited person pick their own role on acceptance? No. The role is set when you send the invitation. The recipient sees their role on the People page once they join; if it’s wrong, the inviter can change it immediately.

Do guests count against my billable seat count? Up to the free-guest-seat allowance on your plan, no. Above that allowance, a guest costs the same as a member. The same goes for your member limit: a guest inside the free guest seats doesn’t take a place. The plan-tier guest allowance is shown on the Billing page; see Manage seats and guests.

Can an invited person reset their password before they accept? The invitation link itself is the join path, there is no password to reset until they have an account.

What if they sign up directly instead of clicking the link? They get an account and a personal workspace of their own, and your invitation stays pending. Signing up with an invited address is not enough to join your organization on its own, because knowing an address does not prove you control it. Ask them to click the invitation link and accept from there; Onplana then offers to tidy up the empty workspace their signup created.

Can I add someone to a specific project before they accept the organization invite? Not to a pending organization invitation. Instead, invite them from the project itself (its Add Members dialog, or Someone missing? Invite them in a task’s assignee picker). That sends a project invitation that adds them to the organization and the project together when they accept. Until then they are listed under Invited, not joined yet on the project’s Team card and cannot be assigned work.

Related

• Join a workspace by invitation, what the person you invited sees
• Share a workspace invite link, one reusable link instead of an email per person
• Understand roles and permissions, the matrix that defines what each role can do
• Manage seats and guests, how seats and guest seats are counted
• Create custom roles, Business+ option for non-default roles
• Open a person’s page, what opens when you select a member’s name