This article refers to releases and features. Depending on your workspace type, you may see "schedules" and “activities" in your workspace.
Aha! Roadmaps | User permissions
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to user permissions. Set permissions too loosely and you risk a well-meaning teammate changing an account-wide setting. Restrict access too much and you cannot collaborate effectively with the people who contribute to your team's success.
Aha! Roadmaps is where you define all your strategic work. So you want to invite the right people to the conversation. With our sophisticated user permissions, you can have the best of all worlds — administrators with the ability to align workflows across workspaces, contributors who are fully engaged in your roadmap, reviewers who can provide insights, and viewers who can stay informed of the latest.
User permission levels vary slightly depending on the Aha! Roadmaps plan you have selected. The main difference is that those on the Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans have the ability to add unlimited reviewers and viewers for free.
The Premium plan prioritizes smaller teams who want every Aha! Roadmaps user to have robust access to the account.
The Enterprise plan prioritizes larger teams who want to include reviewers and viewers — two user types who add their perspective to your work but cannot complete the work themselves. Enterprise accounts can add unlimited reviewers and viewers for free.
The Enterprise+ plan includes reviewers and viewers, as well as the ability to configure custom roles for personalized user permissions.
You can also combine Aha! products into one account with add-on plans.
Aha! Ideas Advanced brings greater customers insights into your strategic planning process by expanding your feedback channels.
Aha! Whiteboards Advanced is the visual space for product innovation. It provides features to help you define user flows, create mockups, and collaborate on roadmaps.
Aha! Knowledge Advanced is an AI-powered product information hub that enables you to share all your documents in a central place.
Aha! Develop Advanced brings your development team into your Aha! account, with their unique workflows, dedicated workspace, and shared Aha! records — so that you can create a unified product development environment, no field mapping required.
In this article, we will cover all of the user permission levels, the difference between the three administrator levels, and show how you can manage user permissions in your account.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Non-admin user roles
There are four primary levels of user permissions in Aha! Roadmaps (though you can grant any user level administrator privileges). You can give a user different permission levels in different workspaces in your account.
Permission | Owner | Contributor | Reviewer | Viewer |
Add and manage users within the workspace | x | |||
Create new workspaces* | x | |||
Create workspace integrations | x | |||
x | x | |||
Create and manage strategy, notes, whiteboards, and records such as ideas, releases, and features | x | x | ||
Create and manage presentations | x | x | ||
Add new features to existing releases | x | x | ||
Edit existing records (status, score, custom fields, and details) | x | x | ||
Add public comments on ideas | x | x | ||
Share workspace notes as webpages | x | x | ||
Share workspace notes and whiteboards | x | x | ||
Resolve work requests (Enterprise+) | x | x | ||
Manually flag at-risk records | x | x | ||
Create and edit personal notes and personal whiteboards | x | x | ||
Edit workspace notes and whiteboards | x | x | x** | |
Create and edit ideas from within Aha! Roadmaps*** | x | x | x | |
Add comments | x | x | x | |
Add private portal comments | x | x | x | |
Add public portal comments | x | x | x | |
Customize workspace settings | x | x**** | x**** | x**** |
Comment on to-dos | x | x | x | x |
Create and complete to-dos | x | x | x | x |
Create work requests (Enterprise+) | x | x | x | x |
Create reports and roadmaps | x | x | x | x |
Be added as a watcher on records | x | x | x | x |
Be assigned to features / activities | x | x | x | x |
View workspace line strategy, releases, ideas, and features | x | x | x | x |
*New workspaces can be added by owners using the + icon located on the upper-right side of the toolbar and can be created anywhere in the workspace hierarchy that the owner has visibility. Customization administrator access is required to edit the workspace hierarchy.
**The ability for reviewers to edit documents is controlled by workspace and per-document settings. Customization admins can configure workspace settings to give all reviewers View or Edit access to all documents. Workspace contributors can give reviewers Edit access individually from a document's Share modal.
***Reviewers can create ideas and edit only their own ideas.
****Contributors, reviewers, and viewers can access only the Users and Custom tables pages in workspace settings. They are not able to see or change any other workspace settings.
Administrator roles
Administrator roles give users the ability to edit various account-level settings. Admins are a secondary user role, which means that you can give any user in your account admin permissions, including users without permissions to see any workspaces or workspace lines in your account.
Administrators can also view and edit every report and roadmap in the account, even those that have been set as View only. This way administrators can audit and organize the views that are saved in their Aha! Roadmaps account.
There are three different administrator access roles:
Account: Account admins can access the account settings such as the account profile.
Billing: Billing admins can access account-level billing and user permissions. Your account must always have at least one billing administrator. You cannot delete or disable your only billing administrator.
Customization: Customization admins can access account-level customizations such as custom fields, custom layouts, and ideas portals.
Permission | Account | Billing | Customization |
Change the account profile | x | ||
Adjust security settings | x | ||
Implement account-level single sign-on (SSO) | x | ||
Manage external sharing | x | ||
Monitor account activity | x | ||
Back up your Aha! Roadmaps account (Enterprise+) | x | ||
Manage users and user permissions | x | ||
Create and manage custom roles (Enterprise+) | x | ||
Add or remove paid seats | x | ||
View invoices | x | ||
Manage your workspace hierarchy | x | ||
Create custom statuses and workflows | x | ||
Manage workflow approval groups | x | ||
Create system broadcasts | x | ||
Create custom scorecards | x | ||
Manage time frames for goals and initiatives | x | ||
Create and manage tags | x | ||
Create and manage custom fields | x | ||
Create and manage custom record layouts | x | ||
Create and manage custom tables (Enterprise+) | x | ||
Create and configure ideas portals | x | ||
Configure capacity planning for teams (Enterprise+) | x | ||
Access the recycle bin | x |
Training resources for administrators
If you recently became an administrator in your Aha! account — or you would like to deepen your expertise — we recommend these next steps.
Aha! Academy certification: Learn best practices from Aha! experts and set your organization up for lasting success. Enroll in the next Aha! Roadmaps certification course.
Demos: If you are new to Aha! Roadmaps, we recommend joining one of our weekly group demos to get oriented.
Live tutorials: Join our live tutorials for in-depth walkthroughs of new functionality. You can sign up to get notified about future sessions too.
Aha! Whiteboards add-on roles
Your Aha! account includes essential Aha! Whiteboards functionality that enables you to define user flows, create mockups, and collaborate on roadmaps — all on a whiteboard. You can choose from nearly 100 templates or work from a blank canvas to ideate, illustrate, and iterate on concepts. With an Aha! Roadmaps Enterprise or Enterprise+ plan, upgrading to Aha! Whiteboards Advanced gives you additional capabilities — such as configurable wireframe components, audience voting, and template design support. Upgrading your account to the Aha! Whiteboards Advanced plan also unlocks the ability to add dedicated Aha! Whiteboards users so the broader team can work together.
Aha! Whiteboards add-on users have reviewer visibility into Aha! Roadmaps records and data in workspaces they have been added to.
You manage Aha! Whiteboards users from your billing settings, just as you do full Aha! Roadmaps users in your account. You can give a user different permission levels in different workspaces in your account. There are three user permission levels for Aha! Whiteboards users.
Permission | Contributor | Reviewer | Viewer |
Set default access levels for whiteboards in a workspace | X | ||
Create and edit custom whiteboard templates | X | ||
Create and manage workspace whiteboards | X | ||
Create, edit, and share personal whiteboards | X | ||
Share workspace whiteboards | X | X | |
Comment on whiteboards | X | X | |
Create and assign to-dos | X | X | X |
Comment on to-dos | X | X | X |
Be assigned to to-dos created by other users | X | X | X |
Aha! Knowledge add-on roles
Your Aha! account includes essential Aha! Knowledge functionality — the internal product wiki and beautiful documents where you capture and share information with the team. You will find these documents on the Knowledge page of every workspace. With an Aha! Roadmaps Enterprise or Enterprise+ plan, upgrading to Aha! Knowledge Advanced gives you additional capabilities — such as the ability to publish product knowledge bases. Upgrading to the Aha! Knowledge Advanced plan also unlocks the ability to add dedicated Aha! Knowledge users to your account.
Aha! Knowledge add-on users have reviewer visibility into Aha! Roadmaps records and data in workspaces they have been added to.
You manage Aha! Knowledge users from your billing settings, just as you do full Aha! Roadmaps users in your account. You can give a user different permission levels in different workspaces in your account. There are three user permission levels for Aha! Knowledge users.
Permission | Contributor | Reviewer | Viewer |
Create and manage workspace documents | X | ||
Create and edit custom document templates | X | ||
Create, edit, and share personal documents | X | ||
Publish drafts to a live knowledge base | X | ||
Add comments to documents | X | X | |
Share workspace documents | X | X | |
Create and assign to-dos | X | X | X |
Be assigned to to-dos created by other users | X | X | X |
Custom roles (Enterprise+)
Enterprise+ accounts can configure custom administrator roles and custom user roles. Custom roles are ideal when you have users that need specific permissions which are not covered by the pre-configured roles, or if you would like to restrict workspace to-dos to a specific subset of your users.
User permissions across the workspace hierarchy
If you have a workspace hierarchy set up in Aha! Roadmaps with at least one workspace line and a child workspace, then the following also applies:
A user who has permission for a workspace automatically gets viewer permission for the workspace lines that this workspace is nested under. This allows the user to see the hierarchy and the strategy for the workspace line. Note: The user cannot see other workspaces (even the workspace names) under the workspace line unless they have explicit permission to do so.
A user with explicit permission at the workspace line level will have that permission for all child workspaces. The only exception is if they are given more permission for a specific workspace. (They cannot be given less permission for a workspace in that line.)
Disabling and deleting users
If you are an administrator with billing permissions, you have access to Settings ⚙️ Account Billing Users, where you can edit the permissions and profiles of your users. Here, you can also choose to Disable or Delete a user.
Disabled users do not count as paid seats, and can be reactivated later. Disabling a user does not remove records they have created.
Deleted users are removed permanently from the list of users. Deleting a user does not remove records they have created.
Default user permissions
Account administrators can set default user permissions for new users. Once set up, default permissions will be preselected for new users as a starting point when you add them to your account. Then you can further define which permissions you want a user to have before sending the new user invite. This saves you time when adding multiple users at once.
To define default permissions for new users, navigate to ⚙️ Settings Account Users and click Set default permissions. Then select the permissions you would like set as a default starting point for new users and click Save. Once saved, the default permissions will be preselected when you add new users.
Users with no permissions
If a user logs into Aha! Roadmaps but does not have access to any workspaces in your account, they will instead see a notifications page with a list of account administrators who will be able to update their user permissions.
Bulk edit user permissions
To bulk edit user permissions, go to Settings ⚙️ Account Users. Select the checkbox next to any name. The Bulk edit button will appear at the top of the user list.
Export user information to CSV file
Account administrators can export a complete list of users in their account to a CSV file for better visibility and monitoring of the Aha! Roadmaps user community. Go to Settings ⚙️ Account Users to find the Export Users button.
Exported values include first name, last name, email, last active, seat in use, whether they have administrator rights, the date the user was added to the account, the email address of the person that added the user, and user roles by workspace line and workspace.
Aha! Roadmaps billing plans
There are three Aha! Roadmaps billing plans: Premium, Enterprise, and Enterprise+.
In the Premium plan, you pay for every user no matter their role.
In the Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans, you pay only for owners and contributors. You may add unlimited reviewers, viewers, and users with no permissions. Usually, users with no permissions are added to administer the account.
Enterprise+ plans also allow for advanced license management. Administrators with billing permissions can segment available paid seats across their account by group, so that one group doesn't use seats that another group has paid for.
In any billing plan, you may add unlimited ideas portal users without charge.
Sign up or upgrade your plan under Settings ⚙️ Account Billing.