HacknPlan is a collaborative tool, especially useful for teams, so you can add other users to your project. Go to Administration → Users & permissions on the left menu:

You can invite a new user to your project by clicking on the Add users button on the header of the Users panel. Depending if you are working on a Personal project, or it is part of a Studio Workspace, this will work differently:

• Personal projects: A popup will appear to enter the email address of the user you want to add to your project. In addition, it is possible to enter a list of contacts instead of just an e-mail address. There are two options:
  • Send an invitation email if the user does not exist: When the email you insert does not belong to an existing HacknPlan user, an email is sent inviting the user to register. When the user does so, they are automatically added to the project.
  • The new user is the administrator of the project: The user is automatically provided with administrative rights, which allows them to add other users, create milestones, update the game design model and many other actions.
• Studio projects: When the project is part of a Studio Workspace, this behaves differently: a popup is launched for you to select a user to add among the Workspace members that are not part of the project yet. When you are on a Studio subscription, only users belonging to the Workspace can be part of the project. Adding users to a Workspace is covered here.

Additionally, if the project is in a Studio Workspace, you can add a complete team to the project with the button Add team. Teams are defined at workspace level by the administrator.

Setting permissions

Once you have added users to a project, you may want to adjust their permissions as the default setting is read-only. With HacknPlan, you can easily manage permissions using a straightforward system based on task categories. This enables you to control which tasks each user can view or modify, and decide who can access the game design model and create user stories. To edit permissions, simply click on the pencil icon next to the user’s name on the list or double-click on the user. This will open the permissions dialog.

You can set a different access level for each one of the task categories in your project, which goes from no access at all to full edition permissions:

• No access: The user won’t be able to see any information (including tasks and metrics) about the category.
• Read: The user can access to the category data (board, tasks, metrics…) but can’t create, modify or delete any of it.
• Update: The user can perform a very limited set of actions, oriented to update the tasks they have been assigned to. However, they cannot create or delete anything, nor modify most information related to the tasks, such as the category, milestone, description, or assigned users. This level is very useful for users with very limited power within your team, like contractors or temporary employees. The available actions for this level include:
  • Move assigned tasks among status columns and sort them using drag and drop.
  • Update the current cost (to report progress).
  • Complete or re-open sub-tasks.
  • Add attachments and set them as cover.
  • Add comments.
• Write: The user can create, edit and delete tasks from the category.

You can also give project administration rights to a user, which not only gives full permissions for all categories, but also allows them to manage project master data like categories, subcategories, and element types.

You have the option to adjust the access to the Game Design Model, an essential part of HacknPlan. This allows you to control who has the ability to view the thorough documentation outlining all game mechanics and features, as well as the ability to create new elements and modify existing ones. The available levels of access include:

• No access: The user can’t access the Game Design Model section.However, it is important to note that this setting does not completely restrict the user from viewing the design elements associated with a work item. If the user has the appropriate reading or writing permissions for the category, they may still be able to view the entire GDM structure. It’s worth noting that certain details such as descriptions, attachments, and metrics remain inaccessible.
• Read: The user has access to the GDM section and can read all the information, but can’t create or update elements.
• Write: The user can add new elements, edit and delete the existing ones.

Role-based permissions (Studio only)

HacknPlan Studio project administrators can define roles, which are predefined sets of permissions that can be directly assigned to a user, simplifying the setup of new team members. The roles can be created and maintained from the Administration → Roles section.

Transfer ownership of the project (Personal only)

The current owner of the project can transfer the ownership of the project from the Users & permissions dialog. Read more.