Configure your Figma Education organization
Now that you can log into figma.com with your Admin email and see your Organization alongside the respective administrator features. Select the Admin settings tab, from here, you can see tabs for Dashboard, Workspaces, a list of all Teams created, all Members of the Organization, Activity, Resources and Settings.
Recommended account settings
We recommend that you review some of the default settings configured on your district’s Organization account. Below we will discuss common changes:
- Team management: Choose who can create teams in your organization. While many districts allow all users to create their own teams, some districts choose to limit that permission to administrators only.
- External Access
- Guest Management: By default, external users can join your organization by invitation. We recommend disabling guest access by selecting the option that No external users can join your organization
- Access to external content: By default, users have access to content outside your organization. We recommend disabling access to content outside your organization
- Public Sharing: By default, public link sharing is disabled. You can choose to enable this by toggling on the option to Allow links to be shared with anyone.
- Open sessions: By default open sessions are enabled. You can disable by toggling off the option to allow anyone to edit and interact with a FigJam file for 24 hours
- Other
- Cursor Chat: By default cursor chat is enabled. If you choose to disable this feather you can toggle off the option to enable cursor chat for all files in your organization
Organization structures
There are a variety of options for organization structure based on your administrative needs. By default, the organization members and teams across sites are all administered by the Org admin(s). If the Org admin wants to delegate administrative controls to learning sites, they can create workspaces. Within the workspace structure the designated workspace admins will have administrative control over the teams and users within their group.
Here is a sample of an organization employing a hybrid structure, where one school site utilizes workspaces and the rest adhere to the default team ownership structure:
Workspaces
Workspaces are an optional feature of Figma’s enterprise plan. Workspaces allow administrators to divide users into designated groups, and delegate administration of those groups to other users. Within the workspace structure, the designated workspace admins will have administrative control over the teams and users within their group.
From the Workspaces tab, admins can create new workspaces and review the teams and individual members that belong to a specific workspace. On the More options menu, admins can edit ownership of a workspace.
By toggling Display workplace selector to on the Workspaces tab, admins can force users to self-select a workspace when they first sign in to Figma by toggling the workspace selector. If unchecked, admins need to manually assign teams and members to workspaces
For large districts with several school sites, administrators typically create a workspace, with a site-level administrator at each. Students and staff then self select into their proper workspace upon accessing for the first time.
Learn more in our Guide to workspaces →
Teams
Set up teams
You can think of a Team as a classroom, it is a place to organize collaborative Figma and FigJam projects and files used by both students and teachers. Admins can take two different approaches to setting up Teams with their Org:
Option 1: Team creation by admins
If an Admin wants to have more control over the Teams that are created, they can choose to create all of the Teams and then re-assign ownership to teachers once they have joined. The benefits of this approach are that Admins can apply more consistency (eg. naming structure) as well as more easily monitor new Team creation.
- Click on your Org account name (ie. Milpitas Unified School District) in the left side panel. This will bring up an overview of the Org account.
- Click the “Create a new Team” button in the top right corner.
- Add an existing class section name and select Closed for “Access within the organization”. Click “Create Team”.
- Once the Team is created, click on the Team on the left side panel.
- Add the Teacher who you want to be the owner of the Team by clicking “+Invite members”. Add Teacher via email. Set to “admin” access.
- Once the Teacher has joined the Team, you can transfer ownership of the Team to them. Open the Team and select the Members tab.
- Click the arrow next to their Team permissions and select Owner from the options.
- Figma will ask you to confirm the transfer
- Repeat for any Teams you created but want to transfer to Teachers.
Option 2: Team creation by teachers
Alternatively, if Admins don’t want to be involved in the Team creation process, they can have Teachers set up their own teams. Teachers should set up a closed Figma Team (or one for each of their classes depending on how they want to configure their set up).
- Click on your Org account name (ie. Milpitas Unified School District) in the left side panel. This will bring up an overview of the Org account.
- Click the “Create a new Team” button in the top right corner.
Add your existing class section name and select Closed for “Access within the organization”. - Click “Create Team”.
- Once the Team is created, click on the Team on the left side panel.
- Add students to the Team by clicking “+Invite members”. Add students via email. Set to “can edit” access.
Notes on teams
- It is not recommended that students create their own teams. However, admins can track which teams are being created in the organization, and by whom.
- If a Teacher wants to have group projects where students work together, they should use “Projects” within the Teams and have students join those. No need to make a Team for every project.
- It is possible for students to create “secret teams” whose contents are not accessible by teachers or admins. At this time, admins will not be able to remove these teams, but will be able to see who creates them within the org and discourage them / warn users. Students should instead take advantage of drafts for their personal work, and the teams created their classes for collaborating with their peers and teachers.
Teams are how Figma allows teachers or administrators to build groups or “classes” of students. Teams allow for more streamlined access to shared files and collaborative activities.
From the Teams tab, admins can create new teams, review owners, project and member counts, as well as reassign org access or workspace membership. On the more options menu, administrators can view specific details or reassign ownership of the team
We recommend each teacher set up a closed team for each of their classes and invite their student to the team via email.
Learn how to manage teams in an organization →
Members
The Members tab shows all members of your organization, their last activity date, roles and any workspace assignments they have.
From the members tab, admins can select individual members to upgrade or change their roll. On the more options menu, administrators can get more insights into the activity of a particular member.
Learn more about viewing members and guests →
Get familiar with your organization
Learn how to get started with a Figma organization →
Learn how to manage your Figma organization →
Learn how to manage roles in an organization →
Everything you need to know about Figma organizations →