Updates to how drafts work

Yes, you can collaborate for free in a project in a Starter team.

Starter teams have one project with up to three design files and three FigJam files in them. You can share these files with edit access to unlimited collaborators.

To migrate drafts to a Starter team:

1. Create a new Starter team.
2. From Drafts to move, select relevant files and move them to your Starter team Drafts. This will temporarily give view-only access to anyone you’ve shared the files with.
3. In your new Starter team, move your files from Drafts into the available project. If you have more than three design files or FigJam files, you may need to condense them down.
4. You can now re-grant edit access to anyone you’ve shared the file with.

You can keep working in draft files. The main difference is Drafts are now associated with a team, rather than a user. Now, each team you’ve joined has its own Drafts section.

For your personal work, we recommend creating a free Starter team and continuing to work in your drafts in the Drafts section of that team.

From Drafts to move, you can click Move all to send all your existing files into Drafts on your new Starter team—even if there are hundreds of files.

One important note: if you typically collaborate with other people in your drafts, you’ll need to move them from Drafts into a project on your Starter team. Each Starter team can have one project, with up to three design files and three FigJam files. You can share these files with edit access to unlimited collaborators. For larger scale collaboration, please see our guide to collaborating with clients in Figma.

There are two main changes to be aware of:

• All the paid features of your Professional team are now available in draft files, like Dev Mode, password protection, and advanced prototyping.
• If you typically share your draft files with others, both you and the recipient need a paid seat to edit the file. For free, small-scale collaboration, you can always create a Starter team to work together.

No. Your draft files will remain private to you and whoever you share them with. After you move your files, you’ll be able to find them in the Drafts space of the team you move them into.

Your draft files will only become visible to other people on your team if you decide to move them out of your Drafts and into a project.

Yes. However, after you move the file, people you’ve shared the file with might not be able to edit the file any more. For example:

• If you move the file into Drafts in a Starter team, you’ll need to move the file to a project to give other people can edit access.
• If you move the file into Drafts in a Professional team, anyone invited to the file with can edit access will now have can view access. You can restore their edit access at any time. Note that anyone you give can edit access to will be automatically upgraded to a paid seat on your team if they don’t already have one. 

Before this update, members on the Organization or Enterprise plan couldn’t move drafts created in External teams into the organization. To protect the security and privacy of your organization, we’ve kept this behavior the same.

It’s not possible to hide Drafts to move, but you can quickly move all your drafts into a team in one click, or permanently delete them. Once all drafts have been moved or deleted, Drafts to move will disappear from your sidebar.

If the draft file is in the Deleted Draft tab, it means you deleted the draft file at some point. It’s not possible to open these files in Drafts to move. You can move the file into your Drafts in a team to review the file and decide whether to keep it or delete it again.

If a Starter team has the Locked label, it means the team has exceeded the limits of the plan. To understand why, navigate to the team with the label and click the banner at the top of the page. You’ll see advice for how to unlock the team.

Moving forward, collaborating in drafts requires a paid seat. To prevent unexpected upgrades when a draft is moved into your team, we’ll change the access from can edit to can view for collaborators invited to the file.

These collaborators need to re-request edit access to the file to keep working on it. If they don’t have a paid seat on your plan, they’ll need to upgrade to keep editing.

Over time, if more co-editing happens in existing drafts—or if people share new drafts—you could expect to see more upgrade requests or an increase in paid seats in your team. If you want more control over seat upgrades in your account, consider assigning people the viewer-restricted seat type to make sure they need admin approval to get a paid seat. You can also make viewer-restricted the default seat type for new users.

To investigate recent upgrades in your account:

1. From the file browser, click Admin.
2. Select the Members tab.
3. Hover over someone’s Design seat or FigJam seat to see a tooltip explaining how this person upgraded. People who upgrade by collaborating on a draft have the upgrade reason: {Person} shared {a file} from their drafts folder to {other person}.

Previously, everyone in your organization could navigate to their Starter or Professional teams by visiting External teams. With this update, External teams has been removed and each team outside your organization now has its own dedicated space, with a Drafts space in each team, to make it easier for people to find their files and make sure they are in the right place.

In Drafts to move, draft owners are being asked to organize their external drafts into any Starter and Professional teams they use outside the organization.

Some key things to consider:

• This change does not have any access or billing implications for your account.
• People won’t be able to move these external drafts into your organization. This matches the previous behavior, where people couldn’t move drafts into your organization from External teams.
• All of your settings and controls around external content remain unchanged.