How roles are assigned or updated

Who can use this feature

Supported on the Organization and Enterprise plans

Figma has two products or file types: Figma design and FigJam. Everyone in an organization has a role on both products.

A person's role determines their billing status; if they’re included in your billing. It also controls what activities they can do in design or FigJam files.

There are three roles: viewer, viewer-restricted, and editor. There are a few ways a person’s role can be set or updated in an organization.

Initial roles

Permissions at migration

When you upgrade to the Organization or Enterprise plan, Figma assigns roles to people based on their existing permissions.

• Anyone with can edit permissions on a team or file gets an editor role
• Anyone with can view permissions on a team or file gets a viewer role.

Add to organization

When you add people to your organization via domain capture or manual invitation, Figma gives them an introductory viewer role. Organization or workspace admins can change their role after they join.

Enterprise only features

On the Enterprise plan, there are a few extra ways to assign design and FigJam roles:

• Set default roles for new members and guests. This allows you to control what level of access people get on each product, when they first join.
• If you use SAML SSO, you can provision and assign a member's role using SCIM. This allows you to assign roles to members before they join the organization.

Admin upgrades

Admins can manage Figma design and FigJam roles for members and guests.

• Organization plan: only organization admins can make changes to people’s roles. Team admins can only manage team-level permissions.
• Enterprise plan: organization admins can manage roles for anyone in the organization. Workspace admins can make changes to roles for people in their workspaces.

User-initiated upgrades

Members and guests can start the upgrade process by taking an upgrade action.

Anyone with a viewer role can upgrade themselves to a paid editor role by performing one these upgrade actions.

People with a viewer-restricted role are prompted to request an upgrade when they attempt an upgrade action. Only organization or workspace admins can approve an upgrade request.

• Share a file from drafts
• Create a file within a team
• Open a link to an organization file and take an edit action
• Request to join a team as an editor (only if a team admin accepts your request)
• Join a team without any existing editors

Share files from drafts

Viewers can upgrade to paid editor roles by sharing a file from their organization drafts with someone else in the organization. This applies to an invitation from the file's share modal, or by sharing an edit link to a file.

Create new files

Viewers are upgraded to a paid editor role if they create a file in an organization team. This doesn’t apply to files they create in their drafts, unless they share that file with people in the organization.

• New FigJam file: upgrades to a paid editor role on FigJam.
• New design file: upgrades to a paid editor role on Figma design.

Edit Figma design or FigJam files

Every file and prototype in Figma has a unique URL. In an organization, people can copy this link to quickly share designs and prototypes with other people in the organization.

People can interact with organization files based on a few factors. The person's role, team permissions, and the file's link sharing permissions all play a part.

When a file’s link sharing settings are set to can edit, people will see either an Edit file or Ask to edit button on their first open. 

A person’s role and the file’s link sharing settings influence which button they see and what happens when they interact with it. For viewers, this will update their role or access. For those with a viewer-restricted role, this will send a request.

Join teams

Viewers can request to join closed teams in the organization. As part of that process, they can request either can view or can edit access.

If a team admin accepts their request to join with edit permissions, Figma will upgrade them to a paid editor role in the organization.

If a viewer joins an existing team in the organization, which doesn't have any editors or admins in it, they can get edit access by claiming ownership of that team.