Teams and the Team plan

A team lets several people own timelines and collections together, instead of everything sitting under one person's account. This article covers how membership and roles work, who pays for a team, and how an owner hands it to someone else.

Creating a team

Creating a team needs the Team plan, or a site admin can create one for you. From Teams, New team asks for a name and, optionally, a handle. Each Team-plan subscriber can own up to three teams; see Plans and billing for what the plan includes.

Roles

A team has four roles, from least to most access: Member, Contributor, Admin and Owner. A Member can only view. A Contributor can create timelines for the team and edit every one that isn't private, plus private ones they're invited to; they can't change the team's collections. An Admin can also manage members, invites and the team's settings. The Owner does everything an Admin does, plus managing billing, deleting the team, and handing ownership to someone else.

You invite someone from the team's Members tab, by email and with a role; only someone with Admin's permissions can invite another Admin. Roles below Owner can be changed later from the same tab.

Members and the Team price

Only the Owner, Admins and Contributors can write in a team; a Member can only view. Every role is included in the Team price: the plan costs the same however many people your teams have, up to the member limit shown on pricing, and making a member a contributor or an admin costs nothing extra. Each team the plan funds gets its own storage, which does not grow or shrink with its membership.

Who pays

Most teams run on their owner's plan: while the owner is on the Team plan, every team they own is covered by that one subscription, and there is nothing to pay for on the team's own Billing tab. A team can instead be set up to pay for itself, with its own subscription on that tab — which of the two applies is decided when the team is created and cannot be changed afterwards. If the owner's Team plan lapses, the teams they fund pause: nothing is deleted, but nothing new can be added until the owner is on the Team plan again.

Team-visible timelines and collections

A timeline owned by a team can be set to Team visibility: every member of the team can view it, and the team's contributors, admins and owner can edit it, as can collaborators you invite as editors. A team can also hold Collections, at Team visibility (every member can view), Public (anyone can view it) or Private (only the owner and admins can see it). Only the owner and admins can create a team collection or change what it holds. See Sharing and visibility for how visibility works on a timeline in general.

Members find those timelines under the Team timelines tab of Timelines and the team's collections under Team collections on the Collections page, as well as on the team's own Timelines and Collections tabs. If the owner of a team-visible or public team timeline sets Who can comment to Collaborators and team members, every member can also join its discussion — see Comments.

Handing over ownership

Only the owner can do this, from the Members tab: Make owner… on a member's row opens a dialog to confirm and send the offer. The member has seven days to accept; until then you can revoke it from the same tab. Accepting makes them the owner and you an admin — you keep viewing and editing the team's timelines, but lose the ability to manage its billing, delete it or its timelines, or offer it to someone else. If the team is owner-funded, it would be paid for by the new owner's own Team plan, so they need the Team plan to accept.

Leaving or deleting a team

Any member other than the owner can leave from the team's Settings tab. An owner has to hand over ownership first. Deleting a team needs the Settings tab too, and only works once the team owns no timelines; it removes the team, its members, its pending invitations and any collections it holds, and cannot be undone.