Note: The following information only applies to plans at a service. We also have help articles dedicated to portfolio planning.

​In this guide, learn about:

Anyone with access to a plan can see who else it is shared with by clicking the 'Share' button and viewing the list of people with access.

Plans can be shared by either the plan's author or an Admin who has had the plan shared with them. If you are neither and you need to share a plan, you'll need to ask an Admin or the plan owner to share the plan on your behalf.

Creating a plan that needs to be shared with your team from the start?

You can make a plan shared from the beginning by selecting create a new plan and keeping the plan type selected to team plan.

Selecting plans to shared right from the start avoids people from not being able to access your plan when they need to without having to ask you to change the plan settings.

When you begin a new plan, you can choose to share it with your team, or keep it private to only you.

You might keep a plan private if you're using it for a reflective journal, or if you're just not ready to share it with others yet.

Once you're ready to share a plan that was initially created as private, click the Share button at the top right of the opened plan. This will show a list of all people with access.

Initially, it will only show you, as the plan owner. Click the 'Select who to share with' button and a window will open with the following options:

The default option is to share with all educators in the service. Once you click 'Share plan' it will notify all educators a plan has been shared with them and they will now see the plan on the centre's planning page. (Clicking 'Cancel' instead will keep the plan private to you.)

'All educators' means any current educators as well as educators who join the centre in the future. If an educator leaves your service they will automatically be removed.

You should always use this option for team planning so that everyone who needs access has access, even as educators join and leave the service, or take leave. It means that at least one service Admin will always have access, even if the admin role gets transferred to someone else.

We recommend using this setting for service and room plans so that even if an educator doesn't work day-to-day in a room, they can still access a plan if they ever need to, they just won't receive notifications about plan updates.

Who gets notified of service and room plans when shared with all educators?

Deselecting the 'All educators' option will show a list of individual educators at your service.

You can select any number of educators to share a plan with but we recommend always considering the 'All educators' option first. Share with individual educators only when there is private or sensitive information that needs to stay between individuals, for example, a plan shared only with Managers.

If the plan relates to children, you can choose to share it only with your team, or to also share it with the parents of the children in the plan. 'Parents' means family members with admin rights.

Parents' access only enables them to view and comment on plans that are shared with them, whereas educators' access enables them to view, edit and comment.

Adding children to a plan doesn't automatically share it with the children's parents, you must first select that setting.

Click on an empty grey cell and select 'Children' to open a new child cell. Select one or more children. You can select them from the main centre area or from each room that is listed in the dropdown at the top of the cell.

Once you've finished, click 'Done'. The plan will now also appear on a child's planning page.

At this stage, the plan is still private to the original recipients. To share it with all parents of the children you've added click the 'Share' button then at the bottom of the dropdown click 'Select who to share with'. In the window that opens, under 'Share with parents' click 'Parents of children in this plan'. Make sure you have also shared the plan with 'All educators'

Click 'Share plan'.

Once you've selected the recipients and clicked 'Share plan', anyone you selected will receive an email with a link to the plan so they can start contributing to it. Keep in mind though that people can turn off their email notifications in their notification settings, so there's always a chance that some people may not be aware a plan has been shared with them.

Educators receive a notification letting them know that a plan has been shared with them. Clicking the notification will open the plan in their web browser. They can access the plan at any time by going to the service or room planning area where the plan was started. The Educator's iOS app also includes view-only versions of these plans.

Parents receive a notification letting them know that a plan about their child has been shared with them. If they have the Families app on their mobile device, clicking the notification will open the plan in their Families app where they can access a view-only version of the plan. The ability for parents to comment is currently only available when accessing plans in a browser.

The first time a plan is shared with a child's parent they will see it under a new Planning tab on their child's profile page in both the Families app, and from in a browser. They can access the plan here at any time.

Parents can see who else can access the plan by clicking on 'Who can view this' in the top right of the plan. Individual contributors won't be listed but it will let them know how many educators and parents have access.

Service-wide planning
If you wish to share a plan with all parents of children in your service, start your plan from your main service planning area (rather than a room) and add all children to one or more cells. This would be useful for programmes and daily diaries etc.

Room planning
For room-specific planning, eg. room programmes, projects or events, start a plan from a room, select all children (you can only select children from that room) to add to one or more cells and then share with those children's parents.

Group planning
When planning for groups of children, you could add a few children in a cell, or one child per cell and then share with those children's parents.

Individual planning
When you are planning for an individual child, eg. summative assessments or a transition report, you can start your plan from either the main planning area or the room that child is in (depending on where you want that plan to live), add only that child to a cell and share with that child's parents.

Once you share a plan with your team, all other educators will be able to edit and comment on the plan. But only the plan owner and service admins will be able to change the share settings.

All plans have a 'Plan owner'. This is the person who started the plan, but ownership can be transferred to any other educator by the current plan owner or any service admin.

If a plan is shared with 'All educators' and then this access is removed by selecting this option, the plan owner will continue to have access.

If you're going on leave or moving services it's a good idea to transfer ownership of service plans before you go, to ensure that people can still access them.

As a centre manager, you could also set up plans for each room and transfer ownership to the room leader.

To transfer ownership of a plan, in the 'Share' dropdown, Admins and plan owners can click on 'Editor' next to the current plan owner's name and select 'Change owner'.

Next, select the new plan owner and then select the arrow in the top left to go back to the Share dropdown. The selected person will now be listed as the new plan owner, and the original plan owner is now just a contributor (who can be left on the plan or removed if needed).

Admins and plan owners can remove people from plans, including themselves.

In the 'Share' dropdown click on 'Editor' next to the person they want to remove and select Unshare.

The selected person will now be removed from the plan.

Planning cells can contain linked stories, notes and other plans. Learn more here.

When you share a plan with educators and/or parents, each linked story or child note is accessible to all educators but only accessible to the parents of the children that are included in them. Linked plans are accessible to anyone that the linked plan was originally shared with. If you don't have access to a linked story, note or plan you'll just see a greyed-out link that you can't click to open. For privacy reasons, the linked item will not include a title or description.

If for example, you start a plan which you share with all parents at your service, and in one of the cells you link to a story (or child note) about an individual or a small group of children, only the parents of the children tagged in the story or note will be able to access those links. All other parents will simply see a greyed-out link that they cannot open.

This image shows what an educator would see:

This image shows what a parent would see if the first story was about another child and the second story was about their child (only blue links can be opened):

If for example, you start a plan which you share with educators at your service, and in one of the cells you link to a plan which is private only to you, only you will be able to access that linked plan. Or, if you link to a portfolio story that is private to you, only you will be able to access the linked story. All others would simply see a greyed-out link that they cannot open.

Please think carefully about the content you include in a plan if you're sharing it with parents of more than one child. Think about what each child's parents would be happy for the other parents to view.