Quickstart guide

This walkthrough takes you from a new Plane account to a team working in its first cycle. You’ll set up your workspace, create a project, add and manage work items, and organize work into cycles.

What you'll accomplish:

• Workspace ready for your team
• Team members invited and working
• First project with real work items
• Sprint planning with cycles

Choose the right setup

The steps in this guide cover the essentials for any new Plane workspace. If you are responsible for setting up Plane across an organization, start with the guide that matches where you are today.

How to Plane: For startups
Set up a simple structure that helps your team ship faster and leaves room to grow.

How to Plane: For growing teams
Coordinate teams with shared workflows, approvals, planning, and organization-wide visibility.

How to Plane: For enterprise teams
Establish governance, identity and access controls, auditability, deployment, and rollout across an organization with multiple workspaces.

Before you begin

• Create a Plane account

Set up your workspace

When you sign up for the first time, Plane prompts you to create a new workspace. In this guide, you’ll customize the workspace and invite your team members. Your workspace is the central hub for all your projects and team collaboration.

Customize workspace details

1. Click the workspace name at the top left.
2. Select Settings.
3. Under Administration, open the General tab.
4. To add your company logo, click Upload logo. If the workspace already has a logo, the button reads Edit logo.
5. In the dialog, drag an image into the drop area or click to choose one. The image must be a JPEG, JPG, PNG or WebP file under 5 MB.
6. Click Upload & Save.
7. To rename the workspace, edit Workspace name. The name is required and can't exceed 80 characters.
8. Click Update workspace. The button stays disabled until you change something.

The General tab also shows your Company size, the Workspace URL and the Workspace Timezone. The Workspace URL is read-only. Only people who can edit the workspace see Update workspace.

Invite your team

Get your team members into the workspace so they can start collaborating.

1. In workspace settings, click Members in the left pane.
2. On the People tab, click Add member.
3. In the Invite people to collaborate dialog, type an email address.
4. Select the role you want the person to have.
   • Admin: Full workspace control and settings access.
   • Member (Default): Can create projects, work items, and collaborate fully.
   • Guest: Limited access to specific projects they're invited to.
5. Click Add more to invite several people at once.
6. Click Send invitations.

Plane emails an invitation to each team member, who can then access the workspace. Admins and members use a seat when you invite them. Guests don't. For seat limits, pending invitations and removing members, see Invite members.

Create your project

Now that your workspace is ready, create your first project. A project keeps all related work items in one place, so your team can focus on a specific goal. You’ll set up a project and add work items with basic properties.

1. Look for Projects under the Workspace section in your sidebar.
2. Click Add Project.
3. In the project creation form, enter a Project name. The name is required.
4. Check the Project ID. Plane fills it in from the name, in capital letters. Edit it if you like. The ID identifies the project's work items, so keep it short. It accepts only letters and numbers.
5. Write a brief description of what this project aims to accomplish.
6. Select the project's Network:
   • Public: Anyone in the workspace except Guests can join. This is the default.
   • Private: Accessible only by invite.
7. Select a project Lead.
8. Click Create project.

Plane shows "Project created successfully." and a second screen with switches for the project's features, grouped under Projects and work items and Work management. The footer says your project was created.

9. Leave the defaults and click Open project. To skip this screen, click Close.

You can also change the project's logo and cover image at the top of the form with Change cover. If your workspace uses project templates, you can pick a template there too.

If Plane can't create the project, it tells you why. The name or Project ID may already belong to another project, including an archived one, or the name may contain special characters.

Create your work items

Add tasks so your team can start working immediately.

1. Open the Work items page in your new project.
2. Click Add work item. Plane opens the Create new work item dialog.
3. Enter a title. The title is required. For example, Design new homepage layout.
4. Enter a brief description. For example, Create a fresh layout for the homepage focusing on improved navigation, modern visuals, and clear calls to action.
5. Set the work item's properties:
   • Assignees: yourself
   • Priority: Medium
   • Start date: today
   • Due date: one week from today
6. Click Save.
7. Repeat to add a few more work items.

Plane adds each work item to the List layout. The dialog also has properties for state, labels, estimate, cycle, module and parent. To add several work items in a row, turn on Create more before you save. Click Discard to close the dialog without saving. Team members see their assigned work and can start immediately.

Plan your first Cycle

In this final step, you’ll organize your work into a cycle, a time-bound period like a sprint. Cycles help you track progress, prioritize work, and keep an eye on deadlines.

1. Click Cycles in your project sidebar.
2. Click Add cycle at the top right.
3. In the Create cycle dialog, enter a title. The title is required. For example, Sprint 1.
4. Optionally add a description.
5. Select a Date range of two weeks, starting today.
6. Click Create cycle.

Plane shows "Cycle created successfully." with View and Copy link actions.

7. Click the cycle's name to open it.
8. Click Add existing work item.
9. Select the work items you created earlier.
10. Click Add selected work items.
11. Return to the main Cycles page to see your active cycle.

A cycle is active when its date range includes today. When you save dates, Plane checks them against your other cycles. If they clash, Plane says "You already have a cycle on the given dates, if you want to create a draft cycle, remove the dates." A cycle without dates is a draft.

TIP

Keep cycles to one or two weeks, with goals your team can finish.

You’ve set up a complete workspace. Your team is ready to start working together.

What's next?

• Follow the tutorials to go deeper on each step.