First steps for admins
Get your Smaply Account set up so your team can start mapping in a workspace that looks and works the way you need.
Branding, team access, integrations, customization, and AI controls are all set in one place. Walk through them once and your team can start mapping in a workspace that already looks and works the way you want.
If you're a Workspace Admin and only need to manage one workspace's settings, open Settings in the workspace sidebar instead.
Prerequisites
You're an Account Admin and signed in to Smaply. If you've been invited to a Smaply Account but you're not sure which role you have, see Access levels and permissions.
In this guide
Where Account Settings lives and who can open it
Account Settings is the admin-only configuration area for the whole Smaply Account. While you're at the account level, before entering a workspace, open it from the Account settings button at the bottom of the left sidebar, next to Manage users.
The account-name dropdown at the top of the left sidebar is the account switcher. Use it to move between accounts you belong to or add another account. It doesn't hold settings.
Inside Account Settings, seven tabs cover everything an admin sets up:
Account - Branding and subscription
Users - Invitations and seat allocation
Integrations - Metrics and planning tool connections
Workspaces - Workspace list and per-workspace user management
Customization - Custom Cards and Icon templates
Tags - Tag categories and tags
AI Features - Account-wide AI controls
Account Admins have access to everything here. Workspace Admins are limited to a single workspace's Workspace Settings and don't see Account Settings at all. See Access levels and permissions for the full role and access model.
Set up your Account name, logo, icon, and brand colors
Branding is on the Account tab. It shows up on anything your team exports or shares, so set it before you invite people in.
Account name - Editable text field, shown alongside the account avatar throughout Smaply.
Logo - Wider format. Appears on PDF exports and shared journey maps.
Icon - Square format. Used as the account avatar in navigation.
Brand colors - Up to 14 custom colors that flow into color palettes across the platform.
For the full setup walkthrough, see How to set up custom branding.
Invite your team at the level that matches their access
Smaply has three access levels. Pick the level that matches how broadly the person needs to work. Access at a broader level cascades down, so an account-level invitee has access to every workspace and journey map automatically.
Account level - Use when someone needs access to everything in the Account. Invite from Account Settings > Users.
Workspace level - Use when someone only works inside one workspace. Invite from that workspace's Settings > Manage users.
Journey-map level - Use when someone only needs access to one specific map. Invite from the map's Share menu in the top-right of the editor.
Each invitation also assigns a role. A few things to know about roles and seats:
Roles are Admin, Editor, or Viewer.
Seats follow the user, not the access level. One person counts as one seat regardless of how many levels they have access to.
Viewer seats are tracked separately from Admin and Editor seats.
For the full invite mechanics at any level, see How to invite users. For the role and level model in depth, see Access levels and permissions. To see what's available against your plan, see How to check seat usage.
Plan availability
Viewer seats follow your plan. Free and Repository include no viewer seats. Framework includes 5. Governance is unlimited.
Connect Smaply to your metrics and planning tools
Integrations are configured once at the account level. Open the Integrations tab to see the two categories:
Metrics integrations - Google Analytics, Excel 365, Power BI, Google Sheets, Qualtrics. These pull quantitative data into metric cards on journey maps.
Planning integrations - Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear, Trello, Monday.com. These link work items to the journey steps they affect.
Connecting an integration is the admin's job. After it's connected, anyone on the workspace can drop the data onto a journey map.
For the connection flow on any integration, see Set up your first integration. For cross-tool questions like refresh frequency, switching auth, and what happens on disconnect, see How to manage integrations. For per-tool setup, see the article for your tool under Metrics tools or Planning tools.
Plan availability
Service account authentication for Google Analytics, Power BI, and Google Sheets is available on Governance. On other plans, those three tools connect with Login with your account (OAuth), which ties the connection to a single user.
Set up tags and templates for the team
Two customization items are worth setting up early because they shape how the team organizes content and starts new work.
Tags - Account-level metadata, shared across every workspace. Set up tag categories (each with an icon, color, and name) and the tags inside them. Configured on the Tags tab. See How to create and edit tags.
Templates - Pre-built journey map structures the team can reuse when creating new maps. Smaply provides starter templates. Your team can also save any journey map as a template. See How to create and use templates.
Decide which AI features your team can use
The AI Features tab sets the AI posture for the whole Account. Each AI feature has its own toggle, and a Disable all link turns every one off at once.
When an AI feature is disabled at the account level, it's hidden from the UI for everyone in the Account rather than greyed out. Content already generated by an AI feature stays in place either way.
For the current list of AI features and what each one does, see How to configure AI features.
Plan availability
The AI features available depend on your plan. Journey map create works on every plan, with the Free plan capped at 3 generated maps per month and paid plans raising the cap. See How to configure AI features for per-feature availability.
Keep an eye on seat usage and your plan
Seat usage lives on the Users tab. A Seats used summary at the top shows totals (e.g., "9 of 1000") with a breakdown by Account, Workspace only, Map only, and Pending. A View seat allocation button opens a detailed view that lists users per level, plus a separate Viewer license management section where viewer seats are tracked apart from Admin and Editor seats.
When the team is approaching the plan's seat allowance or wants a feature that's gated, the per-plan feature matrix shows what each tier unlocks.
For the seat views in depth, see How to check seat usage. For the plan feature comparison, see What's included in each plan.
What's next
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