With Coda's workspace offboarding feature, admins can easily remove members from their workspace and reassign ownership of their docs.
Let's say you want to permanently remove a member from your Coda workspace. This article will walk you through the processes to remove this member, revoke access to workspace docs, and transfer ownership of this member’s docs to active workspace members.
⚠️ If you’re an Enterprise customer looking to deactivate a member from your organization or revoke access to Coda, and transfer their docs to new owners, check out this article.
A few things to note:
First, you’ll need to be a workspace admin to complete this process.
Second, you should only offboard makers that are permanently leaving the workspace. If you intend to retain the maker in your workspace, please have them follow the steps here instead.
Lastly, if you’re an Enterprise customer, you can follow the steps in the current article to permanently remove users that do not belong to your owned domain. To deactivate a user from your organization, and to transfer docs owned by deactivated users, follow the steps in this article instead.
Within this article, you’ll find...
Remove member from workspace
To initiate the offboarding process, you’ll start by removing the member from your workspace. Follow the steps below.
Step 1: Remove member
From your workspace home, click on your name in the lower-left corner, then select Admin settings from the list. Then, navigate to the Members and roles tab. Select one or more users you want to permanently remove from the workspace. Once selected, click on the Change roles drop-down, and select Remove.
If you’re permanently removing just one user, you can also click on the role associated with their name, then select Remove from the drop-down.
If this member owns any docs, you'll see a pop-up notifying you that these docs will become read-only and asking you to confirm. But don’t worry - as long as you go through the following steps to reassign doc ownership, these docs won’t remain read-only.
ℹ️ Note that if you are on an Enterprise plan and are trying to remove an org member from the default workspace, you will not be able to do so unless the member has been allocated to another workspace. If you wish to remove them from all workspaces, we recommend deactivating them instead.
Manage doc access
Now that you’ve removed the member from your workspace, you need to complete some important parts of the offboarding process. You’ll start by pulling up the list of removed members.
Step 2: Manage access
In the Members tab, select Removed from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. You should now see the removed member’s name under this section of the members list.
Click on Manage access to the right of their name to open the Manage access window. Here, you’ll see how many docs this member has access to and how many docs they own. You can choose either:
Offboard member, if the member has left the workspace for good and isn’t planning on re-joining (note that this process is not reversible)
Reinvite to the workspace to undo the removal
or just close out to leave their access as-is if their removal is only temporary to make collaborating with them in the future easier
To continue with offboarding, select Offboard member, then select Continue.
Step 3: Revoke access
Next, you’ll see a dialog explaining how many docs in the workspace are currently shared directly with this member. Select Accept to proceed.
Note: This action is not reversible. Access will be revoked immediately once you’ve clicked the Accept button.
Next you’ll see a window prompting you to transfer doc ownership. Follow the steps below to complete.
Transfer doc ownership
So you’ve now removed the member from your workspace, and you’ve permanently revoked all their access to any docs in the workspace. But there’s one important step left: transferring doc ownership. Doing so ensures that your workspace doesn’t lose access to your data, and that collaborative docs continue to operate smoothly.
Step 4: Transfer doc ownership
After you revoke access (in the previous step), you should see a dialog pop up. In the Transfer To field, type an email to choose which active member of the workspace should own these docs moving forward. You’ll only be able to select from current Doc Makers in this drop-down. Both the original and the new owner will receive notifications about this once the transfer is complete.
Note: You may also see a number of Non-transferrable docs owned by this removed user. These are private docs that are not shared with anyone. For privacy reasons, these docs will be deleted instead of transferred. If you want to transfer instead of delete these private docs please reach out to Coda Support.
Check the box to confirm, then select Transfer.
That’s it! You should be all set. But if you run into any issues, you can always contact our Support team for help.
FAQs
Who can offboard workspace members and reassign their docs?
Only workspace admins have this ability.
What happens if I don’t transfer doc ownership from the removed member?
Any docs that person owned in your workspace will become read-only and will not be editable. A doc needs to be owned by an active Doc Maker in order to remain editable and fully functioning.
Please note that Enterprise customers have additional features available when it comes to deactivating org members, including a 7-day grace period before a doc becomes read-only. Learn more here.
Can I transfer ownership of a member's docs without offboarding them?
No, you will need to first complete the offboarding process and remove the member from the workspace in order to transfer their docs. If the member is still active in the workspace, they can change ownership of their own docs by following the steps in this article.
I’m an Enterprise customer. When should I offboard a member versus deactivate them?
Org admins should use deactivation when they want to deactivate a member of their organization across all their Coda workspaces, such as when an employee leaves your organization. Offboarding is intended for permanently removing members from specific workspaces, such as when you need to permanently remove a contractor from one of your workspaces. You can read more about the differences here.
Note that org deactivation is only available for Enterprise customers. So if you’re on the Free, Pro, or Team tier of Coda, you’ll always use offboarding.