Using Org Chart Drafts and the Archive

Org Chart Drafts let you build and refine a version of your org chart privately, share it with the people who need to weigh in, and publish it to your whole organization only when it's ready. The Archive keeps a read-only, restorable history of every chart that was previously live, plus any draft you archived yourself.

Drafts and the Archive come with the Scale and Flourish memberships, and are not included in Core. See Is this included in my membership? below.

Before you start

Where it lives: click Org Chart in the left navigation. If your organization renamed this term (for example to Accountability Chart), the tab names and messages below use your organization's word instead.
Nothing you do in a draft touches your live chart until you press Publish.
Drafts and the Archive are a membership feature — see Is this included in my membership? at the end of this article.

Who can create and work on drafts

Two separate permissions decide what you can do here: your permission on the live org chart, and the permission you hold on an individual draft. They are not the same thing, and you can have one without the other.

1. Your permission on the live org chart

Everyone in your organization holds one of three levels on the org chart itself — View, Edit or Admin. These are managed separately from your other Bloom permissions; see the Managing Org Chart Permissions article if yours needs changing.

Only an Admin on the live org chart can create a draft. If you're not an admin, the + button beside the My drafts title simply isn't shown — there's nothing greyed out to hover.
Being shared into someone else's draft — even at Admin level — does not let you start a draft of your own. Creating a draft is a chart-level action, not a draft-level one.
Admin on the live chart is also half of what archiving requires (see point 3).
A user with View or Edit on the live chart can still be shared into a draft and work on it. They just can't create one.

2. Your permission on an individual draft

Whoever creates a draft is its Owner, always holds full rights over it, and can't be removed from it. Everyone else gets access by being shared in at one of three levels, chosen when they're added and changeable afterwards: View, Edit or Admin. Anyone who is an Admin on the live org chart holds Admin on every draft in your organization automatically.

What you can do with a draft	View	Edit	Admin
Open and read the draft	Yes	Yes	Yes
Add, edit, move and remove seats	No	Yes	Yes
Share it and change other people's levels	No	No	Yes
Publish it as your live org chart	No	No	Yes
Archive it	No	No	Yes — and also needs Admin on the live org chart
Create a brand-new draft	No	No	No — Admin on the live org chart only

Note: "Edit" means something wider inside a draft than it does on your live chart. On the live chart, Edit only lets you change seats you sit in or supervise. Inside a draft, an Edit collaborator can restructure the entire draft — but still can't share, publish or archive it.

3. Archiving needs both permissions

Archiving is the one action that requires Admin on the draft and Admin on the live org chart together. If you hold Admin on the draft but not on the chart, the archive icon still appears on the row but is greyed out, and hovering it reads: Archiving a draft needs admin permission on the org chart. You can still edit, share and publish this draft. Ask an org chart admin to archive it for you, or to grant you Admin on the chart.

Note: seats can't be added, edited or moved from a phone or tablet — in a draft or on your live chart — whatever your permission level. Build drafts in a desktop browser.

Switching between Public, Drafts and Archive

At the top of the Org Chart page there is a three-way switch:

Public — your live org chart, the one everyone in your organization sees.
Drafts — your working copies.
Archive — the read-only history.

On a narrow window the three tabs collapse into a single dropdown menu in the same position. If you don't see Drafts or Archive at all, check the permission rules under Before you start.

Creating a draft

Click Org Chart in the left navigation, then click the Drafts tab.
Click the + (plus) button to the right of the My drafts title. Hovering it shows the tooltip Create new draft.
In the New draft dialog, type a name in Draft title (required — the field's placeholder reads Type a draft title).
Under Choose template, select one of the two options:
- Empty draft — Create a draft completely from scratch, without any template.
- Current published chart — Copy your current published org chart. Generating it may take a few minutes.
Click Create draft. The button reads Creating... while it saves.

If you chose Current published chart, the new row appears in your list with a blue Generating draft… badge under its title while Bloom copies your structure. The badge clears on its own when the copy is finished. If the copy doesn't complete, the row shows an orange Draft generation failed badge instead — create the draft again, and contact support if it keeps failing.

Note: you can't archive a draft while it is still generating. The archive button is disabled and its tooltip reads "You can't archive this draft while it's generating."

Reading the drafts list

Once you have at least one draft, a Sort by control appears at the right-hand end of the My drafts header. Choose Newest or Oldest to reorder the list. The Archive tab has the same control.

The My drafts table has these columns:

Draft title — click anywhere on the row to open the draft.
Created by — who made it.
Shared with — a stack of avatars for the people it's shared with; hover one to see the person's name and their permission level. It reads Not shared when the draft is private to you.
Created and Last updated — dates.
An archive icon at the end of the row (see Archiving a draft below).

Before you've made your first draft, the tab shows You don't have any draft org charts yet. with a short explanation. Anyone who has only had a draft shared with them will see the same explanation without the create button — creating is an admin action.

Editing a draft

Click a row in My drafts to open it. The page header changes to a breadcrumb — Drafts / your draft's title — and you can click Drafts in that breadcrumb to go back to the list.

Inside a draft you add, edit, move and remove seats exactly as you do on the live chart, and the same zoom, search, depth and print controls are available. Changes save as you make them. Nobody outside the draft's share list sees any of it.

Sharing a draft

Sharing is available to anyone with Admin permission on that particular draft — its creator, an org chart admin, or someone given an explicit Admin share.

Everything you set up in the dialog is held until you click Share, so nobody gains or loses access while you are still deciding.

Open the draft, then click Share. Share and Publish sit on the chart itself — outlined buttons in the top-right corner of the chart area, next to Search and Add seat — rather than in the page header.
In the Share draft dialog, click the person field (placeholder Type or choose a user) and pick who to share with. Their row appears in the list below at Edit level, and the Share button becomes available. Nothing has been shared yet.
If Edit is not the level you want, change it on that person’s row using the dropdown beside their name:
- View — Can view this draft. Read-only.
- Edit — can change the draft’s structure, but cannot share or publish it.
- Admin — can also share and publish the draft.
To take someone’s access away, use the Remove collaborator button on their row. The row leaves the list, but their access is not revoked until you click Share.
Click Share to apply everything at once. One confirmation reading Sharing updated appears and the dialog closes.

Cancel, or closing the dialog, discards everything you staged and leaves access exactly as it was. Share stays unavailable until you have changed something.

The draft’s creator is marked with a grey Owner badge, and the permission dropdown on that row is greyed out — an owner always holds full rights and can’t be changed or removed.

Note: in the person field, anyone the draft is already shared with carries a checkmark. Picking a checkmarked name stages their removal rather than sharing again, and picking them once more puts them back. Use the dropdown on their row to change a level.

Note: anyone in your organization can be given a share on a draft — they do not need any org chart permission of their own. Sharing a draft never gives access to the live chart or to the Archive.

Publishing a draft

Publishing replaces your live org chart with the draft. It's available on the draft's page to anyone with Admin permission on that draft.

Open the draft and click Publish — the outlined button in the top-right corner of the chart area, beside Share.
Read the Publish draft dialog. Its banner reads: This chart will become your live org chart. Everyone in your organization will see it, and the chart that's live now will be archived. Below the draft's name it adds: The chart you're replacing moves to the archive. If this was a mistake, you can restore it from there.
Click Publish. The button reads Publishing... while it works.

The moment publishing finishes, everyone in your organization sees the new chart on the Public tab, and the chart it replaced moves to the Archive tab, where any org chart admin can restore it.

Archiving a draft

Archiving is how you clear a draft out of your working list without losing it. It's shown to Admins on the draft, and works if you also hold Admin permission on the live org chart.

On the Drafts tab, click the archive icon at the end of the draft's row.
The Archive draft dialog reads: You're archiving the following draft. It'll move to the Archive tab, visible only to you, and can be restored back to your drafts at any time.
Click Archive draft. The button reads Archiving... while it works.

If the icon is greyed out, hover it — the tooltip says why:

Archiving a draft needs admin permission on the org chart. You can still edit, share and publish this draft. — you hold Admin on this draft but not on the live chart. Ask an org chart admin to archive it, or to grant you Admin on the chart.
You can't archive this draft while it's generating. — wait for the Generating draft… badge to clear, then try again.

If you were shared into a draft at View or Edit level, the archive icon isn't shown on that row at all.

Using the Archive

Click the Archive tab. The line above the table reads: A read-only history of your Org Chart. Charts that were previously live are visible to every admin; drafts you archived are visible only to you.

An archived draft that was shared with you also appears in your Archive, at the level you were shared at — so a draft someone shared with you stays reachable after they archive it, and you do not need any org chart permission to open it. Charts that were previously live remain visible to org chart admins only.

The My archive table has three columns plus an action:

Title — the chart or draft's name.
Type — one of two badges:
- Previously published — a chart that used to be live. Hovering it reads Visible to every org-chart admin.
- My archived draft — a draft you archived. Hovering it reads Private — only you can see this.
Archived — the date it landed here.
A Restore button at the end of the row.

Click a row to open that chart full-screen and read-only. A badge at the top repeats its type, followed by Read-only. Created and the date, and a Restore button. You can pan, zoom and search it, but not edit it. If the chart has no seats, the page reads This archived org chart has no seats.

Before anything has been archived, the tab reads You don't have any archived org charts yet. with the explanation: A read-only history of your org chart. Charts that were previously live are visible to every admin; drafts you archived are visible only to you.

Restoring from the Archive

What Restore does depends on which kind of item you're restoring.

Restoring a previously published chart — the dialog is titled Restore public chart and carries the same banner as publishing: This chart will become your live org chart. Everyone in your organization will see it, and the chart that's live now will be archived. Click Restore chart to confirm. This is how you undo a publish you didn't mean to make.

Restoring a draft you archived — the dialog is titled Restore draft and reads: You're restoring this draft back to your Drafts list, editable again. Click Restore draft to confirm. The draft reappears on the Drafts tab, with its shares intact.

Either way, the button reads Restoring... while it works. If something goes wrong you'll see Failed to restore — try again, and contact support if it persists.

Is this included in my membership?

Org Chart Drafts and the Archive come with the Scale and Flourish memberships. They are not included in Core.

If your organization's membership doesn't include them, you'll still see the Drafts and Archive tabs (as long as you'd otherwise have access to them), each carrying a small lock mark. Hovering the mark tells you what applies to your organization:

Comes with followed by a membership name — your organization is on Core, and Drafts come with the membership named there. Clicking the tab opens a card with the same message and a link to see what that membership includes.
Part of Bloom's membership tiers — your organization is on Bloom's previous membership model, so this isn't included.
This trial has ended — Drafts were switched on for your organization as a trial that has now finished.

Nothing is lost while the feature is locked: drafts and archived charts your organization already created stay exactly where they are, and become available again as soon as your membership includes them.

Troubleshooting

I can't see the Drafts or Archive tab. The Drafts tab appears for org chart admins and for anyone who has had a draft shared with them. The Archive tab appears for org chart admins, for anyone who archived a draft of their own, and for anyone who has had an archived draft shared with them. Both also depend on your membership — see the section above. Note that the tabs appear a moment after the page loads, so give it a beat before concluding they're missing.
I'm an org chart admin but there's no + button. Make sure you're on the Drafts tab, not Public or Archive; the button sits directly to the right of the My drafts title.
My draft has been "Generating draft…" for a while. Copying a large published chart can take a few minutes. If the badge turns into Draft generation failed, create the draft again.
I published the wrong chart. Open the Archive tab, find the chart marked Previously published with the most recent Archived date, and click Restore.
The Archive won't load. The page shows We couldn't load the archive. Try refreshing the page. — refresh your browser, and contact support if it continues.
Someone I shared with can't publish. Only an Admin share can share or publish. Open Share on the draft and raise their level from Edit to Admin.