Available with any of the following subscriptions, except where noted:
🟢 Starter (up to the plan’s step limit) | 🔵 Builder | 🟣 Optimizer |
⚫ Enterprise
Building effective processes starts with understanding who’s responsible for what. Puzzle’s People Canvas gives you a visual way to map out contributors, assign functional roles, and clarify team structure across your workflows — whether or not someone is an active user in your Organization.
Designed for internal clarity, planning, and delegation, the People Canvas lets you build a complete picture of your team without managing user permissions. It’s ideal for planning around future hires, working with external collaborators, or visualizing internal roles that don't require login access.
If you do need to manage access or permissions, that’s handled separately through your Organization’s People tab. But if you want to understand and communicate who’s involved in your process, this is where the People Canvas shines.
🧩 What the People Canvas Is (and Isn’t)
The People Canvas is a visual layer for team planning, not a user management tool. It helps you track involvement and assign responsibilities, regardless of a person’s login status.
✅ What it does:
Create People Cards for anyone — no email or invite needed
Assign functional roles (e.g. “Project Manager”, “Ops Lead”)
Connect People Cards to steps in workflows
Feed role data into Process Costing when applicable
🚫 What it doesn’t do:
Does not grant access to your Organization or Workspaces
Does not manage user invites (handled via the People tab in the Organization sidebar)
This makes it a flexible space to plan roles, delegate clearly, and manage contributors without complicating access permissions.
🔑 Key Benefits Of Using People Canvas
🧠 Visual Role Mapping: Easily identify who’s contributing to what across your workflows.
🛠 Flexible Planning: Great for modeling org structure, cross-functional contributors, and planned hires.
📊 Better Cost Visibility: Connect people and roles directly to manual steps for smarter costing.
📌 Non-disruptive Team Planning: Work with role mapping independently from permission management.
🛠 Step-by-Step: Using the People Canvas
1️⃣ Add a Person
1️⃣ Add a Person
✚ Click Add People in the top-left of the People Canvas. You can create a People Card by name — email is not required.
2️⃣ Assign Roles
2️⃣ Assign Roles
👉 In the right sidebar, choose a role from the dropdown list. These roles are pulled from the Team Canvas.
3️⃣ Connect to Costing (Automatically)
3️⃣ Connect to Costing (Automatically)
🕒 If the assigned role has an hourly rate configured in the Team Canvas, that value will automatically apply when the person is added to steps that include manual work. No additional setup is needed on the People Card itself.
💡 Best Practices for Using the People Canvas
👥 Add contributors who matter — Capture team members, clients, or roles that need visibility (but not access) to build alignment.
🧩 Use roles from the Team Canvas — Maintain consistency across planning and costing by sticking to shared role definitions.
🧹 Keep your team view clean — Archive People Cards no longer needed to reduce clutter.
📋 Model future roles early — Add placeholders for roles you plan to hire or onboard later.
🧭 Want to Invite Users Instead?
If someone needs to log into Puzzle and contribute directly, invite them via your Organization’s People tab — where you can set their permission level (Owner, Admin, or Editor) and assign Workspace access.
✅ Conclusion
The People Canvas is where team planning meets process clarity. It helps you visualize contributors, delegate step ownership, and align your team around workflows — all without needing to manage user access.
Use it to support cross-functional collaboration, organize internal and external roles, and streamline handoffs as your team scales. When paired with Puzzle’s Organization-based access model, you gain total clarity between who’s involved and who has access — giving your team a smarter way to operate!