Projects, slots, and archiving

A project is one audience and everything you learn about them. It’s the container for your research and the unit your plan counts. This article covers what goes in one, how the project page changes as the work progresses, and how to close a project down when it’s finished.

One project, one audience

A project holds exactly one audience. Everything built on that audience lives inside it: the segments, the archetypes, the personas, the interview guides, every run, and every report.

That makes the split easy to reason about. Same people, different questions is one project with several interview runs. Different people is a new project, because a different audience needs its own research from the ground up.

How a project changes as you go

The project page isn’t one fixed screen. It shows you the stage you’re at.

  • Empty. A brand-new project has no audience yet, so the page offers Create an Audience and little else.
  • Generating. Once you submit the audience setup, the project sends you to a progress screen showing which stage is running. This takes roughly 25 to 35 minutes and you can close the tab.
  • Ready. With an audience in place, the page becomes the hub: your personas, your interview guides, your runs, and your reports, with a suggested next step so you always know what the work is waiting on.

That suggested next step is worth following when you’re new. It moves you through generating personas, running a study, checking progress, and reading the latest report in the order the work actually happens.

Active project slots

Your plan includes a number of active projects. Archived ones don’t count. When every slot is full, you can add another slot for an extra monthly charge, or free one by archiving a project you’ve finished with.

Prices and included counts are on the pricing page, and your own limits are in Settings under Billing. See Plans and billing for how the plans differ.

Archiving

Archiving does two things: it frees the project’s slot, and it makes the project read-only. A banner appears on the project confirming both.

Nothing is deleted. The audience, the personas, and every past interview and report stay fully viewable. What you can’t do is run new interviews or regenerate anything until you unarchive.

This is the right move on a project whose question you already answered. Keeping a finished project active is paying to hold a slot you aren’t using.

Unarchiving needs a free slot

Bringing a project back makes it active again, so it starts counting against your limit again. If you’re already at your limit, the Unarchive button is disabled and tells you why. Archive something else or add a slot first.

Worth knowing before you need it. The usual way people hit this is archiving several projects to get under a limit, then trying to reopen one.

Who can do what

Owners, admins, and editors can create, edit, and delete projects, and run research in them. Viewers can read a project and its results without changing anything.

A second layer sits on top of that. Owners and admins see every project in the workspace automatically. Editors and viewers only see projects they’ve been added to as members. So a project missing from your list is about membership, and a button missing from a project you can see is about your role.

The four roles and their permissions are in Inviting your team and choosing roles.

Where to go next

Common questions

One project holds one audience. Everything built on top of that audience, meaning the personas, the interview guides, the runs, and the reports, lives inside it. So the question to ask is whether you're researching the same group of people. Testing three concepts with the same audience is one project and three interview runs. Researching small-business owners and then enterprise buyers is two projects, because those are different people and each needs its own audience research.

A project starts empty. Creating it names the work, but it has no audience until you generate one, which is why the project page shows a Create an Audience button rather than a dashboard. Once you submit the audience setup, generation runs in the background for roughly 25 to 35 minutes and the project page shows a progress screen. When that finishes, the same page becomes the working hub for everything else.

It makes the project read-only and frees the project slot it was using. The audience, the personas, and every past interview and report stay fully viewable. What you lose is the ability to run new interviews or regenerate anything until you unarchive. Nothing is deleted. Think of it as closing a finished project rather than throwing it away.

Only if you have a free slot. Unarchiving puts the project back to active, which means it starts counting against your plan's limit again. If you're already at your limit, Candor blocks the unarchive and tells you so, and you'll need to archive something else or add a slot first. This catches people out when they archive several projects and then try to bring one back, so it's worth knowing before you need it.

Owners, admins, and editors can all create, edit, and delete projects, and run research in them. Viewers can read a project and its results but can't change anything. There's a second layer on top of that: owners and admins see every project in the workspace automatically, while editors and viewers only see the projects they've been added to as members. So if a project you expect isn't listed, that's membership. If a button you expect isn't there, that's your role.

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