Application Portfolio Guide

🧭 Getting Started Guide

A small panel at the bottom right, Find a risky application, takes you to a shareable Target Report in five steps: start a portfolio, link applications to capabilities (you can skip this), open an application's dependency diagram, mark an application as a target, and print the report. Each step ticks itself when you do it, however you do it, so there's no Next button. Choose – to shrink the panel to a small button, Show me to be taken to the control a step means, or Don't show again to close it. Your progress is kept with your account, so it follows you to another computer. Bring it back from Account ▾ → Getting-started guide.

Load the example is offered only while the portfolio is empty, so it never mixes with real applications. It imports Sample Corp's applications (a fictional company), including Legacy Customer Archive, which is being retired while other applications still depend on it. If the portfolio has no capability map, a portfolio admin can also load the example map, which becomes their own model in the Capability Modeler.

💡 Overview

The Application Portfolio is a catalog of your applications — one row per application, with owner and contact details, version and lifecycle information, upstream/downstream data flows, and (optionally) a link to a capability in your Capability Modeler map.

Unlike the Capability Modeler or BDN, there is exactly one portfolio — everyone with access sees and edits the same list, and you can additionally share it with specific people at a chosen access level (see Sharing & Permissions).

Two tabs

The top bar has two tabs: Portfolio, the application list itself, and Worklist, the queue of scheduled reviews and lifecycle work items tied to those applications (see Worklist). Everything else lives in the top bar to its right and is available from either tab: a standalone Print / PDF button, a Reports ▾ menu, an Admin Tools ▾ menu (admins only — Configure, Work Items, Integrations, Share), and an Account ▾ menu (Portfolio Settings — admins only, Help, Profile, Sign out).

Mapping to a capability model

If you've built a model in the Capability Modeler, open Account ▾ → Portfolio Settings (top bar) and choose it as this portfolio's capability model. You can choose your own models and any model shared with you.

Once a model is selected, link each application to every capability it supports, in the Business Capability part of the application form:

• Pick capabilities from Add a capability…, which shows the model as an indented tree, group by group.
• The first capability you add is the primary one; the others are supporting. Use Make primary to change which one is primary, or Remove to drop a link. An application has at most one primary capability, and doesn't need one.
• Choose a parent or its child, not both. Once a capability is linked, its parents and children (at any depth) are greyed out in the picker, with a note naming the link that already covers them. This keeps an application from being counted twice in the same branch of the model.

The list's Primary Capability column shows the primary link and Supporting Capabilities shows the rest; the capability-group filter matches any linked capability. The CSV export has a Primary Capability column and a Supporting Capabilities column (several separated by semicolons). CSV import doesn't set capabilities; link them in the form.

Opening a portfolio from another tool

Other Useful EA tools can link straight to a portfolio: the Repository's Open in Application Portfolio, for example, opens the portfolio it refers to. The link only opens your own portfolio or one shared with you; otherwise the Application Portfolio opens as usual.

➕ Adding Applications

The Portfolio tab has a stationary left-hand sidebar — it stays in place as the application list below it scrolls. The Search applications... box at the top of the sidebar is always visible; Filters underneath (department, disposition, location, capability group, and "feeds"/"receives from" data-flow filters) can be collapsed or expanded. Below that are the action items covered in this section: Add Application (with its From JSON... sub-item), Import CSV, Export CSV, and Replace....

Add manually

Click Add Application in the sidebar and fill in the form. Only Short Name and Full Name are required — everything else can be filled in later.

The Ownership section holds the application's Department and its contacts:

• Department — pick an existing department from the list, or type a new name to add one. If the new name looks like an existing department (different case, punctuation, or a typo or two), you're asked Did you mean …? before it's created: use the existing one, or add the new name anyway.
• Contacts — add as many as you need with + Business contact, + Technical contact and + Other contact. Each has a name and/or email and, optionally, their own department. A contact's email is what makes them eligible to be invited into a Review Campaign for the application's department — see Review Campaigns.
• A Recommended strip reminds you when an application has no department, no business contact or no technical contact, with an Add link for each. It's only a reminder: you can always save without them.

To find applications that still need them, tick Missing department or contacts under the sidebar's Filters. Departments can be renamed, or a duplicate merged into another, in Account ▾ → Portfolio Settings → Departments; merging moves its applications, contacts and review campaigns across.

Custom fields you've configured (see Custom Fields & Columns) appear near the bottom of the form, just above the Data Flow section. A free-text Notes field sits below Ownership for anything that doesn't fit a structured field.

Once an application has been saved, a Work Items panel appears next to Vendor/Description showing any worklist items already scheduled for it, with a + Add related work items link to schedule the standard checklist for its current Disposition — see Worklist.

Add from JSON

Click the small ▾ arrow next to Add Application and choose From JSON.... This is designed for pasting output from an AI assistant: the dialog shows a copyable example JSON template — built from your portfolio's actual custom fields, not generic placeholders — that you can hand to an AI assistant as the target format, for example:

"Summarize this application into the following JSON shape: { ...template... }"

Paste the AI's response and click Continue. The regular Add Application form opens, pre-filled with everything recognized — nothing is saved until you review it and click Save yourself.

Import from CSV

Click Import CSV in the sidebar and select a file. Rows are matched to existing applications by (Short Name, Version Number) — a match updates that application's fields; no match creates a new one. A blank Version Number is treated as 1.0, both on import and in the manual form, so the two line up correctly.

Click Export CSV first (directly below Import CSV in the sidebar) to get a template with every supported column, including your custom fields.

Everything you enter survives a round trip: an exported file imported again (into this portfolio or another) brings back Parent, Notes, Annual Cost, Fitness, Target, every contact, the capability links and the Upstream/Downstream links. A column the file leaves out leaves that field as it is; a blank cell in a column it has clears it.

• Contacts holds every contact in one cell, separated by semicolons: Business: Jordan Lee <jordan@example.com> (Marketing); Technical: Sam Patel. The role comes first; the name, email and department are each optional.
• Primary Capability and Supporting Capabilities are matched by name in the portfolio's capability model; the matching Group columns tell apart two capabilities with the same name. The same rules as the form apply: one primary, and never a capability together with its parent.
• Upstream and Downstream list App Codes; codes in the file's own App Code column are matched first, so links survive an import into another portfolio.
• Owner Intent and Last Validated come from review campaigns and are exported but not imported.

Anything a file has that can't be used (a Fitness outside −2 to +2, a capability that isn't in the model) is listed when the import finishes, and that field is left blank or as it was.

Editing and removing

Use the pencil and trash icons at the right of each row to edit or remove an application.

🔀 Data Flow & Diagrams

Recording data flow

In the application edit form, the Data Flow section lets you check off which other applications this one gets data from (upstream) and which it feeds data to (downstream). These links power the filters on the main list (Feeds… / Receives from…) and the network diagrams below.

Diagram modes

Open Reports and choose a diagram mode from the dropdown:

• Single application diagram — pick one application to see just its direct upstream and downstream neighbors.
• Full network diagram — every application and data-flow link in the portfolio, laid out in columns by dependency depth. Rows within each column are automatically arranged to minimize crossing lines, so the diagram stays readable as it grows.

A diagram fills the window under the top bar and opens fitted to the screen, so you see every application at once; it fits itself again when you pick another application or change the shading. Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, and use the +, − and fit buttons in the bottom-left corner.

The diagram's controls sit in the top bar, next to its name: the application picker (single application diagram), shading by department or capability group, Arrows, and Export ▾ (PNG, JPEG, PowerPoint or draw.io). When shading is on, PNG, JPEG and PowerPoint exports include the shading key in its own column to the left of the diagram, as on screen, so it never covers any of it.

🧩 Custom Fields & Columns

Click Admin Tools ▾ → Configure in the top bar to open a dialog with three tabs.

Custom Fields tab

Add fields specific to your portfolio — a name and a type (Text, Number, or Yes/No). They appear on every application's edit form and become available to show as columns in the list and report (below). Rename a field by editing its name and clicking away; remove one with the field's Remove link.

List Columns & Report Columns tabs

Choose exactly which fields appear in the main application list and in the printed report — independently of each other, and in whatever order you like. Every built-in field and every custom field is available in the Available fields section; click Add to bring one into Shown, in order, then use the ▲ ▼ buttons to reorder, or Remove to drop it back to Available.

Until you customize a tab, it shows the built-in default set — opening Configure and changing nothing leaves your list and report exactly as they were.

Text field row height

For the Description field and any Text-type custom field, a Rows box appears next to it in the Shown list — set how many lines of text to display (1–10, default 2) before the cell truncates. This is set independently for the list and the report, since a printed report often has more room than an on-screen table column.

🔍 Search & Replace

Search & filter

The Search applications... box at the top of the left sidebar filters the main list instantly as you type, matching against short name, full name, code, department, contacts, location, vendor, and description.

Below it, the collapsible Filters section narrows the list by department, disposition, location, capability group (once a capability model is selected), and by data flow — Feeds… to find everything that feeds a chosen application, or Receives from… for the reverse. Filters combine with each other and with the search box; a Clear filters link appears whenever any are active.

Replace

Click Replace... in the sidebar to open a guided find-and-replace — most useful for updating a stakeholder's name, department, or email address across every application that references it.

1. Choose which field to search (Short Name, Full Name, Department Owner, Department Contact, Technical Contact, Location, or Vendor).
2. Enter the exact value to find and the value to replace it with, then click Find Matches.
3. Every matching application is reviewed one at a time — for each, click Apply to save that one change or Skip to leave it alone.

Replace Contact

Click Replace Contact... (the sub-item under Replace... in the sidebar) to set the Department Contact, Department Contact Email, and/or Technical Contact for every application owned by a chosen department in one pass — handy after a reorg, when a stakeholder changes roles, or to quickly fill in missing contact emails for a whole department before running its first Review Campaign (see Review Campaigns). Pick the department, enter the new value(s) you want to apply (leave any blank to leave it unchanged), then review the full list of affected applications before confirming — this one does apply to every match at once, unlike the one-at-a-time Replace above.

✅ Worklist

The Worklist tab (top bar, next to Portfolio) is a queue of scheduled reviews and other lifecycle work tied to individual applications — separate from the application records themselves. It shows only open items; once something is completed it drops off the tab (see Worklist Report for full history, completed items included).

Left sidebar

Mirrors the Portfolio tab's sidebar: an always-visible Search applications... box and a collapsible Filters section — by department, by contact (department or technical), and by capability group (primary or secondary) — since a work item itself only knows which application it's for, these filter on that application's own fields. Below the filters, Add Work Item opens the add dialog.

The worklist table

Sortable by Due Date (the default) or Assigned To — click a column header to sort by it, click again to reverse. A row's due date is shown in red when it's overdue.

Adding a work item manually

Click Add Work Item and fill in:

• Application and Due Date — required.
• Assigned To — free text, optional; items with nobody assigned show as unassigned.
• Repeat every N workdays — leave blank for a one-time item, or set a number of workdays for a recurring review.
• Notes — free text.

Completing and repeating

Click Complete on a row to mark it done. If that item had a repeat interval set, completing it automatically creates the next occurrence, due that many workdays after today — the cadence resets from whenever the item is actually completed, not from its original due date, so a review completed late doesn't leave every future occurrence permanently behind schedule.

Click Remove to delete a work item outright (with a confirmation prompt) instead of completing it — for a one-off item that's no longer needed.

Adding a checklist of work items to an application

Rather than adding items one at a time, you can schedule an entire pre-configured checklist against one application at once. On that application's edit form (see Adding Applications), below the Disposition field is a Work Items panel listing any work items already scheduled for it, and a + Add related work items link.

1. Set the application's Disposition to whatever it's changing to (e.g. Retired).
2. Click + Add related work items. The dialog previews the checklist configured for that disposition (see Work Item Templates) — if nothing is configured yet, it tells you so and points you to the Work Items button.
3. Pick a Date and choose Starting on or Ending on:
   • Starting on — the date is when the first item begins; each later item's due date chains forward from it.
   • Ending on — the date is when the last item is due; a true workback plan, with every earlier item's due date computed backward from it.
4. Click OK to create one worklist item per checklist entry — all created unassigned, with the checklist item's title carried over as its Notes. Assign them to people from the Worklist tab afterward.

🗒️ Work Item Templates

Click Admin Tools ▾ → Work Items in the top bar (admins only) to configure the standard checklist of steps for each Disposition — Planned, Pilot, Active, Sunset, and Retired. This is the checklist that + Add related work items (see Worklist) schedules onto an individual application.

Editing a checklist

Choose a Disposition from the dropdown to see its ordered checklist. For each item:

• Edit the title or workdays inline — click away (or tab out) to save.
• Reorder with the ▲ ▼ buttons.
• Remove to drop it from the checklist.

Add a new item at the bottom of the list with a title and a workdays value, then click Add. Every change (add, edit, reorder, remove) saves immediately — there's no separate save step, only Done to close the dialog.

Workdays for the first item is counted from the checklist's start date; for every later item, it's counted from the previous item — always in business days (weekends are skipped; holidays are not accounted for).

Sample start date

Enter an optional Sample start date at the top of the dialog to preview how the checklist would land on a real calendar — each item shows the date it would be due, chained forward from that date. This is a preview only; nothing is saved by entering it.

Reset to Defaults

Click Reset to defaults at the bottom of the dialog to discard the configured checklists for every disposition in the portfolio and replace them with the system defaults — the same starter checklist a brand-new portfolio gets. You're asked to confirm first, since this can't be undone; it affects all five dispositions at once, not just the one currently selected in the dropdown.

🎯 Targeting for Retirement

This is the workflow for deciding which applications are good candidates to retire or replace — not by disposition or gut feel, but by weighing what each application actually costs against how far it's drifted from being a good fit for what the enterprise actually needs. Three fields on each application drive it: Annual Cost, Fitness, and Target.

The three fields

All three live on the application's edit form alongside Version (see Adding Applications), and — like any other field — can also be added as columns to the main list or the Application List report (see Custom Fields & Columns).

• Annual Cost — a plain number for what the application costs per year. No currency is assumed or displayed; just be consistent about which currency you use across the portfolio, since the Target Report (below) compares these numbers directly against each other.
• Fitness — a subjective, five-point scale for how well the application's features match what the enterprise actually needs, set with a row of buttons rather than a plain dropdown. Hover any level for a tooltip explaining it:

Clicking an already-selected level clears Fitness back to not assessed — a blank Fitness is treated differently from a 0 (Good Fit) everywhere in this feature, including the Target Report below.

• Target — a yes/no flag marking that an application has been identified as a candidate for retirement or replacement. Wherever it's shown — the main list, a report, or the Target Report itself — a targeted application shows a red ◎ in that column; an untargeted one shows a blank cell, nothing more.

The Target Report

Open Reports ▾ → Target Report. This is where the three fields above come together into a ranked worklist for an architect:

• Only applications with an assessed, non-zero Fitness appear — a Fitness of 0 (Good Fit) is never a candidate, and an application nobody has assessed yet doesn't show up until someone does.
• The list is ranked by Annual Cost × the size of the Fitness mismatch (its distance from 0, regardless of direction), highest first — so an expensive application that's a poor fit rises above a cheap one with the exact same Fitness score, and a wildly-over-featured expensive tool ranks just as high as a wildly-under-featured one of the same cost. In short: the top of this report is where your money is most misspent relative to what the enterprise actually needs.
• Each row shows the application's Name, Owner (Department Owner), its current Target status, and a wide Notes field for the application's own free-text notes — useful for capturing why a decision was made or what a replacement plan looks like.
• A button on each row — Mark as Target or Remove from Target — flips that application's Target flag immediately, right from the report, with no need to open its edit form.

📨 Review Campaigns

A review campaign asks the people who actually run a department to confirm, in their own words, what your portfolio says about the applications you have on record for them — and to tell you about anything you're missing. Instead of one shared link, every invitee gets their own personal link, so you always know who has responded and who you still need to track down.

Starting a campaign

Open the Review Campaigns tab. The Departments table lists every department found on your applications, each with a status badge:

• Never reviewed — no campaign has ever been run for this department.
• Due — it's been longer than your configured review interval since the last campaign.
• Up to date — reviewed within that interval.

Click Start review on a department to open the campaign wizard:

1. The wizard shows how many applications are owned by that department and derives a candidate list of invitees from those applications' Department Contact and Additional Contact fields (see Adding Applications), deduplicated by email.
2. Review and edit the invitee list — add anyone missing, remove anyone who shouldn't get a link, or fix an email before sending.
3. Edit the instructions shown to invitees — pre-filled from your standing default (see Settings below), but editable per campaign.
4. Click Send. Each invitee is emailed their own unique review link.

The applications shown to every invitee in a campaign are a fixed snapshot taken the moment the campaign is created — if you add or reassign applications afterward, that campaign's invitees still see the original list.

What an invitee sees

Each person's link opens a simple page with no login and no account needed — just the applications from that department's snapshot, one card per application. For each one they can:

• Confirm ownership: Yes, we own this one / No, but here's who might / No, and I don't know who does / I've never heard of this application / We used to own it but it's been dumped.
• Pick a recommended action — one of nine options, from "don't own it" through "actively piloting," "keep it," "want to replace it," "getting rid of it," to "already dumped."
• Leave notes (append-only — a note can never be edited or removed once added, by them or anyone else, and only you can see this note thread).
• Give a fitness rating and the annual cost, if they know them.
• Optionally suggest a primary/secondary business capability — entirely optional, and you're free to ignore it.
• Suggest an upstream or downstream data-flow connection to another application.
• Report an application your portfolio doesn't have listed at all, using the form at the bottom of the page.

Every answer saves the instant it's entered — there's no submit button and nothing to lose by closing the tab partway through. A Mark done button at the bottom is purely a courtesy signal for the invitee's own peace of mind; it doesn't lock their answers or stop them from coming back to change something later.

Tracking responses — the roster

Open a campaign from the Departments table's history, or from the Campaign history list below it, to see its Invitees roster: name, email, and a status for each — Not opened, Opened, no activity yet, In progress, or Marked done — this is how you tell who you still need to chase down. From here you can add someone you missed, remove an invitee, or Resend their invitation email. A Close campaign button marks the whole campaign closed once you're done with it.

Reviewing what came in

Below the roster, the Review queue has three tabs:

• Responses — every application response across every invitee, with ownership, recommended action, fitness, annual cost, and notes. Where a pending answer differs from what the application holds now, the current value is shown underneath (now: …). For each pending response choose:
  • Apply — copies the answered recommended action (as the application's owner intent), fitness, and annual cost onto the application and marks the response reviewed. An unanswered field leaves the application's value as it is. If the answer is to replace or remove the application, applying also marks it as a Target.
  • Review only — marks the response reviewed without changing the application.
  If the invitee later changes their recommended action, fitness, or annual cost, the response goes back to Pending so you see the change. If someone indicated another person or department owns the application, an Update contact action lets you push that onto the application's own Department Contact / Additional Contact fields.
• Link Suggestions — data-flow connections invitees suggested. Since they typically only know the other application by name, pick the matching application from the dropdown, then Approve to create the real connection (visible afterward in that application's Data Flow), or Reject to dismiss it.
• New App Suggestions — applications invitees reported that aren't in your catalog. Click Promote to review/confirm the Short Name, Full Name, and contact details (pre-filled from what was reported) and create a real application record, or Reject to dismiss it.

Nothing an invitee enters changes your real application data automatically — suggestions and responses sit in the queue until you explicitly apply, approve, or promote them.

Settings

Open Account ▾ → Portfolio Settings (visible on enterprise accounts) to set two standing defaults for this feature:

• Default invitation instructions — the text pre-filled into every new campaign's instructions field, so you're not composing the same explanation from scratch each time.
• Months between reviews — how long after a campaign before that department is flagged Due again on the Departments table.

📋 Reports

Click Reports ▾ in the top bar and choose a mode: Application List, Single Application Diagram, Full Network Diagram (see Data Flow & Diagrams), Worklist Report, or Target Report (see Targeting for Retirement). The report's name and its own controls (filters, shading, Download CSV, Export) appear in the top bar beside the tabs. To print a report or save it as a PDF, use Print / PDF in the top bar; it prints whichever page you're on.

Application list report

A printable table using the columns configured under Report Columns. Click Print / PDF in the top bar to open your browser's print dialog — choose "Save as PDF" there to export a file.

Worklist Report

A printable table of every work item — open and completed, not just the active queue shown on the Worklist tab — with its Application, Due Date, Assigned To, Status, and Notes. Filter it to a particular application, a particular assigned person, or both at once using the dropdowns in the top bar.

Target Report

The ranked candidate list for retirement/replacement decisions — see Targeting for Retirement for the full workflow, including how it's sorted and what each column means.

Export / Download CSV

Both the sidebar's Export CSV (Portfolio tab) and the Reports page's Download CSV (Application List mode) export every application with a fixed, comprehensive column set (all built-in fields plus your custom fields) — independent of whatever columns you've configured for on-screen viewing, so the CSV is always a complete data dump suitable for re-importing or archiving.

🔌 Integrations

Read applications in automatically from systems like ServiceNow or Vertice instead of entering them by hand. Click Admin Tools ▾ → Integrations in the top bar to configure a source and trigger reads — this is only visible to portfolio admins.

Configuring a source

1. Click Admin Tools ▾ → Integrations → Add Source.
2. Give it a name, choose the source type (ServiceNow or Vertice), and enter the API address, account ID, and API key for that system.
3. Click Save.

Reading data in

Click Read now next to a configured source to pull its current applications. A summary appears showing how many were:

• Added — a genuinely new application, created and linked to this source.
• Matched to existing — the incoming record's name closely matched an application already in your portfolio (entered manually, imported via CSV, or read from a different source), so it was linked to that application instead of creating a duplicate.
• Refreshed — already linked from a previous read of this same source; only the link itself was refreshed, not the application's fields, so any manual edits you've made since survive every resync.
• Ambiguous — the incoming record's name matched more than one existing application about equally well. Rather than guess, it's skipped and flagged here for you to sort out by hand.

Vertice: reads run from your browser

Vertice's API only accepts requests from allowlisted client IPs, so a Vertice source's "Read now" runs from your own browser rather than from this app's server — the decrypted API key is fetched just long enough to make the calls, and never stored client-side.

🔗 Sharing & Permissions

Use Admin Tools ▾ → Share (top bar) to invite specific people to your portfolio at a chosen access level.

Access levels

Who owns the portfolio

Each organization has one portfolio. The person who first opens it becomes its owner; everyone else, colleagues included, needs to be invited. Anyone with Admin access is also an owner. If the owner's account is ever deleted, an Admin keeps the portfolio, or failing that the earliest Editor becomes its owner.

Course access: if your portfolio's first application was added while you were enrolled in a course, it's shared with your educator as an Editor until the term ends. The share list labels it Course with its end date.

Inviting someone

1. Click Admin Tools ▾ → Share in the top bar.
2. Enter their email address and choose an access level.
3. Click Send Invitation.

Change or revoke access for anyone already invited from the same dialog.

Viewing a portfolio shared with you

If someone has shared their portfolio with you, use the portfolio switcher next to the logo to move between your own portfolio and any shared with you. Action buttons throughout the app are shown or hidden based on the access level you were granted for whichever portfolio is currently active.

Renaming the portfolio

Only the portfolio's original owner can rename it, from Account ▾ → Portfolio Settings — this is intentionally separate from the Admin access level, the same way only a model's creator can rename it in the Capability Modeler.

👤 Your Account

One Useful EA account works in all five tools: the Capability Modeler, the Benefit Dependency Network (BDN), EA Maturity Assessment, the Application Portfolio Manager and the Architecture Repository. Everything in this section works the same way in each of them.

Signing in once

Sign in to any tool and you're signed in to all four. Signing out of one signs you out of all of them. Email sign-in is case-sensitive: use the same capitalization you signed up with.

Switching tools

Click the Switch tool button (the grid icon at the left of the top bar) to open another Useful EA tool. The tool you're in is marked You're here.

Your profile

Open Account ▾ → Profile. Your profile is shared by every tool, so a change made here shows everywhere:

• About you — first and last name, job title, employer and a short professional bio. Your name is what others see on your comments and in share lists.
• Login — your sign-in email and user ID, and Change password.
• Billing — your plan, and Manage billing to update your card, see invoices or cancel. If you've cancelled, the date your plan ends is shown here.
• Comment emails — whether to be emailed when someone @mentions you, and whether to get a daily summary of new comments on your models and replies to your comments. Every comment email links back here so you can change this at any time.

The license agreement

The first time you use Useful EA, and again whenever the End User License Agreement changes, you're asked to read and accept the current version before you continue. You accept once for all four tools.

Plans, trials and read-only accounts

• Beta accounts are free forever. Every account created while Useful EA is in beta keeps full access at no charge.
• New accounts (after beta) start with a free 30-day trial, then continue on a paid plan.
• Read-only. If a trial ends without a plan, or a subscription is cancelled or can't be paid, the account becomes read-only. You can still open and read everything, export to CSV and delete your own work, but you can't change anything. Image, PowerPoint and print exports are turned off. A banner explains why and how to fix it.
• Deletion date. A read-only account is deleted 90 days after it becomes read-only, unless you choose a plan or join a course. The banner shows the date, and you're emailed when the clock starts and again 30, 7 and 1 days before. Time spent in a course or a consultant engagement doesn't count.
• Cancelling stops the renewal, not your access: you keep everything until the end of the period you've paid for.

Ownership and co-owners

Each portfolio belongs to the people who have Admin access on it. Being in the same organization as someone doesn't give you access to their work: only the owner and the people they share with can see it. Everyone with Admin access is an equal owner. If one of them deletes it, they simply leave, and the others keep it. If the last owner's account is deleted, the earliest person with editing access becomes the owner instead of the work being lost.

Codes: courses and consultant engagements

Choose Enter a code… in the Account ▾ menu to join a course or a consultant engagement with the six-character code you were given. If you don't have an account yet, use Have a code? on the sign-in page: it holds your code while you create your account, then offers to join it.

• A course code shows the course, institution, educator and term before you join. You get full access until 30 days after the term ends, and anything you create during the term is shared with your educator until the term ends, with Editor access. If you're on a trial, it pauses for the course. You accept the Student Course Enrollment Notice to join.
• A consultant engagement code lets you join the work your organization has engaged a consultant for. The named key contact at your organization is asked, in a banner, to review and accept the engagement terms first. If you pay for your own plan, its billing pauses for the engagement and resumes by itself afterwards; you're reminded 20 and 3 days before.

Joining your company's account

If your company has a Useful EA company account and you sign in with an email at its domain, you'll see an invitation to join it in every tool. The dialog explains what joining means and shows the Company Membership Notice:

• Join to use the tools under the company's plan. Your own work and its shares don't move, and any individual plan you were paying for is cancelled.
• Decline to keep your individual account. The company's administrators can see that you declined (your email and the date, nothing else).
• An invitation you don't answer expires after 30 days. That isn't treated as declining, and an administrator can send it again.

Maintenance notices

Before planned maintenance, a notice appears when you sign in, saying when the tools will be unavailable.