When teams start working in Adaptive Planning, one of the first questions we hear is simple: “How do I update my profile and make sure I receive the right notifications?” It sounds small, but it matters. Clean user setups create smoother workflows, fewer missed approvals, and fewer issues during monthly planning cycles. Most of the friction we see comes from incomplete profile settings, inactive email addresses, or unclear notification rules.
Adaptive gives every user a personal profile area where you control your own information, your home page, and the email groups you use to send reports. The experience is straightforward once you understand how the platform handles identity, SSO, permissions, and notifications.
How Access and Identity Work Behind the Scenes
You sign in to Adaptive based on how your organization manages identity. If you use SAML SSO synced with Workday HCM or Workday Financials, then your profile information flows from Workday. In those setups, you cannot change your name, contact details, or password directly in Adaptive. The system treats Workday as the source of truth.
If your organization does not use Workday or SAML for identity, then your internal IT team defines where you update your personal details. Either way, the profile page inside Adaptive lets you control the settings specific to planning: your home page, notification preferences, email groups, and default instance.
What You Can Change in Your Adaptive Planning Profile
You access your profile by selecting your avatar at the top of any page and choosing View Profile. From there, you control the areas that affect your daily workflow.
1. Personal Information and Password
You can update your personal information, but password changes depend on how your administrator configures login. If SAML SSO is required, Adaptive will not display password options at all. You sign in using your username only, and Workday (or your SSO provider) manages authentication.
If passwords are allowed, your admin defines the rules: character length, number formats, and complexity requirements.
2. Email Setup and Notification Behavior
A valid email is critical in Adaptive Planning because many processes rely on automated notifications. Finance teams depend on these alerts for approvals, workflow tasks, report sharing, and integration updates. When your email is active, you can:
- Receive workflow task assignments
- Get alerts for shared web reports and snapshots
- Receive integration success and failure messages
- Be included in personal email groups
- Be contacted directly by administrators
If your username is already an email address, you can choose “Use username as email” to simplify the setup.
3. Choosing Your Home Page
Your home page defines what you see when you sign in. Administrators set a default for the organization, but you can override it based on your permissions. If you have access to dashboards, you can select a specific perspective or dashboard to appear first, as long as someone has shared it with you.
If no dashboard is selected, Adaptive shows the dashboards overview page by default.
4. Updating Your Avatar
Adaptive creates default avatars based on initials pulled from your name. If your name contains multiple text strings, the system picks the first letter of the first and last strings. It also supports non-Roman characters.
If you prefer a custom image, you can upload one directly from the profile page.
Using Email Groups to Share Reports Efficiently
One of the overlooked features in Adaptive is personal email groups. These groups help you send reports to multiple users at once — useful during forecast cycles, weekly leadership reporting, or monthly operational reviews.
Examples include:
- A “Sales Report” group for distributing weekly pipeline snapshots
- A “CFO Package” group for sending board-ready reports
- A “Department Leads” group for workflow-driven approvals
You can select multiple users at once when creating or editing your groups. You simply choose the recipients and save the group for future use.
Two permissions drive this feature:
- Access Reports — required for creating and using email groups
- Send Notifications — required for sending notifications to the group
Administrators often assign these to budget owners, department leads, or analysts who distribute recurring reports.
Why These Profile Settings Matter
We see the impact of profile configuration every day. Missing notifications delay approvals. Incorrect emails break report-sharing workflows. Weak SSO alignment causes confusion about where to update contact information. The profile page may seem basic, but it controls the flow of communication inside Adaptive.
When your profile is set correctly, you start with the right home page, receive the right alerts, and stay connected to the planning process without interruptions.
How EPMLogic Helps
We support organizations in setting up Adaptive environments that work cleanly from day one. We help you align identity with Workday, configure user access, automate notifications, and organize email groups so reporting flows without friction. These details may look small, but they make the planning experience smoother for every user and reduce noise during your planning cycles.
