Workspaces and spaces

Workspaces and wiki spaces look alike in the interface and behave in opposite ways underneath. Confusion between the two is the most frequent subject of visibility-related support requests. This page states the distinction; other pages link here rather than restating it.

Summary

	Workspace	Wiki space
Owned by an organisation?	No — there is no owner-org at all	Yes — it has an owner
Scoped by the org switcher?	No	Yes
Scoped by	Mode: personal or shared	The organisation that owns it

A workspace has no owning organisation

A workspace is not owned by a single organisation; it is a location in which several organisations and individuals collaborate. Listing workspaces returns every membership held, across every organisation the member belongs to.

This has a direct interface consequence: the organisation switcher must not filter a workspace list. Doing so implies a scoping the data model does not support, and would appear to filter by organisation while in fact hiding memberships arbitrarily.

Workspaces are separated by mode instead:

• Personal — task mode. Your own work.
• Shared — collaborative and coordinated modes. Work with others.

A wiki space does have an owner

A wiki space carries an owner type and owner ID. Organisation scope therefore applies and should follow the member: switching organisation moves into that organisation’s spaces.

There are three kinds of owner, not two:

Owner	The space belongs to
User	You personally
Org	An organisation you belong to
Workspace	A workspace — so a collaboration can have its own wiki

The third owner type is why a workspace can hold a wiki without owning it in the sense an organisation does: the space is owned by the workspace, while the workspace itself has no owning organisation.

One space per owner

Owner type and owner ID are unique in combination, with a consequence frequently reported as a fault: each owner has exactly one space. One personal space, one per organisation, one per workspace. A second space cannot be created for the same organisation. Where an organisation already has a space, no “new space” control is presented; the existing space is the one to use, and structure is created within it as pages.

For client implementations

Scope a space list by organisation and a workspace list by mode. An organisation switcher presented over a workspace list is a defect.