Workspaces

This feature is available with a Pro or Enterprise plan

Use workspaces to model your teams and entities, and the dependencies between them, to enable greater collaboration and knowledge sharing. A workspace may represent an application, a service, a component, a team… it's completely up to you.

Each workspace has its own Dashboards, Data sources, Monitors, and Collections, and covered in this article, Home page and Status.

Workspace home page

If you have the Default page option set to Workspace overview in the workspace settings, then the workspace home is displayed whenever you navigate to a workspace (after configuring a data source).

The workspace home presents an overview of the dashboards, monitors, data sources and health states within a workspace. This information is displayed across the following sections:

Health: The Health section lets you to view the rolled-up health state of the monitors and dashboards within your workspace. Use the filters at the top of the section to toggle between Monitors and Dashboards view and then use the adjacent Sort and State filters to control what is displayed. Click a monitor or dashboard in the list to open it. See What are health status rollups?
Data Sources: The Data Sources section displays a list containing each of the data sources configured for the workspace, in addition to the Status of the data source and the count of objects it includes. Click a data source name to quickly open the corresponding overview page.
KPIs: The KPIs section lets you see all the KPIs in this workspace at-a-glance. See KPIs.
Map: The Map section displays an interactive model of the dependencies with this workspace. See Map for more information.

How to add, edit and delete workspaces

From the Settings > Workspaces tab you can view, add, edit, and delete workspaces.

How to add or edit a workspace

You can add a new workspace from either:
- Settings > Workspaces > Add workspace.
- + Create workspace after clicking on the dropdown next to the current workspace name on the left-hand menu.
You can edit workspace settings from either:
- Settings > Workspaces then either click the Edit workspace icon next to the workspace name, or click the workspace name on the left-hand menu.
- Go to the workspace overview page (accessed by clicking on the workspace name on the left-hand menu) and click the top Workspace settings button.
Name:
Enter the name you want to give the workspace.
Description:
Optionally, enter a description of the workspace.
Icon:
Optionally, you can upload an image for the workspace. The image will appear across the application such as on the home page, workspace home and maps
Type:
Optionally, you can give the workspace a type from the dropdown list. This can be used for grouping, filtering or searching, for example from the Organization home page, see Organization home.
Tags:
Optionally, you can give the workspace one or more tags from the dropdown list. These can be used for grouping, filtering or searching, for example from the Organization home page, see Organization home.
Default page:
Choose the page which is shown first when someone browses to this workspace.
Choose from:
- Workspace overview: Sets the default landing page to your workspace dashboard collection. This is the default option used when creating a new workspace.
- First dashboard in the list: Sets the default landing page to the first dashboard listed in the left-hand nav bar.
Optionally, configure the following on the Access Control tab:
Restrict access to this workspace:
Optionally, enable this toggle to limit who can access this workspace. See Access Control
Allow view-only link sharing for all dashboards in this workspace:
When Sharing is enabled for the organization the Allow dashboard sharing toggle is shown and can be enabled or disabled for the workspace. Sharing allows dashboards in the workspace to be shared with anyone. See Sharing.
Optionally, configure the following on the Advanced tab:
Links:
The Links section tells you how many workspaces the new workspace will be linked to. Workspaces will automatically be linked to the new workspace based on their permission settings. See Workspace linking.
Show workspaces:
Click this to view all workspaces that are linked to this workspace.
You can remove linked workspaces by selecting x next to the desired workspace.
You can add linked workspaces by typing their name.
Click Add or Save.

How to delete a workspace

Go to Settings > Workspaces.
Click the Delete workspace icon next to the workspace that you want to delete.
Click Delete.

How to organize a workspace

By default, dashboards appear in alphabetical order on the left-hand menu within a workspace. This short 47 second video shows you how to move dashboards within your workspace:

Dashboard folders

You can create folders and sub-folders to organize your dashboards and reorder the list of to suit your needs by dragging and dropping the dashboard name in the left-hand menu.

Only members of the Admin group, users with Full Control or users with Editor permissions are able to change the order of the dashboards within a workspace.

To create a new dashboard folder, hover over Dashboards in the left-hand menu, click Add folder

and then enter a folder name. You can then create subfolders as required up to three levels deep.

Hover over a folder name then click more options

to display the following options.

Option	Description
Add dashboard	Click to create a new dashboard and place it under the corresponding folder in the left-hand pane.
Add subfolder	Click to create a new subfolder, to a maximum of three levels deep.
Rename folder	Click to rename the folder.
Delete folder	Click to permanently delete the folder. A prompt appears with the option to Delete the content in this folder. Selecting the toggle then clicking Delete will also delete any subfolders and dashboards in the folder you are deleting. If you delete a folder without enabling the Delete the content in this folder toggle, any folders and dashboards in the folder will be moved up one level in the left-hand pane.

What are health status rollups?

Monitors are used to watch for changes in your data and signal when a specified state or threshold is matched. Pro and Enterprise users can even provide scripts for even more in-depth control over monitors.

Depending on how you configure a monitor, you can choose whether the status roll up returns a red, amber or green color to the tile.

The status of the tile will then automatically roll up to the dashboard, and to the workspace. So if a tile turns red, so does the dashboard and workspace.

The red, amber or green status indicators mean you can instantly see if everything is okay or if something needs your attention.

Once your monitor is configured, SquaredUp can alert you when its state changes by sending notifications.

For more information on configuring monitoring see Monitors.

The status of the tile will then automatically roll up to the dashboard, and to the workspace. So if a tile turns red, so does the dashboard and workspace.

The red, amber or green status indicators mean you can instantly see if everything is okay or if something needs your attention.

Your Organization home page shows the state of each workspace.

This short video (2 mins 20) shows status roll-ups in SquaredUp:

Getting notifications of monitor state changes

SquaredUp can alert you when the state of any monitor changes by sending notifications.

More about Notifications

Workspace settings

Admin users can also manage workspaces from Settings > Workspaces. This page provides a single place to manage all of your workspaces. You are able to add, edit, delete and navigate to workspaces from this page.

Access control

You can control access to workspaces by configuring permissions, where you can assign Viewer, Editor or Full Control access to users or groups. If you do not set permissions when creating a workspace, then anyone will be able to view, edit and administer it.

Access control is configured in the Access Control tab of the Edit Workspace window, and is enabled via the Restrict access to this workspace toggle. By default, Restrict access to this workspace is set to off, meaning that the workspace can be viewed, edited and administered by anyone. Enable this toggle to manage access to a workspace.

When using the Restrict access to this workspace fields to control who has access to the workspace:

By default, the user setting the permissions for the workspace will be given Full Control and the Everyone group will be given Viewer permissions.

Tailor access to the workspace, by selecting individual users or user groups from the dropdown and giving them Viewer, Editor or Full Control permissions.

Access level	Permissions
Viewer	User can view the workspace contents (dashboards, scopes, KPIs, etc.). User can add the workspace as a downstream workspace for monitoring from other workspaces. User can see the workspace and related objects in their scopes (i.e., to monitor the state of the workspace). User cannot edit or delete anything within the workspace, including dashboards, tiles, scopes and KPIs. User cannot configure the workspace or its contents (e.g., change workspace name, change the ACL, configure notifications).
Editor	User can do everything from Viewer level, but additionally can modify the workspace contents (dashboards, scopes, KPIs, notifications, etc.). User can modify workspace properties, such as name. User cannot modify the workspace ACL. User cannot delete the workspace.
Full Control	User can do anything with the workspace, including changing its ACL and deleting it.

If the user is not available from the dropdown, you can invite them to the workspace by typing in their email address and then clicking Add. The new user is sent an email inviting them to create an account on SquaredUp. Once the account has been created they will gain access to the organization. See Users and Groups

Administrator special access

Administrators have special ‘administrative’ access to all workspaces. This means they see all workspaces listed under Settings > Workspaces, and they can modify workspace properties, including the ACL, for any workspace.

Administrators do not see all workspaces in the main dashboarding area of SquaredUp, and do not have any access to the contents of workspaces unless they add themselves to the workspace ACL.

Workspace linking

Each workspace is linked to a set of data sources. These data sources are the only data sources that the workspace can read data from.

Data source ACLs are mainly used to restrict the users that can link a data source to workspace - once the data source is linked it is accessible to anyone with access to the workspace. Control over access to data source data is mainly controlled through workspace permissions, not permissions on the data source itself.

This means that all users with access to a workspace are guaranteed to be able to see everything in the workspace, regardless of their permissions on data sources used to populate it. Similarly, any monitoring and alerting is based on this same fixed view of the data. This is particularly important with scopes that match across multiple data sources.

Each workspace can also be linked to a set of other workspaces, for the same reason. The linked workspaces can be accessed to read workspace resources like state or KPIs. Again, this ensures any user viewing state or KPI tiles sees the same data as everyone else with access to the workspace.

Linking is performed automatically where possible. If access control is never enabled for any workspace or data source, linking is completely automatic.

The scenarios where linking occurs automatically are:

Any new workspace is automatically linked to all workspaces and data sources that are accessible to everyone.
Any new data source is automatically linked to all existing workspaces that are accessible to everyone, if the data source is accessible to everyone.
Any new workspace is automatically linked to all existing workspaces that are accessible to everyone, if the new workspace is accessible to everyone.
When a user asks to create a new workspace for a new data source, the workspace is linked to the data source.
When a user adds a downstream workspace on the Monitoring page, the downstream workspace is automatically linked.

When users start restricting access to workspaces and/or data sources, manual linking becomes necessary in some cases.

For example, if user 1 adds a new data source and restricts Link to workspace permissions to only user 2, there will be no automatic linking of the data source to any workspaces. If user 2 wants to use the data source in their workspace, they will need to add the link. The link can be added through the workspace configuration, or by clicking on the data source in the Quick Scope editor.

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