Workspaces

A Workspace holds your Spaces, its people and its usage. Every Workspace is the same kind of thing, and each has a plan: Free, Starter, Pro or Studio.

Your first Workspace

An account starts in no Workspace. The first time you open Otherspace after you’re let in, it makes one for you, named from your first name (“Sam’s Workspace”), with a first Space in it (My first Space) and a blank Canvas there, and opens the Canvas. You’re the Workspace’s Owner and it starts on Free. Rename either whenever you like: the Workspace in its settings, the Space from its menu.

It happens once: opening Otherspace in another tab at the same moment, or trying again after a dropped connection, never makes a second Workspace. If it can’t be set up, you see Try again.

If you joined by accepting an invitation, you’re in the Workspace you joined, on what was shared with you, and nothing is made for you.

This happens once for each account. If you’ve had a Workspace of your own and close it, leaving you in none, you see You’re not in a Workspace: choose New Workspace to make one (on Free, if you don’t own one), or Account settings to manage or delete your account.

You can own one Workspace on Free. Each Workspace has its own plan and billing, so you can own as many on Starter, Pro or Studio as you need. Workspaces other people have invited you to don’t count.

Making another Workspace

Open the Workspace switcher at the top of the sidebar and choose New Workspace…, then name it.

If you don’t own a Free Workspace, it’s made on Free straight away, and you’re working in it.
If you already own one, the new Workspace needs a paid plan from the start: choose Starter, Pro or Studio, how often you pay and, for Pro or Studio, how many seats, then Continue to checkout and pay with Stripe. The Workspace is made once you’ve paid: you’re its Owner, it’s on the plan you chose, and you land on its Home. If you cancel at checkout, or leave it, nothing is made and nothing is charged.

Working alone, or with others

Who a Workspace works with depends on its plan:

Free is just yours: no Members, Guests or Teams, and its Spaces and Canvases are shared by link only.
Starter is yours, and you can invite Guests to view your work, such as clients, free. From Members, invite them as Guests, or share a Space or Canvas with their email address at Can view. On Starter, Guests can view only.
Pro works with Guests too: Guests who view are free, and a Guest can also be given Can edit (or Can manage) on a Space or Canvas, which takes a Full seat. Starter and Pro have no Members, Admins or Teams.
Studio works with everyone: Members, Admins, Guests and Teams, and sharing at any level.

In Settings › Members on Free, or Teams on Free, Starter or Pro, it says what the plan would need.

Seats. Pro and Studio are billed by the seat (Pro from 1, Studio from 2, up to 100). The Owner, each Admin and Member, and each Guest who can edit or manage something need one; a Guest who can only view is free. A change that needs a seat that isn’t paid for says A Full seat is required (see Seats).

Working with Members, Admins and Teams comes with Studio: its people share its usage, which comes per seat. The Workspace’s Owner upgrades it in Settings › Plan, choosing its seats (see Upgrading), and can then invite people.

Inviting people

In a Studio Workspace, the Owner and Admins invite people from Members in the sidebar (or Workspace settings › Members) with Invite people: enter an email address and choose a role: the Owner invites a Member, an Admin or a Guest; Admins invite Members and Guests. We email them a link. Each invitation works for 7 days, and only for the address it was sent to.

Pending invitations are listed above the Workspace’s people, with who sent each one and when it expires. From an invitation’s Manage menu:

Resend sends it again with a new expiry. An expired invitation works again, with the same link.
Revoke closes its link straight away.

The person invited opens the link. If they don’t have an account, they create one from it and confirm their email address with the emailed code, then come back to the invitation. They see who invited them, to which Workspace and as what, and choose Accept and join or Decline. Accepting adds them to the Workspace and takes them into it. Someone signed in with a different address sees only that the invitation is for someone else, and can switch account.

If new sign-ups are paused (see Accounts), accepting an invitation still lets an invited person in straight away: their account is let in when they accept, not when the invitation is sent. When they accept, Otherspace first checks the Workspace as it is then: an invitation to a read-only Workspace, or for a role its plan no longer includes, can’t be accepted, and they’re asked for a new one. Declining, a revoked invitation or an expired one lets no one in.

Inviting someone to a single Space, Project or Canvas, without making them a member of the Workspace, isn’t available. To show one Canvas to someone, share its link.

Switching

The top of the sidebar shows the Workspace, its plan (Free, Starter, Pro or Studio) and your role in it. Select it to see all your Workspaces, each with its plan, and the one shown checked. Choosing one makes it the Workspace you’re working in, and takes you to where you were last in it. The first time, that’s its Home: its Spaces, and New Space.

Otherspace remembers which Workspace you’re in, and where you were last in each, on every device you sign in on. Only choosing a Workspace changes which one you’re working in. Opening a Space by its address shows it in its own Workspace, with that Workspace at the top of the sidebar, but you’re still working in the same Workspace as before: opening Otherspace takes you back there. To work in the Workspace shown, choose it. Workspace settings is in the same menu, for the Workspace you’re working in.

If you leave a Workspace, or are removed from it, you’re back in another Workspace of yours (the first by name).

Members and roles

Workspace settings › Members lists everyone in the Workspace, with their role:

Owner: there is exactly one. They can rename the Workspace, change anyone else’s role between Admin, Member and Guest, and remove anyone. Passing ownership on isn’t available yet, so the Owner can’t leave.
Admin: can rename the Workspace, and remove Members and Guests.
Member: belongs to the Workspace, makes Spaces, and opens what is shared with everyone in it.
Guest: for freelancers and clients. A Guest opens only what is shared with them (directly, or through a Team they are in), never what is shared with everyone in the Workspace. They make no Spaces, invite no one, and see only the Workspace’s Owner and Admins in Members, not its whole directory. A Guest can be in Teams. The Owner can make a Guest a Member, or a Member a Guest.

Removing someone, and leaving, ask you to confirm first. Whoever leaves or is removed is no longer in the Workspace; what they made stays. A Workspace on Free, Starter or Pro has no Members: it’s yours, and on Starter and Pro its Guests’.

Workspace settings › General shows the Workspace’s name, which the Owner or an Admin can change.

Space access

Each Space in a Studio Workspace has its own access, separate from Workspace roles. Choose Share in a Space’s header to see who can open it:

Can view: open the Space and its Canvases, read-only.
Can edit: also make, change and rename Canvases, and share them by link.
Can manage: also delete and restore its Canvases, rename the Space and decide who else has access.

A Space’s access is given to:

Everyone in the Workspace, at one level (No access, Can view or Can edit);
Teams (see Teams), each at its own level;
People in the Workspace, one by one;
Anyone else, by email: they’re invited to the Workspace as a Guest, and their access waits until they accept (see Inviting people).

Choose Share in a Space’s header. Someone who manages the Space types into Add people, teams or emails to find the Workspace’s people and Teams, or enters an email address, picks a level and adds them. Each row shows where its access comes from (a Team, a person’s own, the Workspace’s Owner and Admins by their role, or an invitation waiting to be accepted), and its menu changes the level or takes the access away. Remove invitation takes back what was waiting for an invited address; if nothing else is waiting for that Guest invitation, it’s cancelled. No one can give more access than they have, and someone who can edit a Space works in it but can’t share it.

Someone’s access is the furthest of what reaches them: everyone’s (never a Guest’s), their Teams’, and their own. Whoever makes a Space manages it, and the Workspace’s Owner and Admins manage every Space in it. Managing a Space means changing who can open it; editing means working in it. Anyone who can open a Space can see who has access. A Space in a Workspace on Free is just yours, so it has no Share. A single Canvas can also be shared on its own, with people who can’t open its Space (see Sharing a Canvas).

Teams

A Team is a group of a Studio Workspace’s people, such as Design or a client’s reviewers, to share Spaces with together. Teams aren’t above Spaces: a Space can be shared with several Teams and with people. The Owner and Admins make, rename and delete Teams in Workspace settings › Teams, and choose who is in each. Everyone in the Workspace can see its Teams. Taking someone out of a Team, or deleting a Team, takes away the access it gave them straight away, including on Canvases they have open. A Workspace on Free, Starter or Pro has no Teams.

Transferring ownership

A Workspace has one Owner, who looks after its plan, seats, billing and people, and who can close it. To hand it to someone else, the Owner opens Settings › Members and chooses Transfer ownership…:

Choose who: any Admin or Member of the Workspace. A Guest can’t receive it; make them a Member first.
Choose what happens to you once they accept: Become an Admin, or Leave the Workspace.
Choose Offer ownership.

Nothing changes until they accept: you stay the Owner, and they keep their role. They see the offer across the top of the Workspace (and in Settings › Members), with Accept and Decline. While it waits, you can Cancel transfer.

When they accept, they become the Owner at once, and you become an Admin or leave, as you chose. Everything about the Workspace stays as it was: its plan, subscription, seats, usage, billing and everything in it. If invoices were going to your email address, they go to the new Owner’s from then on; if someone set a separate billing contact, that stays. If they’re no longer an Admin or Member when they try to accept, the offer is cancelled.

Closing a Workspace

The Workspace’s Owner can close it for good: choose Workspace settings, then General, then Close Workspace…, and type the Workspace’s name to confirm.

Everyone in it loses access at once, and its invitations and Teams go.
Its Spaces and Canvases, and everything in them, are deleted for good. They can’t be restored from Trash.
Drafts stay with the people who made them.
Its billing records, such as invoices and usage, are kept.
Within a day, its billing details are deleted from Stripe, our payment provider: the billing name, email, address, tax IDs and saved cards. Stripe keeps its invoices and payments, as tax records.

Once it’s closed, no one can open its Billing, so download any invoices you need first.

A Workspace with a live subscription can’t be closed. Cancel the plan in Manage billing first, and close the Workspace once the plan has ended. If it was the only Workspace you had, you name a new one.