Workspaces Usage

What are Workspaces?

Starting with version 7.3.0, OneStream introduced Workspaces, a sandboxed environment in which engineers can develop multiple, complex financial scenarios and organize dashboard objects. Workspaces store dashboard maintenance units (DMUs) and facilitate community development. They are the foundation for dashboards and will continue to evolve into the framework that encapsulates artifacts needed to develop business solutions.

Workspace Benefits

Workspaces provide the following benefits:

1. Isolation: Dashboards are isolated between Workspaces, allowing multiple developers to work on the same dashboard or solution within a sandboxed environment.
2. Flexibility: Developers and team members gain greater flexibility in testing, making changes, and planning new features.
3. Name Consistency: Dashboard Maintenance Units and their objects can retain the same names in separate workspaces, eliminating the need for renaming and reducing naming conflicts, especially when importing and exporting objects from other applications or sources.
4. Selective Sharing: You can selectively share workspace objects, such as embedded dashboards, parameters, file resources, and string resources, across different workspaces, promoting object reuse rather than duplication.
5. Future-Ready: Workspaces establish a foundation for future enhancements and ongoing development.

Workspace Definitions

Workspaces operate according to the following conventions:

Naming Conventions

All DMU objects can have the same name if they are in separate workspaces.

Default Workspace

Upon installing OneStream 7.3.0 or later, existing DMUs migrate to the Default workspace. All previously existing dashboards will continue to function correctly, as will existing MarketPlace and dashboard solutions.

• The Default workspace is always shared and is accessible by any other workspace, even if not explicitly added to the Shared Workspaces list.
• Parameter references do not consider workflows and backward compatibility is enabled.

Sharing

Sharing enables developers to selectively share dashboard items—such as dashboards, parameters, components, and adapters—across multiple workspaces. For optimal organization, implement related items within the same workspace to minimize cross-workspace sharing. When sharing is necessary, it facilitates reuse of existing items rather than creating duplicates.

Workspace Properties

Is Shareable Workspace

When the Is Shareable Workspace property is set to True, other workspaces can reference objects in the current workspace. The Default workspace is predefined by OneStream with the Is Shareable Workspace property always set to True, allowing all other workspaces to reference dashboards and parameters defined within it.

The Default workspace also functions as though all other shareable workspaces are included in its Shared Workspaces list. This allows for any dashboard or parameter from another shareable workspace to be referenced by items in the Default workspace. This approach simplifies backward compatibility, as new workspaces gain access to all previously existing items in the Default workspace. However, implementers should avoid using similar names for items in the Default and custom workspaces to prevent conflicts.

Cube views, data management sequences, and extensible documents are currently implemented outside of workspaces, but they can reference parameters defined in any shareable workspace. For those items, the search order is determined as if the item (for example, the cube view) was implemented in the Default workspace.

Shared Workspace Names

This property indicates the workspace names for use in the current workspace. This is a comma-separated (no spaces) list of names that can be used to find embedded dashboards, parameters, file resources, string resources, etc. while processing a dashboard in this workspace. Referenced workspaces must have the Is Shared Workspace property set to TRUE.

Search Order

When sharing items across multiple workspaces, a specific search order is used. Items are found by checking the following sources in order:

1. The current workspace
2. The Default workspace
3. The Shared Workspace Names list

note

If all items are defined in the Default workspace, search order is irrelevant.

Create a Workspace

1. Click Application > Presentation > Workspaces
2. Select Workspaces from the submenu.
3. Click Create Workspace in the dashboard toolbar.
4. In Name and Description, enter a name and description for the workspace. Do not use special characters, dashes (-) or underscores (_) in names.
5. Configure Security and Sharing settings.
6. Click Save.