Creating workspaces
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In Totara you can build powerful, collaborative workspaces where social and informal learning can flourish.
Workspaces allow users to have discussions with specific groups of users and add learning resources for everyone in the workspace.
Workspaces can either be Public, Private or Hidden.
If the workspace is Public then it means anyone can find and join the space without permission.
Users will also be able to view the workspace, look at the discussion and review the learning resources without joining the space.
If they want to post in the discussion and interact with other users and resources, they can choose to Join.
If the workspace is Private then users will be able to find the workspace by searching for it.
Users can find workspaces either via Find workspaces in the Your workspace section or via the Explore catalogue, which we will look at in more detail shortly.
Users can request access to a private workspace and this can be granted by a Workspace Owner.
Workspaces can also be Hidden, meaning they will not show up when users search for them.
To join a hidden workspace, users need to be added by a Workspace Owner or by a Site Administrator if adding bulk members via audiences. Note that this task can only be completed by Site Administrators by default, although you can add the capability to other roles if you wish.
In this video, I’ll create a new public workspace.
To create a new workspace navigate to Your workspaces and select Create new.
Then you’ll just need to give the workspace a name, something that’s easy to find for others to join.
I’ll also add a description so people know the purpose of the workspace.
You can also add a hashtag to help other users find this if there are lots of workspaces on your site and I’ll add an image to help distinguish the space.
When setting up the space you can decide whether to make it Public, Private or Hidden.
If you choose to make the space Public then you won’t be able to make it Private later and the same is true if you decide to make the workspace Private.
Private workspaces can’t be made public once they’ve been created.
You could choose to Hide a private workspace which means it won’t appear in the search results.
You will be also able to unhide the workspace later if you wish.
For now, I’ll create a Public workspace so everyone in the organisation can benefit from it.
And finally, I will add some tags, set in the site-wide tag settings, which will help users find this workspace during a search. See our separate video on Managing tags in the Playlists and resources course.
Once you’re happy with how the workspace is set up, select Create and the space will be live.
As Site Administrator, you can decide if you want workspaces to be discoverable in the Explore catalogue.
The workspace I created can now be discovered via the Explore catalogue or via Find workspaces in Your workspaces.
Users will just need to select Join and they’ll be added to the space.
Users can choose to mute notifications from the workspace if they no longer want to receive updates.
They can do this by selecting the bell icon or by selecting the dropdown and selecting Mute notifications.
By default, when a user is added to a workspace they will receive a notification.
As Site Administrator, you can edit the notification used in the site-wide Notifications.
From here, you can enable or disable the notification or Edit the notification.
I’ll personalise my notification by addressing the user by name.
Site Administrators and Workspace Owners can also delete a workspace if it is no longer required by selecting the menu and choosing Delete workspace.
If you do decide to delete a workspace, remember that you’ll lose all the data stored in that workspace.
So, that’s how you create and manage a workspace in Totara.
Why not have a go at creating your own workspace now?