Aha! Roadmaps | Workspaces and workspace lines

When you build out your workspace hierarchy, you will come across two types of hierarchy elements: workspaces and workspace lines.

• Workspaces should be organized around what you deliver to your customers or users.

• Workspace lines are a way for you to organize your workspaces into families, suites, or groups. Workspace lines can also represent any level in your organization, such as business units, divisions, and your company. Therefore, a workspace line can contain other workspace lines and workspaces.

You must be an Aha! Roadmaps administrator with customization permissions to configure workspaces and workspace lines.

Click any of the following links to skip ahead:

• Configure your workspace hierarchy

• Configure workspaces

• Configure workspace lines

• Move workspaces to a new workspace line

• Create your overall workspace structure

• Report on workspace settings

Configure your workspace hierarchy

Setting the right hierarchy is important if you want easy navigation or to set up more sophisticated user permissions. But it is especially important for rolling up strategy from the workspace all the way up to the company level.

Before configuring workspaces or workspace lines, we recommend you read through how to add your workspaces in Aha! Roadmaps and review the Aha! Roadmaps data model for the various workspace types available to ensure you are setting the right hierarchy.

You can start by setting up either workspaces or workspace lines under Settings ⚙️ Account Workspaces. You can rearrange your groupings at any time. You can adjust your workspace hierarchy by creating a workspace line and then selecting which workspaces belong to it. Or you can select a workspace and choose which workspace line it belongs to.

Workspaces cannot be converted to workspace lines and vice versa.

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Configure workspaces

1. Click Add workspace.

2. Select the workspace type you wish to create. The different workspace types are pre-configured for particular work.

3. Select the workspace line your new workspace should belong to (if one exists).The Workspace line field shows where your workspace line fits into the hierarchy — specifically who a workspace line's parents are in the hierarchy. This field is optional since a workspace line might have no parents.

4. Name your workspace. The Name field is the name you would like to display throughout Aha! reports, roadmaps, and records.

5. Add a prefix. Aha! records use the Prefix field to build unique identifiers for records in that workspace line. The abbreviation you pick here should be a good shorthand for the workspace line. You can edit it, but editing the prefix will not change any records created with the original prefix.

6. If you are an Enterprise+ customer, you will see an option to apply a Workspace template as well. You can use workspace templates to apply consistent workspace settings in workspaces across your account.

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Configure workspace lines

1. Click on Add line.

2. Select the line's Type. This is one of the workspace types.

3. Select the workspace line your new line belongs to (if one exists).

4. Enter a Name, Prefix, and Label.

5. Add any child workspaces or workspace lines (if they exist). Then click Create line.

Workspace lines with equivalent Label will be grouped on equivalent levels of the hierarchy report and the workspace settings report. A workspace line also inherits its terminology in the top-level navigation menu from its label.

• It may be helpful to select consistent workspace line label nomenclature across your Aha! Roadmaps account before you start creating workspace lines. (For example: "Company Division Subdivision Workspace" or "Organization Team Group Workspace".) You can also edit this field at any time if your account's nomenclature needs to change.

• There are situations where you might want to have inconsistent nomenclature in your account — if you want to ensure that no one will be able to accidentally report on one workspace's initiatives under a different workspace line's goals, for example.

Remember that once you create a workspace hierarchy, you can select which workspace or workspace line you are going to work on from the dropdown menu at the top-left of the Aha! Roadmaps navigation.

This dropdown allows you to expand or collapse workspace lines, type to search for a specific workspace, and also saves the three most recent workspaces you have viewed for faster access.

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Move workspaces to a new workspace line

If your workspace hierarchy changes, you may need to move a workspace or a set of workspaces to a new workspace line. Before you do so, consider four ways the move might affect your team:

• Goals and initiatives can roll up to higher hierarchy levels — which means if you move workspaces to a new workspace line, you may need to reconfigure those roll up record links.

• Strategic records such as models, positioning, personas, and competitors can be inherited from higher workspace hierarchy levels — which means if you move workspaces to a new workspace line, you may need to review your strategic records in the Strategy tab of the navigation.

• Many workspace settings can be inherited from the workspace line — which means moving a workspace to a new workspace line will also change the workspace's settings.

• Users can inherit their user permissions from a workspace line — which means moving a workspace to a new workspace line could also change users' workspace access and permission levels.

• Moving a workspace to a new workspace line can affect your integration field mappings. If your workspace inherits its record layout from its parent line, the layouts it inherits from the new parent line might not contain the same fields — and so an integration webhook will not be able to sync that information with an external team.

To address these concerns, review the settings of the workspace(s) you intend to move. You may find the workspace settings report helpful here. Pay attention to any setting that is set to Inherit from line, and make sure the new workspace line's settings are settings you want the child workspaces to inherit.

Then, it's time to look at users. Navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Users and filter the list of users by the workspace(s) you intend to move. Make sure that the appropriate users have the appropriate user permissions in the new workspace line, and if you are an Enterprise+ customer, make sure they will still have access to the appropriate custom roles.

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Create your overall workspace structure

With workspaces and workspace lines, you will create an overall structure representing your offerings and how they are related to one another for your customers and within your company.

Often your workspaces have technical components, or are part of a bundled or larger solution, or may even be more of a platform of capabilities to benefit the entire portfolio. When you create a workspace structure that considers these relationships, your roadmaps at every level of detail can be made easily from the day-to-day work that is already being done.

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Report on workspace settings

For a comprehensive view of the workspace settings across your Aha! Roadmaps account, navigate to Settings ⚙️ Workspace in any workspace or workspace line, then click the View report link to open a pre-built list report.

This report will show you the settings for every workspace and workspace line in your account that you have access to.

Use the report to view your workspace settings all on one page, so you can compare them at a glance and adjust them easily.

To view your workspace settings in the context of your workspace hierarchy, load your workspace settings report, and then use the Record type dropdown to view your report as a pivot table.

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