4.3 Managing a Team Workspace

Team workspaces are the key to helping you and your team accomplish tasks and meet objectives, together.

As the owner of a workspace, you are primarily responsible for workspace administration. You can create other containers for information (sub-workspaces and folders), adjust access control to determine who can do what in the workspace, and provide some initial content to assist team members with getting started.

4.3.1 Creating a Team Workspace

By default, everyone in Teaming has rights to create a team workspace.

Team workspaces are the most common type of workspaces. They facilitate team objectives by enabling team members to quickly share files, share ideas, and work together more efficiently and effectively.

Novell Teaming enables you to create a highly visible team workspace in the Team Workspaces directory, or you can create a nested team workspace, which is a team workspace inside of an existing team workspace.

Before you begin creating a team workspace, you might want to view the short tutorial video, Building a Team Workspace. To display the video, follow the link, then click Building a Team Workspace.

Creating a Highly Visible Team Workspace

If you want your team workspace to be highly visible and easy to find in the workspace tree, create the team workspace in the Team Workspaces directory.

  1. Expand Home Workspace in the Workspace Tree Navigation tool, located near the top of the Teaming interface.

    The Home Workspace directory is the highest-level folder in the workspace tree, and might be named something specific to your organization.

  2. Click Team Workspaces.

  3. Click Add a Team Workspace.

    The Add a Team Workspace page is displayed.

    If you do not see this option, your site administrator has not permitted you to create a new workspace at this level. Continue to expand the workspace tree, following the path of your organizational unit, then click the name of the directory where you want to create the new team workspace. Or, follow the steps in Creating a Team Workspace inside of an Existing Team Workspace.

  4. Specify the following information:

    Workspace Title: Provide a title for the workspace.

    Team Members: Specify the team members.

    You can specify individual users, entire groups, or add names that are on your clipboard. For more information about using the Teaming clipboard, see Section 9.5, Using the Teaming Clipboard.

    Workspace Folders: Select the folders that you want the workspace to contain.

    If you later decide that you want to add additional folders, you can add them at any time.

    For information on how to add folders to an existing workspace, see Section 4.1.7, Adding Additional Folders to a Workspace.

    Announcement: (Optional) Select the check box, then type a message in the Announcement Text field.

    This message informs team members about the existence of the workspace, and can also explain the value of the workspace.

  5. Click OK to create the new workspace.

Creating a Team Workspace inside of an Existing Team Workspace

Teaming enables you to create nested workspaces, which are workspaces inside of other workspaces. You can create a team workspace inside of any existing workspace where you have appropriate rights.

You might want to do this if you are not concerned about having high visibility in the workspace tree, and if the team workspace that you want to create consists mostly of members that already belong to a certain workspace.

  1. Navigate to the workspace where you want to create the new team workspace.

  2. Click Manage > Add New Workspace.

    The Add New Workspace page is launched.

  3. In the Workspace section, select Team Workspace.

    You can also create a basic workspace, a project management workspace, and a discussions workspace.

  4. Specify the following information:

    Workspace Title: Specify a title for the workspace.

    Team Members: Specify the team members.

    You can specify individual users, entire groups, or add names that are on your clipboard. For more information about using the Teaming clipboard, see Section 9.5, Using the Teaming Clipboard.

    You can also click Team Members. This displays a list of all of the members of the team workspace where you are creating your new team workspace. Select the names of the users that you want to include in your new team workspace.

    Workspace Folders: Select the folders that you want the workspace to contain.

    If you later decide that you want to add additional folders, you can add them at any time.

    For information on how to add folders to an existing workspace, see Section 4.1.7, Adding Additional Folders to a Workspace.

    Announcement: (Optional) Select the check box, then type a message in the Announcement Text field.

    This message informs team members about the existence of the workspace, and can also explain the value of the workspace.

  5. Click OK to create the new workspace.

4.3.2 Adding Additional Team Members to Your Workspace

After you create your workspace, you can add other Novell Teaming users who need to join your team.

Before you begin adding team members to your workspace, you might want to view the short tutorial video, Adding Members to a Team Workspace. To display this video, follow the link, then click Adding Members to a Team Workspace.

  1. Navigate to the team workspace where you want to add the additional team members.

  2. In the sidebar, in the Team section, click Manage Team.

    The Add or Delete Team Members page is launched.

  3. (Conditional) If this workspace is currently inheriting its team membership from a parent folder, click Yes.

  4. In the Users field, specify the names of the individual users that you want to add to the team.

    You can also specify entire groups in the Groups field, or you can add names that are on your clipboard by clicking Clipboard User Names. For more information about using the Teaming clipboard, see Section 9.5, Using the Teaming Clipboard.

  5. Click OK.

You can announce the workspace to the new team members. For information on how to do this, see Section 4.3.3, Sending E-Mail to Team Members and Announcing the Workspace After Its Creation.

4.3.3 Sending E-Mail to Team Members and Announcing the Workspace After Its Creation

Teaming enables you to send e-mail messages to your entire team. Also, if new team members join the team after the team workspace has already been created, you can use this functionality to announce the workspace to the new team members.

To send mail to team members:

  1. Navigate to the team workspace.

  2. In the sidebar, in the Team section, click Send E-Mail To Team.

    The Send E-Mail page is displayed.

  3. Fill in the appropriate fields.

    For information on filling in the rest of the Send E-Mail form, see Section 9.4, Filling Out the Send E-Mail Page.

  4. Click OK.

4.3.4 Starting or Scheduling a Team Meeting

If you have Novell Conferencing, you can start or schedule a team meeting.

  1. Navigate to the team workspace that contains the team members with whom you want to meet.

  2. In the main sidebar, click Team > Start a Team Meeting.

    The Add meeting page is displayed.

  3. In the Team Members section, deselect any team members that you do not want to invite to the meeting.

    By default, all members of the team are selected.

  4. Click Start Meeting Now, or Schedule for Later, depending on when you want to meet.

    The Conferencing client is launched.

    For more information about how to use Novell Conferencing, see the Novell Conferencing User Guide.

4.3.5 Viewing Team Members

Viewing Team Members in an Accessory from the Workspace Home Page

Accessories are sections at the top of workspaces and folders that provide summary information for you. For more information on working with accessories, see Section 8.0, Managing Accessories.

By default, Novell Teaming includes a team-membership accessory on the home page of your workspace. This accessory displays all team members.

Viewing Team Members from Any Page within The Workspace

You can view the members of the team from any folder within the workspace:

  1. On any page within the workspace, click Team > View Team in the main sidebar.

4.3.6 Allowing Visitors to Your Team Workspace

By default, only team members can view and participate in the workspaces and folders contained in the team workspace. There might be times when you want to allow other people to visit your team workspace (which, by default, means that they can read entries and comment on them, but they cannot create entries).

To allow visitors to your team workspace:

  1. Navigate to the team workspace where you want to allow visitors.

  2. Click Manage > Access Control.

    Teaming displays the Configure Access Control page for the team workspace.

  3. Ensure that the workspace is not inheriting its access control settings. Select the no radio button, then click Apply.

  4. (Conditional) If Visitor is not already a column in the provided table, click Add a role > Visitor:

  5. On the left side of the table, click Add a User, and use the type-to-find feature to select the name of the person who you want to add as a visitor to the team workspace.

  6. In that new user’s row, select the check box in the Visitor column.

  7. Repeat Step 5 and Step 6 until you have added all your visitors.

  8. Click Save Changes > Close.

The people for whom you selected the Visitor role now have the right to view your team workspace and to add comments to existing entries. They cannot create new entries.

For more information on managing access control, see Managing Access Control for Users and Groups in the Novell Teaming 2.1 Advanced User Guide.