Spaces

A Space is a container for a body of work inside one organization. Features, access groups, chats, files, tags, projects, managed databases and connected mailboxes each belong to exactly one Space.

Your organization starts with one, called Main, and most organizations stay that way. If yours has only one Space, nothing on this page is visible to you and you can safely skip it: there is no control to find, no badge to read, and every list shows everything as it always has.

A second Space is for work that should be kept apart: a rebuild that will run alongside the real thing for a few months, a client whose data stays separate, a training set for new hires. It is the nearest thing Ronja has to a separate environment inside one organization — its own features, its own access groups, its own chats and files.

The three rules

A Space is separate. You are in it if an admin put you on its member list — on the Space’s own page — or if the Space includes everyone. Main always includes everyone, and admins are in every Space.
Access groups work inside their Space. Inside a Space, access groups and features work exactly as they do everywhere else, among the people in that Space. An access group’s Everyone switch means everyone in that Space, and nothing shared with an access group in one Space reaches somebody who is not in that Space — a feature, a chat, a project, a workflow, a note or a secret alike.
Anything shared with you by name works anywhere. A chat or a project somebody shared with you, or a feature you were made a maintainer of, reaches you wherever it lives — like being handed a document. Your own work stays yours, in the Space you made it: a private feature is listed in the Space you created it in, and opens from anywhere.

So there are two ways something in another Space can reach you, and only one of them crosses Spaces: being in that Space, or being handed the thing personally.

What changes when you switch

Everything that lists things shows the Space you are in:

Features, Files, Apps, Metrics, tags, projects, your chats, managed databases and mailboxes.
Home’s app tabs: Recent, Trending and Favorites show only apps in the Space you are in.
Search (⌘K).
What Ronja herself can find. Ask her what tables exist and she answers for the Space you are in.

That includes your private features: each one is listed in the Space you created it in, so a new Space starts without the private features you built in Main. One you create somewhere no Space is chosen — over the API or the command line, or by Ronja in a Slack or Microsoft Teams chat — lands in your organization’s default Space. My Private Feature, your personal home, follows the same rule: each Space has its own, made the first time something you make without choosing a feature lands in it there — a Saved Agent, or a Make my own copy of an app. Something made where no Space is chosen lands in the default Space’s. So a new Space shows no My Private Feature of yours until you make something there, and the one in Main opens from anywhere by its link.

Two kinds of page deliberately do not change:

Admin pages stay organization-wide — the trash, the audit log, activity, usage, runs and traces. A thing you deleted has to be findable without first guessing which Space it was in.
Users & Access follows the Space you are in, like every other list: its rows are that Space’s people and its columns are that Space’s access groups. So you do that work standing in the Space it concerns — pick the Space from the Spaces picker in your account menu, or Switch to this Space on its row on the Spaces page — and the description under the page title names the Space it is showing. One column there is not about the Space: a person’s role is organization-wide, so changing it on this page changes it everywhere, and the role menu says so.

A link opens if you can reach the thing. A Space does not change how access works — it decides which people an access group can reach through. A link to a chat shared with you personally, to your own file or private feature, or to a feature you maintain opens from anywhere. A link to something whose only route to you is an access group in a Space you are not in does not: you see the same “not found” you would see for anything you have no access to. Ask an admin to include you in that Space.

A feature you open from outside the Space you are in says so at the top of its page, and offers to switch you over. A chat carries a small badge naming its Space, because a chat stays in the Space it was created in: open a chat from another Space and ask a question, and the answers describe that Space’s work, which is what you want and worth knowing.

Moving between Spaces

If you are in more than one Space, open your account menu — your name at the very bottom of the sidebar. The line under your name names your organization and the Space you are in, and the menu entry Spaces reads the same name beside it. Click Spaces, pick one from the list, and this tab moves there. Admins also get Manage Spaces… at the bottom of that list, which opens the Spaces page where Spaces are created.

Each browser tab keeps the Space it shows, across reloads. Two tabs can sit in two Spaces, which is the point: a rebuild in one, the real thing in the other. Reloading a tab leaves it where it was, and a new tab opens in the Space you last chose — on a fresh browser session that is Main (or whichever Space is badged Default), which is where nearly everyone works.

A chat you start from a project is in the project’s Space, even if you were looking at another one when you started it — so it appears in that Space’s list of chats, not in the one your tab is showing. The same is true of a chat you start on a feature’s page, My Private Feature included: it belongs where the feature belongs.

If the Space a tab is showing goes away while you are working in it — somebody deleted it, or took you out of it — Ronja moves that tab to your organization’s default Space and says so. Once you are out of a Space, the private features you made there — your My Private Feature there included — no longer appear in your lists, because each is listed only in the Space it was made in — but a link to one still opens.

Creating a Space

Open Admin → Spaces. The page lists your organization’s Spaces and is where a new one is created.
Click New Space at the top right, give it a Name and an optional Description, and click Create Space.

A new Space is born closed: only you and your organization’s other admins are in it, so nobody else’s sidebar changes. It also starts with one access group called Default that everybody in the Space is in and that sees every feature in the Space — so the moment you include somebody, they reach everything shared there. Create more access groups later if different people in the Space should see different things.

Creating a Space lands you on its page, which is where you include people.

Each Space’s name on the Spaces page links to that Space’s page, and the end of its row carries the two actions that are not about one Space’s settings: Switch to this Space moves this browser tab into that Space, and the bin button (absent on the Default Space) deletes it. The Space your tab is in carries a Current chip and no Switch to this Space; a Space that includes everyone carries an Everyone chip. Renaming a Space does not rename its access group — an access group is its own thing, with its own name.

At most 20 Spaces per organization.

Letting someone into a Space

Who is in a Space is decided on the Space’s own page — nothing else grants entry.

Open Admin → Spaces and click the Space.
In the People section, tick the people you want in it. The section lists everyone in the organization; ticking somebody puts them in the Space, and they then reach everything shared with that Space’s access groups. Do this before adding them to one of the Space’s access groups — an access group only reaches the people in its own Space, so adding somebody who is not in it is refused.
Nothing else is needed. Spaces appears in their account menu the next time they load Ronja.

Two things on that page you should know about:

Administrators have no checkbox. Their row reads admin — in every Space instead, because an admin is in every Space and there is nothing to grant or take away.
The Who can enter section carries one switch, Everyone in the organization is included. Turn it on and everybody in the organization is in the Space and the People list is ignored — the people you ticked are remembered and come back into force the moment you turn it off again. On the Space badged Default the switch is on and locked: every organization needs one Space nobody is shut out of.

Turning that switch off asks you to confirm, because people leave at once: “People you include explicitly stay in. Everyone else leaves the Space immediately and its access groups, and any automation or channel bound to one of those groups by someone who is not included stops with them.” Both halves are worth reading twice. Everybody who leaves is also taken out of the Space’s access groups — the same clean-up that happens when you untick one person, and for the same reason (see Taking someone out of a Space). And a scheduled automation or a bridged channel that reaches its work through one of this Space’s access groups stops when the person who set it up is no longer in the Space.

To change what people in a Space can reach, use its access groups as usual: Users & Access, in that Space, lists the Space’s people against the Space’s access groups. Note that Invite users there still invites somebody to the organization — it does not put them in the Space you are looking at, and the page says so in a line above the matrix, with a link to the Space’s own page.

Taking someone out of a Space

Untick them in the People section. From then on they cannot enter the Space, it disappears from their Spaces list, and nothing shared with the Space’s access groups reaches them any more.

What they keep:

Their own work in that Space — a chat they had, a private feature, a file they uploaded. It no longer appears in their lists, but a link to it still opens.
Anything shared with them by name, and any feature they maintain.
A conversation already under way. A chat or a run that is going when you remove them keeps going until it ends; what changes is what they can reach next.

Removing somebody from a Space also removes them from that Space’s access groups. That is deliberate: a membership in an access group whose Space you have left reaches nothing, and it would be invisible on that Space’s Users & Access — so it could neither be seen nor cleared, and would come back the moment you included the person again.

What a Space is not

Not a replacement for access groups. An access group decides who reaches what, inside its Space. A Space decides which people that group can reach at all, and what your lists show. A Space contains access groups, not the other way round — see Space vs Access Group.
Not a wall around a link. Being in a Space is one of the two ways something reaches you; the other is somebody handing it to you by name, and that crosses Spaces on purpose.
Not a folder. Nothing moves into a Space by being dragged there; a thing is in the Space it was created in. A sub-feature (a Feature nested inside another Feature) is made in its parent feature’s Space and stays there. So a feature can’t be moved under a feature in another Space: the move is refused with an error naming the Space the feature is in.

Deleting a Space

Only an empty Space can be deleted, and the one badged Default never can.

On Admin → Spaces, click the bin button at the end of the Space’s row — or Delete Space at the bottom of the Space’s own page.
Type the Space’s name to enable Delete Space, and click it.

If anything is still in the Space, Ronja refuses and tells you what — the features, chats, files, tags, projects, databases or mailboxes still there, including anything of them sitting in the trash, and anything still attached to the Space’s access groups. Private features there are named by whose they are, since you cannot see someone else’s: ask their owner to delete them. A My Private Feature with nothing in it never holds the delete up — it is deleted with the Space. One with something in it (even something in the trash), with a move into or out of it still waiting for approval, or that has been exported, holds it up like any other private feature. A private feature whose owner has left the organization is named by its id instead, and an admin can delete it. Delete or purge those first, then delete the Space.