# Workspace and team setup

### What are Workspaces?

Workspaces are Wonderly's top-level containers. Each one holds its own projects, tasks, documents, and team members. Workspaces are completely separate from each other. They don't share data, permissions, or settings.

When you belong to multiple workspaces, you are managing separate environments. A project in one workspace cannot be seen or accessed from another.

### Why use multiple workspaces?

Workspaces let you control who sees what. Each workspace is its own boundary, so one team's projects don't appear in another's. This is useful when you:

* Manage different clients who should not see each other's work
* Run departments that need separate access like marketing and engineering
* Work with external stakeholders who should only see their own projects
* Want to keep personal work isolated from team work

For example, a consulting firm with two clients, Acme Corp and Beta Industries, creates two workspaces. Team members working on Acme are added to the Acme workspace. They cannot see any Beta projects, even if they work at the same firm. Access is controlled by workspace membership.

### Workspaces vs Folders

Both organize work, but they serve different purposes.

**Use workspaces when** you need to separate access. Different clients, different departments, or situations where not everyone should see everything.

**Use folders when** you need to organize work within the same team. Multiple campaigns, thematic groupings, or related projects where all team members should see all work.

For example, a marketing team managing three campaigns (Q1 Product Launch, Q2 Rebrand, Q3 Partnership) should use three folders within a single marketing workspace. All team members see all campaigns.

However, if the Q1 Product Launch involves external stakeholders, create a separate workspace for that client. Invite only the relevant team members and the client contact. Their work stays isolated from internal marketing work.

### How permissions work

Workspace membership is the only permission mechanism. There are no granular role controls within a workspace.

* All members in a workspace have the same access level. You cannot assign different roles like "viewer" or "editor" to individual members.
* A workspace owner or admin must add you. You don't automatically gain access.
* When removed from a workspace, you lose access to all projects and tasks in that space immediately.
* Your role in one workspace is independent of your role in another. You might be an admin in one and a regular member in another.

If you need to restrict a team member's access to only specific projects within a workspace, you cannot do so. You would need to create a separate workspace and add only the relevant members.

For example, your engineering workspace has five members who all have the same access. If you want to restrict the designer's access to only design projects, create a separate design workspace and add only the designer and relevant team members.

### What doesn't cross workspaces

Workspaces are intentionally isolated. This keeps data secure and permissions simple, but it means some things require manual setup in each workspace:

* **Projects and tasks** cannot be viewed or edited from another workspace
* **Documents** remain local unless shared externally via link
* **Custom fields and templates** are workspace-specific. A template in one workspace is not available in another.
* **Calendars** connected in one workspace must be reconnected separately in another
* **Statuses and labels** do not sync across workspaces
* **Notifications** are separate. Activity in one workspace does not appear in another.

Plan your workspace structure early. If you need the same project template in multiple workspaces, you will need to set it up separately in each one.

### What's next

Once your workspace structure is in place, the next step is adding members and managing access. See [Adding Members to a Workspace](https://www.wonderly.com/help/work-hub/workspaces-overview/set-up-and-access/add-and-manage-workspace-members-and-permissions) for step-by-step instructions.