Spaces

What is a Space?

A Space is a secure, shared work environment in which all features and content reside. Any documentation, analytics, diagrams, user stories, or other content you produce within Elements or users you add to the system are tied to a Space.

Click to open Learning Objectives

LO1-1 Being able to define Spaces

LO1-2 Understanding how many Spaces I need

LO1-3 Understanding how licenses affect Spaces

LO1-4 Being able to distinguish different space types

LO1-5 Being able to create a new Space

 

How many Spaces?

Any user can be a member of, or even own, multiple Spaces. This is because different Spaces can be used for different purposes.

Click to open illustrative example

A company ‘Zenalpha’ has the core Space called ‘Zenalpha Operations’ which they use to manage their core Production Org, design, document and plan changes to their internal systems and operating model.

However, ‘Zenalpha’ is a software provider, and they want to manage and document their customer-facing Salesforce managed package as well. Since they follow a different methodology and workflow than the internal admin team, they have a separate Space called ‘Zenalpha Product’ in which they manage development of their customer-facing software.

Zenalpha also has a consulting arm, as their Salesforce managed package is complex and requires careful installation to match the configuration of the client’s Salesforce Org. Therefore Zenalpha customer success team also have a separate Space per each one of their new clients so they can sync and analyze their Orgs to plan how to proceed with installing the company’s managed package.

Finally, every member of the Zenalpha company who uses Elements also has their own, personal ‘Playground’ Spaces which they use to train their skills, perform tasks outlined in the Elements Academy, and experiment with features.

How licensing works?

Our licensing is split into 2 categories:

Licensing for companies
Whatever license you purchase, it is always applied to a single Space. Therefore if you would need multiple Spaces for managing your different business units, you would need to purchase separate licenses for each Space. Otherwise you would not have access to all features you might want to utilise. Check our pricing page for more details.

Licensing for consultants
For consultants we offer a special ‘consulting license’ type which is $500 per user per year. This license is tied to the user, as opposed to the Space, and allows the license holder to:

  • Create ‘Consulting Spaces’ which give you access to all Elements functionality for as long as you need it to implement a project.
  • Join an existing company Space and be able to create / manage content without requiring a separate license from the client’s pool

Check our pricing page for more details on our offering to consultants.

Different space types

Spaces are grouped into following types:

  • Playground: this is the default Space for every user who registers in Elements. You cannot share content or add other users to your Playground. It is unique to you. However, you do have access to the full range of Elements features. The Playground Space exists so you can develop confidence and hone your skills with using Elements without polluting your paid-for company Spaces.

  • Shared Spaces: Every type of Space you create in Elements is ‘shared’, meaning you can add additional users to them. We distinguish 2 types of shared Spaces:
    • Free: When you create a new Space, it is a free one by default. You can add other users to a free Space, however, you only have access to the core diagramming capability. No other feature is supported on a free Space. You might want to create a free Space to either practice drawing UPN or architecture diagrams together as a team or to prepare an environment before you purchase licenses.
    • Paid Space: Based on your purchased licenses, different features and capabilities become available on a paid Space. Licenses affect availability of features (e.g. connections to external systems such as JIRA), number of available connections to Salesforce, and how many users can use certain features.

Creating a new Space

Creating a new Space is extremely straightforward.

 

But you shouldn’t just create more Spaces without having a plan for how you will utilise them.
Let’s cover a few use-cases:

  • Single paid for Space: we recommend you have just one paid for Space if you have a team of administrators, analysts and developers working on the same systems and following the same workflow.
  • Multiple paid for Spaces: we recommend that you set up multiple paid for Spaces if you have multiple teams who need or want to follow different workflows and work on different systems or parts of the business.
    • If you are a consultant with the consulting license, you should set up a separate Space for each client. This will allow you to perform Org Discovery separately for each client and offer distinct managed services to your clients.
  • One paid for Space and multiple free Spaces: This model is recommended for teams that want to use free Spaces to collaborate on and brainstorm on diagrams together before they are copied to the core paid for Space. However, with the Space permission model, this is not really necessary – and will be covered in the next module.

And that is the foundation of your knowledge and understanding needed to use Elements spaces.

What ‘s next

Next, you will take a short, theory and practical quiz. Select it from the menu below.

This quiz will help you to recognise the skills and knowledge you have gained, and identify any areas you still need to explore and learn.

Remember, you can revisit these pages, or ask us for help if you get stuck. Once you pass the quiz, click “Next Module” to move on to Module 2.

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