Workspaces
The collaboration unit and the data boundary.
A workspace is the most important concept in Dalea. It is simultaneously:
- a collaboration unit — the set of people who can see and operate on the work,
- a data boundary — schemas, records and inventory in one workspace are invisible to another,
- a storage quota carrier — quota and feature flags are issued to the workspace via its parent organisation's tier.
Anatomy of a workspace
Inside a workspace you'll find these sub-pages, each accessible from the sidebar:
Quick-access cards, recent activity, member roster.
Project- and folder-organised notebook pages.
Environments, tables, queries.
Containers, items, lots.
Reusable blueprints, optionally locked.
Full-text across docs, data, inventory.
When to make a new workspace
Make a new workspace when either:
- the people change (an external CRO needs limited access; a manuscript review group shouldn't see in-progress data); or
- the data boundary changes (a new programme starts and you don't want it polluting the search index of an older one).
A workspace is cheap to create — give it a name and it exists. Don't be precious about keeping the workspace count low.
When to keep one big workspace
Keep work in one workspace when team and data are the same and you want to:
- reference the same inventory of reagents across studies,
- reuse the same data environment (e.g. a single "In-vivo PK" schema across multiple programmes),
- search across all running studies in one query.
A common pattern in biopharma: one workspace per programme, with projects inside the workspace for individual studies. Compound libraries and reagent freezers often live in their own workspace and are referenced from study workspaces by ID.
Switching workspaces
Click your workspace name in the sidebar header. The dropdown groups workspaces by organisation: your Personal org, then any orgs you belong to. The currently open workspace is highlighted; the most recently visited workspaces appear at the top.
The keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧W opens the same dropdown.
Workspace settings
Settings → Workspaces → <name> exposes:
- Details — name, icon, colour, description
- Members — invite, change role, remove
- Roles — create or edit custom roles (in addition to the five built-in roles)
- OAuth clients — for connecting external apps via OAuth (e.g. Claude Desktop)
- Audit trail — workspace-scoped audit log review (if your role includes the permission)