Prerequisites of a Workspace

Summary: 

Prior to activating your workspace, it is best to understand key points of interest and information you will want to have prior to getting started. 

This video will cover the required information that is needed to activate your workspace along with some tips and suggestions.  

Some topics include how to name a workspace, general workspace questions, where workspace data is stored, and creating a workspace description. Other information demonstrated includes inviting team members to a workspace, assigning groups to members, templates, and creating lifecycle definitions. 

Transcript:

00:00:00:24 - 00:00:26:00
Hello. In this video, we'll take a look at some information and key points of interest that should be considered prior to activating your new workspace. As we all know, and often do when we get something new, we love to just dive in. However, since your workspace can become somewhat of a tool or platform that your company may be using for years to come, it's usually best to understand some of the basics prior to getting started.

00:00:26:03 - 00:00:50:02
That's what we'll go over here. What you're taking a look at is the web page where you would activate your Altium 365 Workspace. As you can see on the left, there will be some information that you want to enter, and so these are some items you'll want to consider prior to getting started. If there are some general questions, there's some key FAQ type questions there on the right that you can click on to understand a little bit more about it,

00:00:50:04 - 00:01:11:27
if you need to know more information. However, let's go over the information that you'll need to get started. First, you'll need a workspace name. Now this is usually something identifying, basically it'll be something along the lines of the organization name, perhaps a department or specific type of workspace that is going to be used for things like that.

00:01:12:00 - 00:01:35:10
So I'll go ahead and give this one a name to help us kind of get started. Also, you can choose your location of where you would like to have the workspace data stored. Typically there's four areas: US West, US East, there's also one for Europe and one for Asia. So you want to choose the workspace location that's closest to you,

00:01:35:12 - 00:02:04:03
and also the description, which as you can see is optional, but you can provide a brief description of what this workspace will be used for. Then you can choose to include sample data or not. I typically recommend using a sample data to get started. But we'll talk more about that in a few moments. Additionally, what is not shown here is you will have a workspace owner, which is basically the main administrator of the workspace.

00:02:04:06 - 00:02:22:18
This main administrator will be the person who you want to actually activate this workspace, so that the workspace is assigned to them as the main administrator or workspace owner. So make sure the person who's going to be that main workspace administrator is the one that is performing these functions to get the workspace activated. So go ahead and click on activate.

00:02:22:21 - 00:02:48:03
Allow that workspace to go ahead and start activating. Now as I mentioned earlier, some of the information that you want to be aware of included the sample data or not. Now what comes with the sample data is sample components, sample projects or designs. There's also, depending on the platform tier and whatnot, Templates; and then there's basic structure for how the content will be stored, which we can take a look at here in a moment.

00:02:48:05 - 00:03:10:25
But these are things that you want to be aware of if you want to include it with your workspace activation or not. Now, the reason I recommend that you go ahead and include this data specifically if this is your first workspace, or you've never had any experience with a workspace before, is because it does give you an idea of the types of components that can be stored, how it's stored.

00:03:10:27 - 00:03:29:28
It allows you to kind of review some of that information, and then take a look at it all and get a sense of how it works and what everything looks like once you get that workspace activated. So as you can see here, the workspace has been activated, and now because I chose a sample data, I have a few projects.

00:03:30:00 - 00:03:49:28
I also can go and find my library, and take a look at what components have come with this. Then again, you may have templates and other information to know about. Now something else you'll want to consider, most likely prior to starting the workspace, is who's going to be a member of this workspace and how you want to organize your user groups.

00:03:50:01 - 00:04:13:29
So as you can see, the first user is going to be an administrator. But as you invite different team members to this workspace, you can then assign them to a specific group such as administrators, mechanical engineers, managers, depending on what type of user they will be. It's good to assign them based on groups. Then you can manage permissions and other features based on the particular group type.

00:04:14:02 - 00:04:37:16
So it helps you keep your workspace organized in the way of the different members of your workspace. Again, you might also want to consider and be prepared to define templates or lifecycle definitions. Some of this can be defined here in Altium 365 by going into the admin section and then under the general settings, you'll see these lifecycle definitions.

00:04:37:18 - 00:04:52:02
Now you can also create new lifecycle definitions, choose to go with the defaults that were already there, modify some of these defaults, if you choose to do so, or different reasons like that. You may also be able to review some of those templates.

00:04:52:05 - 00:04:58:26
Now you could do this in Altium 365 under the Workspace in the Explorer Panel.

00:04:58:28 - 00:05:18:11
Now, from here I can manage content as well. So, if I look at my managed content, I can see that I have a folder for all of my different template types along with my schematic sheets and templates there as well. So, there's a number of areas that we can also have predefined based on bringing in that sample data.

00:05:18:13 - 00:05:36:02
Or if you choose to do so, you can start from scratch, build everything from the ground up, so to speak, and make sure that only your data, your information, your configurations are in place. So, that's the recommendation now. Again, if you are new to this, the other thing to consider is you can create a workspace with the sample data.

00:05:36:03 - 00:05:54:15
As I said, get a feel for what it contains; how it works. Then, from there you can deactivate the workspace and start a new one. Or, there are methods for cleaning out the sample data if you get too far along and you actually have production data in there; there's methods for actually cleaning out some old data that you won't need.

00:05:54:18 - 00:06:12:21
But those are covered in other topics of the videos. So helping you to understand what you need to know prior to getting started and activating that Altium 365 Workspace so that you know this prior to getting down the road and being too far along and needing to do a major overhaul of your workspace. I hope this video has been helpful for you.

00:06:12:23 - 00:06:13:03
Thank you.