The Prism Cloud workspace is a common, shared place for workspace members to publish, share, and create discussions to collaborate on their projects created in Prism. In order to publish to Prism Cloud, you must be a member of at least one workspace, but it's possible to belong to more than one Prism Cloud workspace. While in the Prism Cloud web app, the current Prism Cloud workspace will be shown in the the left panel (the workspace navigator) beneath your Profile Settings and Shared with me. If you belong to more than one workspace, you'll be able to click the dropdown arrow to choose the workspace that you'd like to browse.

 

Workspace Home

The workspace home page displays a sorted view of the folders with the most recent activity. Any time a new project is published into a folder or an existing project within a folder is updated, that folder gets moved to the front of the list on the workspace home page. This way, you'll always be able to quickly see where work is being published and browse the latest updates from other members of your workspace.

 

Workspace Trash

Any folders or projects that have been deleted will be moved to the trash. You can access the trash folder at the bottom of the workspace section of the navigator in the Prism Cloud app. A few things about trash and deleted items to keep in mind:

•Deleted projects and folders are kept for seven (7) days. During this time, they can be restored from the trash

•If a folder is deleted, it also deletes all projects contained within that folder

•If a folder is restored, it also restores all projects contained within that folder

•Folders in the trash cannot be opened or explored (as a result, projects within deleted folders cannot be restored independently of the deleted folder). If there is a project inside a deleted folder that you do not want to be deleted, you must first restore the enclosing folder, move the project to a new folder, then delete the original folder again

•Each workspace has its own trash folder. If you delete a project from "Workspace A" and then switch to "Workspace B", you will not see the deleted project in the trash folder for "Workspace B"

 

Workspace Settings

Workspace settings can only be accessed by workspace administrators (this option will not be displayed to users without admin privileges within the workspace). There are two tabs within Workspace Settings that allow workspace administrators to view and/or modify information about the workspace as well as information about current workspace members.

Settings tab

The workspace settings tab provides information on:

•The workspace name (this can be edited on this page)

•The type of subscription that the workspace is associated with (either "Group", "Personal", or "Enterprise")

•The number of used and total workspace seats

•The amount of used and total storage available for the workspace

Members tab

The workspace members tab is a useful tool for managing access and publication privileges for members of the workspace. The first table on the workspace members tab is the "Active users" table, and contains the name, email address, and role of each workspace member. Workspace administrators may change the role of other workspace members (with the exception of their own role and changing the workspace owner).

A user can be "deactivated" from a workspace by clicking the "Deactivate" button on the corresponding row in the Active users table. This will move the user to the "Deactivated users" table, and increase the number of available seats in the workspace. Deactivated users will no longer have permissions to publish or browse folders and projects within the workspace. Note that this does not prevent projects within the workspace being shared with these users, nor does it remove access for these users from projects in the workspace that had previously been directly shared with them.

As long as there are seats available in the workspace, users in the Deactivated users table can be re-activated by simply clicking the "Reactivate" link in the corresponding row. These users will be moved back to the Active users table and will retain their prior role (Administrator or Creator) within the workspace.

Workspace Roles

•Workspace Owner - assigned to the owner of the associated Prism subscription. Functionally, they have the same permissions and access as Administrators (see below). However, this role does not occupy a workspace seat. The Workspace Owner role cannot be modified.

•Administrator - has access to Workspace Settings (and member management); is able to move, rename, delete, or modify any common folder, any private folder that has been shared with them, and any asset (project or power analysis result) within any folder for which they have permissions. Is able to publish projects and create power analysis results within the workspace. Occupies one workspace seat

•Content Manager - is able to move, rename, delete, or modify any common folder, any private folder that has been shared with them, and any asset (project or power analysis result) within any folder for which they have permissions. Is able to publish projects and create power analysis results within the workspace. Does not have access to Workspace Settings. Occupies one workspace seat

•Creator - is able to publish projects and create power analysis results within the workspace. Occupies one workspace seat

•Commenter - is able to view content within the workspace, and is able to add comments or create discussions within assets (projects and power analysis results). Does not occupy a workspace seat.

Limitations to Prism Cloud Workspaces

This section details some former and previous limitations to Prism Cloud Workspaces. For some of these topics, improvements have already been made to resolve the limitations, and links will be provided to other pages in this guide with additional information on these improvements where appropriate.

There is a one-to-one relationship between a Prism subscription and Prism Cloud Workspaces

Prism Cloud workspaces are created in association with a new or existing Prism subscription. This conveniently allows users who activate the Prism desktop application to be automatically added to the associated Prism Cloud workspace. This removes a significant amount of effort on the part of the workspace owner or administrator as Prism Cloud users generally do not need to be manually added to a Prism Cloud workspace. However, larger organizations often aggregate multiple independent research groups or labs within a single Prism subscription. In this situation, all of the members of these groups would be able to publish to - and browse - all of the common folders within the workspace.

Importantly, workspace members are able to create Private Folders that are only visible to workspace members that have had the folder shared with them. To avoid needing to share multiple private folders with the same sub-group of workspace members, Groups can also be created to define a dynamic group of workspace members. Once created, private folders can then be shared with the group, giving all group members permissions simultaneously.

There is a one-to-one relationship between a Prism desktop file and a Prism Cloud project

When a Prism file is published to Prism Cloud, a link is created between the published project and the file stored locally. This link allows the Prism Cloud project to be updated via the Prism desktop app with changes made to the local file quickly and easily. However, a local Prism file can only be linked to a single Prism Cloud project at a time. This means that if a project is published "as new", any link to an existing Prism Cloud project will be removed, and the existing Prism Cloud project will become "orphaned" once the new Prism Cloud project is linked to the local Prism file.

To alleviate this issue, Prism Cloud allows users to download a copy of a published file. This downloaded file will retain the link to the Prism Cloud project that it was obtained from, meaning that you're able to make modifications in the Prism desktop app and - with appropriate permissions - push those updates back to the Prism Cloud project.

Content within a user's personal folder is not accessible by any workspace owner, administrator, or content manager

While generally considered a security benefit, this limitation to folder access may become a problem if/when a user is removed from a Prism Cloud workspace. Because no other workspace members (including administrators and the workspace owner) have the ability to access projects published to another user's personal folder, it is not possible to recover this content after a user is removed from a workspace.

There is no "nesting" capability for folders

Currently, Prism Cloud allows only a flat structure for folders:

•A folder can be created within a workspace

•A project must be published into a folder

•A folder cannot be created within another folder

This means that there is only one "level" of folders, and each new folder created within a workspace will be visible in the navigator for that workspace. With a large number of folders, this may make it difficult to find the desired folder. Note, however, that folders are listed in alphabetical order making it easier to find a specific folder within the list.

There is no "Search" functionality (or keyword/tag capability)

There is currently no way to search for a published project within a workspace. Additionally, there is no way to tag published projects with keywords that can be used to query and locate the published project. However, we're working on this, so keep looking for updates to the Prism Cloud interface!