[From Wrike] What's The Difference? : Spaces and Folders
Hi guys! I'm Hugh, Community Associate here at Wrike!ย ๐ Really looking forward to helping you guys out and make your Wrike experience as rewarding and productive as it can be!
We've all been there; you're getting ready to start a brand new exciting project and you want your team to find their tasks as quickly and as easily as possible. What's the best way for your team to access all their work at once though? Should you create a folder and place all your tasks in here? Or should I create a Space and assign it to my team? And what is the benefits of using one over the other?ย ๐ค
Well, wonder no more! This article will break down the differences between Spaces and folders so when you're putting a project together, there will be no doubt in your mind as to how you should deliver it to your team!
But first of all, what are folders and Spaces?
Folders:
- Can contain tasks and subfolders - create a hierarchy within your folder to break down your project into manageable sections.
- Structure - folders are excellent tools for grouping together related tasks such as meeting agendas or to-do lists.
- Visibility - use folders and subfolders to easily maneuver around the Workspace's Navigation Panel on the left-hand side.
Spaces:
- Create projects and folders directly within the space - useful for company wide information.
- Customizable access permissions for users - create private Spaces, assign users as admins that can adjust permissions and assign request form management to Space admins to ensure information is being sent to the right people.
- Bookmarks - place all your important external links in one easily accessible area.
But why should I use one instead of the other?
One of the reasons why Wrike is the top tool in collaborative project management is its ability to seamlessly integrate different items together. Rather than asking yourself "Should I create a folder or a Space?", you should ask yourself "How can I use these functionalities together to maximize my team's output?".
Folders are excellent tools for organizing tasks for specific aspects of your business. If you have a large project coming up, and you need each stage of the project to be broken down in easily manageable places, then using folders within your projects denoting each of the separate stages is a great way to ensure that your team will never get lost looking for their tasks.
Spaces are the perfect place to assign a department's projects and folders. Whether it's using your personal space to organize and prioritize your work, using a private Space to give your departments a one-stop place for all of their needs or using a public Space to keep everyone in your company in the know about all the projects that are underway, Spaces can make a difference in the way that your team works towards your goals as a business.
If you have questions about any other aspects of folders or Spaces don't hesitate to put them in the comments below! I'm sure our Community Team and your fellow Wrikers would be more than happy to help make sure you're using Wrike to its full potential.
Happy Wriking!
Hi Hugh,
We have a lot of cross-teams projects, and would like to find the good use of spaces and folders. We are a bit lost with the different rights we should give to the different groups/folders/spaces. We have an Enterprise account. Ideally, here is what we would like :
- The goal is to keep a clear & common view of all projects. The "Shared with me" treeview would be identical for all users except admins, and the root folders would change only when a new project is officially created.
- To do that we need to avoid people creating projects/folders except in their team folders (within official projects). We also don't want people to share a task when its parent folders are not shared, because in this event tasks appear at the root of "Shared with me" (which is very unclear).
To my mind, we should then use several teams spaces to gather the different team folders in one place. For everyday work, each team would use its Space as a central hub, whereas the "Shared with me" will be used for cross-team meetings, e.g. to superpose the Gantts of all teams for a specific project.
I don't know if it is clear, but I'd like to have a feedback about this way of using both spaces and "old" Shared with me structure.
Many thanks ! ๐
Hi @Pierre-Marie, happy to see you on the Community ๐
Hope you don't mind me jumping in for Hugh here. I think what you've described here is a very good use-case for using the Shared with me folder and Spaces. I think that withย Access Rolesย you can set up the process of new work creation so that the users can only create new folders/projects in their team folders. Let me know if you'd like to discuss this further ๐
I also am interested in how you are using the Bookmarks section in Spaces - would be great to hear about your experience with them!ย
Thanks for posting!
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Hi! I am interested in using the Spaces section as a common area for important links, resources, links often references, etc. on a project. At my company, we host a number of different projects and feel like a barrier is constantly looking for a link to a report we reference, the original proposal of the project, etc. We typically hosted this type of information in a task or subtask named 'resources' or 'commonly used links,' but am wondering if 'adding a space' to a project would resolve this issue. Any thoughts?
Hi Leila Sammander, happy to see you here on the Community!ย ๐
You can use the Bookmarks section - it can house Bookmarks, which are quick access links to the Folders, Projects, Reports, Dashboards, etc that are most frequently needed. Space admins can add items to the Bookmarks bar and organize content. Please let me know if that's helpful!ย
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Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Hi Lisa
I have a question regarding this comparison. The ideal setup in my mind is to have a separate space for each department (i.e., Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, etc.)
But I also want the capability to see tasks ACROSS all those spaces in one view. I know I can get that if I give each department a "folder" instead of a "space".ย
For more context, we have a large initiative coming up, and each department is involved, and we have many tasks to track under each department. I would love to somehow see all of those tasks, categorized by each department, in one full view (whether it be the table view, gantt, etc.). I understand I can do this with a "Marketing folder" and "Human Resources folder" etc., but can I do this with spaces?ย
Please let me know if you need any clarification on my question!ย
Welcome to the Community Joy Ramzy!ย ๐
Thank you for reaching out, this is a very interesting use-case! I've asked my colleagues from the Support team to help here; they'll contact you ASAPย ๐
Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover
Hi Joy Ramzy,
Thank you for sharing your use-case with us!
I have several suggestions to help you get the overview you need, while still allowing you to create your ideal setup of having a separate space for each department.
The first option is to create aย dashboardย with differentย widgetsย for each space. This would give you a one-stop location to get an overview of the ongoing projects and tasks from each of your department's spaces. Here is an example of how such a dashboard might look:
A second option is to use theย Reports featureย to generate a project report and a task report that sources data from all of your team's spaces.โ Reports can display more information than what you would see on the dashboard, they update automatically like dashboards, can be exported to Excel, and can be shared with external stakeholders through theย Reports Snapshot feature.
Please give it a try and let us know how it works for you.
Have a productive day!ย ๐
Hi @...!ย
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Thank you for the suggestions. I was actually hoping for a way to track in a gantt view as well, since we're tracking tasks from each department that all feed into a singular initiative. I did find a way around it though!ย
Essentially, I created a space for each team (i.e., Marketing Space, Human Resources Space) and a separate space for the Initiative itself, "Initiative Activities".ย
I created a "Marketing Initiative Activities" folder in the marketing space but also tagged this folder to be in the "Initiative Activities" space. That way, when the marketing team update or add any work to that "Marketing Initiative Activities" folder solely project related, it feeds into that one central view in the "Initiative Activities" space. I did the same process for HR and so on.ย
Hoping my explanation makes sense, do you find any potential barriers in the future from this set-up? Any conflicts I may experience? Or should this work smoothly for my purposes?
Hi Joy Ramzy, just wondering how you got on with the setup you describe here. I'm considering a similar department plus big complex project space but want to keep things as simple as possible without creating a big mess if cross-tagging isn't properly used.
I know it's a while ago but I'd love to hear how this worked out!