About Collaborative Spaces

The following video provides an overview of what you can do with collaborative spaces.

This video is based on the user interface in an earlier release, but the concepts described are still valid.

Click Play to watch the video:

You can use these provided collaborative space families as templates to create your collaborative spaces:

• Standard
• Design

You can create as many collaborative spaces of each type as you need. An Owner can modify existing collaborative spaces. You cannot build a hierarchy of collaborative spaces.

A user can create, modify or delete content in the collaborative space that the user is currently logged into. The collaborative space owns the content and only an Administrator can transfer content to another collaborative space.

Access to content in collaborative spaces can be public, protected, or private. Accessing content means the ability to search for, explore, view and open the content.

The Owner can change the visibility of a collaborative space.

Visibility	Access to Content Owned by Collaborative Space
Public	Content is visible to users logged into this collaborative space. Content is also visible to users logged into other collaborative spaces if the organization of that collaborative space is the same or the parent organization for that user, except for content in the Private maturity state. Content can be freely accessed and connected to from any other collaborative space. Public content remains public, ensuring stability and consistency of public content across different collaborative spaces.
Protected	Content in the Released or Obsolete state is visible to users logged into this or from any other collaborative space if the organization that owns the content is the same as the organization or parent organization for the credentials assigned to the user. Access to content in the Private, In Work, or Frozen states is protected and is not visible to other users.
Private	Content is accessible to the users who are members of that collaborative space. Content is not visible to users logged onto any other collaborative space.

Public content is visible to users logged onto any other collaborative space, so long as the organization owning the content is the same organization as (or a "parent" organization of) the organization for the credentials assigned to that user.

Content in public or protected collaborative spaces can be either private or public depending on the current maturity state of the content. Content in private collaborative spaces is always private. This table defines whether content is public or private based on the type of collaborative space and the maturity state of the content.

Collaborative Space Visibility	Maturity State
	Private	In Work	Frozen	Released	Obsolete
Public	Private	Public	Public	Public	Public
Protected	Private	Private	Private	Public	Public
Private	Private	Private	Private	Private	Private

Because public content from other collaborative spaces can be accessed by any user, it is possible for any user to create content structures that cross over collaborative spaces. However, content from one collaborative space can only reference public content from another collaborative space. Team members from one collaborative space can see all the external content used within the collaborative space.

The family selected for a collaborative space is either Standard or Design. Content created in a standard collaborative space is considered standard content, and content created in a design collaborative space is considered design content.

For consistency, a standard structure can only contain standard content. You should not use design content in a standard structure, and many apps display an error if you try to do so. For more information, see the app's user assistance. Design structures do not have this restriction: you can add standard content to a design structure.

Your company can customize the business logic for aggregating content.

Standard content belongs to a standard collaborative space and is typically catalog parts.

Standard content uses the same lifecycle as design content. Users in a design collaborative space can access that content. When using 3DXML to exchange content between companies, content can be standard content for one company, and design content for another.

In these examples, the current collaborative space means that the person is a member of that collaborative space and logged into that collaborative space. For users with restricted roles, their access is limited to content owned by their organization.

Public collaborative spaces:

• An Author who is a member of the collaborative space can modify the content
• A Reader from other collaborative spaces can access and attach the content to another collaborative space

Protected collaborative spaces::

• An Author can work on content in the current collaborative space
• A Reader from another design collaborative space can access or attach content in the Released state
• A Reader cannot access or attach content in the Private, In Work, or Frozen states
• Content in the Private, In Work, or Frozen states is visible to the Author in the current collaborative space

Private collaborative spaces:

• Reader from another collaborative space cannot access nor attach any object

A user can be assigned to several credentials (consequently to several collaborative spaces and roles) at the same time.