Best practices for setting up spaces and workspaces

This topic provides best practices and recommendations for setting up spaces and workspaces in ALM Octane.

Overview

This overview provides basic information about the various types of spaces in ALM Octane and how to work with them.

Terms

Site

Top level container.

Allows the management of the different spaces created in ALM Octane as well as a place to carry out administrative tasks and manage users.

Space

Top level logical container.

Provides absolute isolation of data. A space is the highest container level that allows data sharing and interaction. A space allocates its own resources when created, such as relational database schema, Elasticsearch indexes, and the repository location.

Workspace

A working container.

A user always works in the context of a specific workspace. A workspace is always contained in a shared space and provides logical isolation of data and settings. The level of isolation is defined by the type of shared space created.

For details about the site and spaces, see Manage spaces (for space admins).

Types of spaces

ALM Octane Enterprise edition provides the following types of spaces: Shared and Isolated.

Shared space

(Enterprise edition)

Workspaces share customization and can share data. Cross workspace reporting is possible. Some entities may be defined as global and be viewed across all workspaces.

Isolated space

(Pro and Enterprise editions)

Each workspace defines its own customization. No sharing between workspaces. A user can be assigned to multiple workspaces and seamlessly switch between them.

Note: Pro edition only allows creation of isolated spaces. Shared spaces are an enterprise level feature.

Back to top

Planning how to set up spaces

When planning your ALM Octane deployment, it is important to plan how to break down your projects into a structure that provides you with the best experience for your teams.

Generally, unless there is an actual need for complete isolation of workspaces, use shared spaces(instead of isolated spaces). The use of shared spaces allows you to better scale out ALM Octane as your projects grow.

Considerations in setting up spaces

The following are some questions that you should consider before setting up spaces:

Back to top

Planning how to set up workspaces

Similar to the strategy for setting up spaces, consider how to partition projects within a space. The factors to consider are similar to the space strategy parameters, but on a smaller scale.

If the projects are tightly intertwined, and a large portion of the data needs to be used by different teams in these projects, the projects should reside within the same workspace to allow ease of sharing of data.

You can make sure that each project member only sees the information that is relevant in the following ways: 

Considerations in setting up workspaces

The following are some questions that you should consider before setting up workspaces:

Back to top