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Full guide for admins
Updated over a week ago

1. Introduction

Purpose of this guide

The aim of this guide is to empower you with the knowledge needed to build an efficient, secure, and user-friendly Workspace that enhance productivity and collaboration.

Target audience

This guide is intended for Workspace administrators responsible for managing and configuring Workspace environments, whether you are new to Workspace 365 or are more experienced and are looking to fine-tune an existing Workspace.

Here's an example of a digital workplace:

workspace overview (1).png


2. Getting started

Requirements

In order to create a Workspace environment, the following requirements must be met:

  • Each Workspace 365 environment must be created with a Global Administrator of the corresponding Azure tenant.

  • The provisioning key of your instance is required. This is highly sensitive information and should be known within your organization. If the provisioning key is no longer known, contact support.

  • For the requirements to fully utilize the Workspace 365 environment, see article: Registration requirements.

  • For more information about the renewal of SSL certificates, please read the article: Automatic provisioning of SSL certificates.

Setup

A single or multiple Workspace 365 environments can be linked to one Azure tenant. Workspace will not make changes to your Azure tenant.

New environments can be created via:

For new Workspace environments, the name "demo" is not allowed. If you want to create a demo environment, please refer to the article Creating a demo environment.

setup.png


You cannot link multiple Azure tenants to one Workspace 365 environment.

setup 2.png

Spaces

It's important that employees can seamlessly navigate their workday with efficiency and convenience. Spaces provide a high level of adaptability, and it keeps the digital workplace clear and organized, as you don't want to overload employees with too much content. Therefore, it's important to think about how you're going provide structure to Personal- and Shared spaces.

For more information on this topic, please refer to the Best Practices "Design & Organizational structure".

Billing & Reporting

You can request pricing information of Workspace 365 via our website. Each module offers different features. Which one you choose, depends on your organization.

At the end of each month, an invoice will be sent. This invoice is based on only the active users in the Workspace environment. It is also possible to get a reporting overview per Workspace environment.

For more information on this topic, please refer to:


3. Apps & Integrations

App store

You can create applications and tiles from the App store, and assign them to employees to create the best Role-Based Workspace. You can recognize the App store by the waffle icon, accessible from the navigation menu on the left hand-side in your digital workplace. By default, everyone has access to applications.

To add tiles and apps to the Workspace, simply click on the "Edit" button and then the "+ Add tiles" button. For more options, click on the App store icon from the navigation menu. From there, it's also possible to configure the app settings under the "Manage apps" tab to change the app name, colour and manage the app permissions, enable maintenance or set conditional access.

Request apps

Users can request apps. For this functionality, a Boost license is required and you must first allow users to make user requests under "Group permissions". You will then be notified via the Activity Feed, but only if you have the setting enabled to receive these kind of notifications. Requests can be approved from the Activity Feed or from the "User requests" settings page, but make sure you assign the user permissions to the app beforehand.

Integrations

Combine all your applications and technologies together in one digital workplace.

Exchange Online and SharePoint/OneDrive will automatically be linked when you log in to a new Workspace environment for the first time (provided your admin account has the correct licenses).

For other integrations, such as opening local apps with our Workspace 365 Local App Launcher, remote apps like Clientless RDP, file server or other Micro apps, please refer to our Integrations section. Here, you will find a complete overview of all our integrations, including configuration instructions.

Third-party apps with APIs

Simply work and personalize Workspace 365 for your organization and develop your own integrations with our APIs. It is relatively easy to setup for people who are slightly tech-savvy:

For example, you could use the Activity Feed API to further improve your digital employee experience. It allows you to create a task-based approach to working by displaying external information, tasks and notifications in the Activity Feed. It is possible to connect countless applications to the Activity Feed. We offer you a few API examples:


4. User management

User provisioning

Be aware that by default users will be notified via email when their digital workplace is ready to use. You can however temporarily disable the Welcome email before important users, or temporarily mark imported users as inactive to prevent the email being sent.

Before you start designing the Workspace, we recommend to first sync users and/or groups from Microsoft Entra ID (previously called Azure AD) to Workspace. We recommend using Automated user provisioning via SCIM API. Synced groups are automatically created as Workspace groups in the Workspace, which can be used to assign permissions to Shared spaces, Shared tile groups and applications.

1. Automate user provisioning via the Azure SCIM client (recommended)

SCIM is our synchronization solution that runs directly from Microsoft Entra ID. You must be a hosted partner or customer (SCIM is not available for self-hosted partners) and have an Adapt or Boost license.

From the User provisioning page, you could set the 'Default status for synced users' to 'Inactive'. After designing the Workspace, ensure that the Welcome email is enabled under the User management page. Then, go to the Licensing page and change the user status to 'Active' when you're done importing users. All imported users will now receive the Welcome email.

2. Automate user provisioning via the Azure AD synctool

Our Azure AD synctool is available to all our partners and customers. The synctool is not cloud-based and requires a machine to be installed on and to run from.

From the User provisioning page, you could set 'Manage licenses from' to 'Workspace 365'. Imported users will be marked as 'Inactive'. After designing the Workspace, ensure that the Welcome email is enabled from the User management page. Then, go to the Licensing page and change the user status to 'Active' when you're done importing users. All imported users will now receive the Welcome email.

3. Manually import users from Office 365 (groups) or manually create users in Workspace 365

We strongly recommend using one of our synchronization solutions mentioned above, because manually imported or created users and/or groups must also be managed manually, creating a lot of manual actions and adding complexity.

If you do need to manually add users to the Workspace environment, make sure the sync from AAD is disabled.

User roles & Permissions

User permissions let you control which users can access resources, such as data and applications, but it also specifies what tasks users can perform. We recommend assigning permissions based on groups, but this isn't always as easy as it sounds.

This is why we created a separate article to explain everything you need to know: Understand and manage user permissions in Workspace 365.

Conditional Access

Nowadays, security in the digital workplace extends beyond your organization's network. You want to know who your users are and what they do with organizational data. It's important that people see the right information and applications at the right time, resulting in a well-organized Workspace.

Perhaps you want to enable MFA? Or hide certain apps being accessed from mobile devices or unsecured networks? Or maybe you want to control how files are being opened?

For more information on this topic, please refer to the article Conditional Access.

5. Design

Branding

As an administrator, you can easily brand the Workspace environment. The branding is the first thing people see, and if it’s recognizable and nice-looking, people are more likely to be receptive to their adaptive digital workplace. For example, you can configure the colours, logos and the product name as displayed in the top left of the Workspace.

Please refer to the article Branding your workspace environment for more information.

Template

As a Workspace administrator, you can push your Personal space as a template to all users. This means you can push your Personal- and Shared tile groups to the Personal space of new and/or current users.

Before implementing this change, it is crucial to carefully assess and ensure that the template aligns with best practices, taking into consideration factors such as content volume to prevent overwhelming users with excessive information, et cetera. Also bear in mind that Shared tile groups will be presented at the top, and Personal tile groups at the bottom.

6. Best Practices

Want to know how you can create a simplified interface that contributes to optimal user experience? Take a look at the Best Practices - everything you need to know about design & organizational structure, user management to key features and important applications.

7. Support

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We provide you with FAQs for both Workspace administrators and end users:

Troubleshooting

Can't sign in? Or having issues with creating the Workspace environment, managing users and/or groups or having trouble with setting up integrations? On our Support Portal, you will find troubleshooting articles that will help you on your way.

Please visit our Troubleshooting section for more information.

Change Requests

Besides the regular Support form and Feature Request form, we offer you the following Change Requests:

Name

Description

Support article

CR-01 - Change environment name of customer

We change the name of an existing environment, this is reflected in the URL.

For example, 'https://workspace365.net/environmentnameA' becomes 'https://workspace365.net/environmentnameB'.

CR-03 - Custom URL

We create an additional, custom URL for an environment. This can be any URL, as long as the URL itself is available.

CR-04 - Nedap ONS Certificate request

To make use of the Nedap ONS integration, you must first request a certificate. This certificate is valid for one year.

CR-07 - Emergency restore

We make backups of all our cloud resources. You can request a restore for a Workspace environment that we host for you.

An SQL rollback is possible. However, specific environment settings like a custom branding, created announcements or integration credentials created after the date/time to which the environment is restored, will be lost.

CR-08 - Self-hosted Office Online Server

Request an Office Online Server (OOS) in order to open files with the Online Editors as a self-hosted partner. Hosted partners have access to our hosted OOS by default.

See the article "Configure OOS & WOPI domain/URL" in the Support Widget

CR-09 - Acceptance environment

To provide our customers and partners with the opportunity to test configuration changes or new Workspace 365 features before they are implemented in production, we offer a dedicated “Acceptance” environment based on a monthly subscription.

CR-12 - ConnectWise Hosted Partner

We configure a ConnectWise URL on your hosted instance for our ConnectWise integration.

See the article "Configure ConnectWise" in the Support Widget

CR-13 - Renew provisioning key

If you lose your provisioning key as a hosted partner, you can request a new one.

See the article "Request new provisioning key (CR-13)" in the Support Widget

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