Workspaces

A workspace is where members of each team can work together to manage employee requests without compromising data security. Each team such as IT, HR, Facilities, Finance, etc. can have its own workspace, configure settings at the workspace level, and control access to its tickets and other data.

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You can create new workspaces or manage the settings of existing workspaces from Admin> Manage Workspaces.

Learn more about workspaces.

Workspace Creation: Workspaces created using the IT workspace template are called IT Workspaces. Workspaces created using any other workspace template (HR, Facilities, Legal, Finance, and General) are called Business Workspaces. If you use the blank template, the workspace type is determined by the primary business function selected. If IT is chosen, an IT workspace is created. If any other business function is selected, a Business workspace is created.

Distinctions: Here are the key distinctions between the two. 

• Ticket types supported: IT and Business Workspaces will grant access to different ticket types. IT Workspaces will support Incidents, Service Requests and Major Incidents whereas Business Workspaces will support Cases (which can be prefixed as Queries/Issues/Requests). Learn more about the differences between ticket types here.

• Features supported: Only IT workspaces will have access to IT-specific features: Problem, Change, Release, Alert, and On-Call Management. 

• Agent Permissions: Business agents can only be granted ‘view’ access in IT Workspaces. IT and business agents get complete access to all the capabilities in Business workspaces.

The first workspace created in the account is tagged as the primary workspace. It functions as follows:

• Any ticket raised will be assigned to the primary workspace if its destination workspace cannot be identified. 

• If the workspace field has not been enabled for the ‘Report an Issue’ form on the support portal, tickets will be assigned to the primary workspace. If a global workflow rule has been configured, it will route the ticket to the right workspace.

• If a ticket has been created through a marketplace app, integrations, or API call and the value for the Workspace field is not specified, that ticket will be directed to the primary workspace. 

• Marketplace Apps that reference your service desk’s form fields can only refer to the primary workspace’s form fields. 

• Any API request from an integration/custom app/workflow that creates data or retrieves a list of data requires information of the workspace where data needs to be created/retrieved from. In the absence of the workspace ID, the data will be created/pulled from the primary workspace.

Note: Tickets raised via the Service Catalog will be routed to the home workspace of the service item. Tickets raised via email will be assigned to the home workspace of that email address.

Draft workspace: Any workspace added to the account is created in draft mode. A draft workspace is a workspace that is being built, configured, and taking shape but not yet published. The draft mode ensures a secure space to configure a workspace and gives the necessary time to build the same. Any activity in the draft mode will not be exposed to non-members and hence will not impact the support portal in any way. Thus no tickets can be raised to the draft workspace from the support portal. However, agents can raise tickets to this workspace from the agent portal and workspace settings cn

Requesters cannot submit tickets or access service items/solution articles until the admin publishes the workspace to them. 

Published workspace: Once a workspace has been set up, it can be published to requesters from Workspace Settings > Workspace > Publish. 

After that, requesters will be able to view service catalog items and solution articles configured in the workspace. They will also be able to select the workspace in the "Report an Issue" form and raise a ticket to the workspace directly. The name of the field will however be exposed as "Issue related to" instead of "Workspace" to requesters. Admins can choose to hide this field from Global Settings > Field Manager > Workspace Field.  

Single Workspace

By default, any Freshservice account is created with a single workspace which is also the primary workspace of the service desk. This workspace contains all the required settings to manage the account such as user management, plans & billing, field settings, etc.

Multiple Workspaces

As soon as more than one workspace is added to the service desk, a section called Global Settings is introduced to allow admins to centrally manage key operations such as user management, plans & billing, field settings, etc. 

Modules such as Field Manager, Email Notifications, Workflow Automator, etc. will also have a global equivalent, and settings added here will be applied to each workspace in the account respectively.

This is accompanied by elevation and restriction of agent permissions as well. 

• Elevation: Agents with the “Play God with Super Admin Controls” permission also known as “Admins” and “Account Admins” will be elevated to “Account-wide Admins automatically. This means that they will be able to control the admin settings at the account-wide level as well as within each workspace.

• Restriction: Any other agent with admin permissions other than “Play God” will continue to remain admins within the first workspace and will not get access to the second workspace automatically. However, the following permissions can only be granted at an account-wide level in a multi-workspace account:

If any agent has a role assigned that contains these permissions, they will no longer be able to access them unless granted explicity again. For example: A user has an admin role assigned that contains two permissions:

1. Manage Workflows

2. Create Departments

In an account with multiple workspaces, ‘Manage Workflows’ can be granted within a specific workspace as well at an account-wide level. ‘Create Departments’ can only be granted at an account-wide level. Since before the second workspace was created, the user’s permissions were limited to the first workspace, the same is applied after the second workspace is created. However, since “Create Departments” can only be granted at an account-wide level going forward, the user will no longer be able to access the setting unless access is granted explicitly once again.

Learn how to manage multiple workspaces

All the departments using Freshservice can deliver employee services via a single support portal.

• Service Catalog, Solution Articles, and Announcements: All the service items published across workspaces will be available in the support portal for employees to request services from. The same applies to solution articles/announcements. Requesters will not be able to identify which workspace a solution article or service item belongs to. 

• Reporting Issues: Admins can choose to expose the workspace field in the “Report an Issue” form from Global Settings>Field Manager to forward employee issues directly to the respective workspaces. The field's label will be renamed to "Issue related to" on the requester portal instead of 'Workspace'. If the ‘Workspace’ field is hidden, the issues will be forwarded to the primary workspace from where they can be moved to the destination workspaces manually or via global workflows.

(Only relevant for accounts that signed up before 12th December 2022)

When workspaces are enabled in an account, all the existing data and settings in your account will be moved to a single workspace called ‘My Team’ without notifying your agents and requesters or impacting their experience. Admins can update the workspace name and logo if required from “Manage Workspaces”. 

The option to manage Workspaces will be available to all Admins, Account Admins and users with the  ‘Manage Workspaces’ permission. 

(Only relevant for accounts that signed up before 12th December 2022)

Admins can create multiple workspaces (up to 25), avail of the business agent license, and use ready-to-go templates for HR, Facilities, Finance, and Legal. In addition to this, they will also get access to key enhancements we’re releasing for specific admin settings.

Know more about the new capabilities in detail

(Only relevant for accounts that signed up before 12th December 2022)

Agent Experience

Single workspace setup: Except for the updated terminologies that will now be used during the ticket creation process, agents will not notice any difference in service desk operations when these capabilities are released. 

Multi-workspace setup: When the admin adds a second workspace, agents will be able to view the workspace their tickets, tasks, etc belong to and move them to another workspace.

Requester Experience

Single workspace setup: Requesters will not notice any difference when these capabilities are released to your account. 

Multi-workspace setup: When you add and publish a second workspace, requesters will be able to view service items and solution articles from both workspaces in your current support portal. In addition to this, you can give them the ability to select a workspace and report an issue or provide a generic “report an issue” form that directs all issues to the primary workspace or the first workspace. Such issues can be routed to the right Workspace later using workflows.

Admin Experience:

Single workspace setup: Admins will now see their existing settings under a workspace called “My Team”. The settings will continue to function as expected, and admins can update the workspace name and logo if required from “Manage Workspaces”. Apart from the new capabilities mentioned in the previous section, admins will not notice any difference in experience when there’s a single workspace in the account. 

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Multi-workspace setup: There are specific changes that take place when a second workspace is added to the account. Learn more about those changes here.

(Only relevant for accounts that signed up before 12th December 2022)

Freshservice APIs: Each workspace in your account can have its own:

• Tickets

• Problems

• Changes

• Releases

• Agent Groups

• Assets

• Softwares

• Contracts

• Purchase Orders

• Business Hours

• Solutions

• Service Catalog

• SLA Policies

• Custom Objects

• Canned Responses

• Announcements

• Audit Log 

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In a single workspace account, APIs based on the above modules will continue to work as expected without passing any workspace ID. However, if you’ve added multiple workspaces and you’re using Freshservice APIs for the above modules in the following areas:

→ Workflow Automator ( Web Request nodes and “Trigger Webhook” Action nodes

→ Custom apps

→ Portal Customization 

→ Any custom services or middleware developed using Freshservice APIs

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You may have to additionally pass the workspace ID in your API request if it’s trying to:

• Create new data within a workspace (Example: Create a ticket)

• Retrieve a list of items from a specific workspace (Example: List all agent groups in a workspace)

•  If the workspace ID is not passed, the new data will be created in or retrieved from the primary workspace or the first workspace of your account.

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For actions that do not require the workspace to be known, for example, fetching, editing or deleting a ticket by passing its ID, the APIs will continue to work as expected even in a multi-workspace account.

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Marketplace Apps: 

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Public Apps: If any public app is based on data that will now reside within a workspace and performs at least one of the following:

• Creates new data in your account.  Example: Create a ticket

• Syncs data with a third-party tool because it has fields mapped between your ticket/problem/change/release forms and a third-party tool

• Retrieves a list of data from your account. Example: Fetch all the tickets in the account

Such apps will continue to function as expected in the primary/first workspace of your account. However, when you add a second workspace, they will continue to perform the above actions only in the first workspace. 

The Freshservice Team is currently in the process of upgrading such apps by adding multi-workspace support to them. In case you want an app to be prioritized,  please write to us at support@freshservice.com

     Private Apps

If you’re using Freshservice APIs for the modules mentioned in the “Freshservice APIs” section and you’re creating multiple workspaces in your account, you may have to update the app by passing the right workspace id so that the app continues to work as expected.    

Tickets within a service desk can be classified into ticket types depending on the purpose that they are raised for. Different teams in an organization may prefer a specific ticket type that works best for them. These preferences are largely based on industry standard practices or primarily for business convenience. 

Workspace Admins can choose their preferred ticket type while setting up the workspace or later from Field Manager> Type. While IT Workspaces support Incidents and Service Requests, Business Workspaces support Cases (which can also be prefixed as Queries/Issues/Requests).

Know more about ticket types in Freshservice.

A Ticket, Problem, Change, or Release can be moved from one workspace to another workspace. Here is an article that describes three ways of moving these items.

Moving a ticket will have the following impacts:

• Impact on ID: It will only change the ticket's prefix and not the ticket's ID

• Impact on Prefix: The ticket will convert into the ticket type set in the new workspace. A ticket passed from a Business workspace to an IT workspace will convert to a Service Request and not an Incident.

• Impact on associations: Any associations not supported by business workspace ticket types (Case/Query/Issue/Request) will be de-linked once a ticket has been moved from an IT workspace to a Business workspace. This is because IT ticket types support additional associations with advanced modules such as problem, change, alert and on-call management which are not present in business workspaces. The associations are preserved when the ticket moves from a business workspace to an IT workspace. 

• Impact on ticket properties: Values present in custom fields of the old workspace will be removed. Having the same name for the custom fields in the source and the destination workspaces would NOT copy over the field values. If the values need to be preserved, the fields should be created as global custom fields.

Yes, two tickets that are present across workspaces can be linked to each other. 

Incidents: Incidents can only have incidents as child tickets. Therefore, when you add a child ticket to an incident, you will only be able to see IT Workspaces that have “Incident” as a ticket type enabled.

Service Requests: Service Requests can have Service Requests/Cases/Queries/Issues/Requests as child tickets. Therefore, you can add any ticket from business workspaces and service requests from IT workspaces as child tickets.

Cases/Queries/Issues/Requests: These can have Service Requests/Cases/Queries/Issues/Requests as child tickets. Therefore, you can add any ticket from business workspaces and service requests from IT workspaces as child tickets.

When you create a workspace, account-wide admins are added by default and given admin permissions in that workspace. In order to remove such admins and control workspace membership manually, you can convert the workspace to a restricted workspace from workspace settings. The option to convert it is present under the three dots menu on the top-right.

When converted to a restricted workspace, all the admins with account-wide permissions will be removed. The workspace admin will have to manually re-add such users if required. 

You can also create restricted groups within a restricted workspace to restrict ticket access only to agents who are part of the restricted group.

No, this is not possible. 

Business agent license is a specialized pricing license available as an add-on in Freshservice that can be leveraged by business teams. A business agent belongs to business teams like HR, Finance, Facilities, Legal, Admin, Sales, Marketing, etc., and is available for purchase on Pro and Enterprise plans. 

You can purchase this add-on from Admin > Plans and Billing.

Learn more about what business agents can access

Note: Once you add business agent licenses to your account, you can use them in business workspaces (any workspace created for a business team). Pro/Enterprise agents converted to business agents will lead to Incidents/Service Requests assigned to them getting unassigned as business agents can only be assigned tickets in business workspaces.

Workspaces will be enabled for all the accounts except for the following set: 

(Please note that this article is applicable only to accounts that have been notified about the presence of unsupported ticket types enabled in specific workspaces)  

Newly launched distinctions between IT and Business workspaces 

To provide a purpose-built product experience for business teams, some distinctions have been introduced between IT workspaces and Business workspaces. 

Here are the key distinctions: 

• Ticket types supported: IT and Business Workspaces will grant access to different ticket types. IT workspaces will support Incidents, Service Requests, and Major Incidents whereas Business workspaces will support Cases (which can be prefixed as Queries/Issues/Requests). Learn more about the differences between ticket types here.

• Features supported: Only IT workspaces will have access to IT-specific features: Problem, Change, Release, Alert, and On-Call Management. 

• Ticketing permissions: Business agents can be granted ‘View only’ access to tickets in IT workspaces, with an option to add private notes. IT and business agents can work on all types of tickets in Business workspaces.

These distinctions have not been introduced in specific accounts as they have workspaces with ticket types that are no longer supported in those workspaces.

Ticket type and workspace type mismatch as a possible consequence

As per the above-mentioned distinctions, workspaces that have any other combination of ticket types enabled will no longer be supported.

Here are the possible scenarios: 

• IT workspaces with Case/Query/Issue/Request as the enabled ticket type.
  
• Business workspaces with Service Request/Incident + Service Request as the enabled ticket type(s).
  
• Any workspace with Incident + Case/Query/Issue/Request as the enabled ticket types.

How to update the ticket types for a workspace

For the workspace that you have been notified about, update the ticket type as follows. If the template type has been communicated to you, you can directly skip to Step 2.

1. Identify the workspace type: For the workspace you've been notified of, you need to first identify the template used to create the workspace. If the IT template was used, the workspace is of type 'IT'. If any business template was used (HR, Facilities, Finance, Legal, General), the workspace is of type 'Business'. For ‘Blank’ workspaces, the type is determined by the value of the ‘business function’ chosen during creation. If IT was chosen, the type is 'IT'. Otherwise, it's 'Business'. 

A quick way to check this is by creating a dummy agent group in the workspace and checking the value of the 'business function' field within agent group settings. If it's IT, the workspace type is IT. If it's anything else, it's of type 'Business'.

2. IT template workspaces support 'Incident' and 'Service Request' whereas Business template workspaces support 'Case','Query','Issue' and 'Request'. Depending on the workspace type, you can enable the right ticket types from Workspace settings > Field Manager > Ticket Fields. After enabling the new ticket types, you will continue to see the old ticket types in your settings till 31st August.

Impact on workspace configurations

Please note that enabling other ticket types might impact your configurations such as workflows, analytics etc in case the admin has referred the old ticket type values in these configurations (for example, there is a specific workflow that triggers only for Incidents). Please update these configurations at the same time so that your operations are not impacted.

In case you need an exhaustive list of impacted configurations for your account, please write to us at support@freshservice.com. 

What happens after you update the ticket type?

After the ticket type has been updated, you will continue to see the unsupported ticket types in your settings. After that, the new distinctions will be applied to your account and only the supported ticket types will be available in your workspace settings. In addition, any historical/old tickets will be auto-updated to the new ticket type as per the below rule:

1. IT template workspace with Incident + Case/Query/Issue/Request as enabled ticket types> The new ticket types will be Incident + Service Request and any old Case/Query/Issue/Request will be converted to a Service Request without any loss of information.

2. IT template workspace with Case/Query/Issue/Request as enabled ticket types > The new ticket type will be Service Request and any old Case/Query/Issue/Request will be converted to a Service Request without any loss of information.

3. Business template workspace with Incident + Case/Query/Issue/Request as enabled ticket types > Incident will be turned OFF and any old incident will be converted to the other business ticket type that's enabled.

4. Business template workspace with Incident + Service Request as enabled ticket types > Incident will be turned OFF and Service Request will be replaced by 'Request' (a business ticket type). Any old ticket will also be converted into a "Request".

5. Business template workspace with Service Request as enabled ticket type >  Service Request will be replaced by 'Request' (a business ticket type). Any old ticket will also be converted into a "Request".

To understand the impact of updating a ticket's type, please read this article. 

For any questions, please reach out to us at support@freshservice.com.