Consider Alternatives for Workspace Design

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Summarize the best practices for designing an effective Enterprise Grid org.
  
• Determine when to create a workspace or a channel to meet the needs of your organization.
  

Rethinking Workspace Design: Why Less Is More

On Slack Enterprise Grid, workspaces are powerful‌—‌but with great power comes real administrative and user complexity. Unlike single-workspace Slack deployments, the Grid environment is meant for very large or complex organizations, where workspaces represent fundamental boundaries (legal, operational, or cultural) within your company.

Why Not Just Create a New Workspace?‌

Typically, creating a new workspace should be a last resort‌—not a routine solution.

Take these considerations into account.

• Administrative overhead: Every workspace requires its own admins (or increased admin responsibilities for existing admins), app management, security reviews, and ongoing maintenance. This quickly multiplies the operational burden.
  
• Fragmented user experience: Switching between workspaces disrupts workflow. Search, context, and notifications become siloed. Information is harder to find and connect across teams.
  
• Diluted knowledge and culture: The more workspaces you create, the harder it is to maintain organizational cohesion, standardize policies, and foster a sense of community.
  
• Onboarding/offboarding complexity: Employees who work across projects may need to be provisioned in multiple workspaces, complicating access control and increasing the risk of oversight.
  

The real goal of workspace design on Enterprise Grid is to strike a balance between necessary boundaries and maximum collaboration.‌ If you’re not certain that you need a new workspace, you probably don’t.

Workspaces Versus Channels: Making the Right Choice

Ask yourself: Can my collaboration needs be met with a channel (or multi-workspace channel) instead of a new workspace? If the answer is yes‌—even for large, complex, or cross-functional projects‌—you should almost always use channels.

Slack gives you powerful tools to connect teams and manage information without resorting to new workspaces.

• Channels: The backbone of Slack. Use channels for projects, teams, topics, and events. Channels keep communication focused and easy to find.
  
• Multi-workspace channels: Unique to Enterprise Grid, these channels allow you to bridge teams across multiple workspaces‌—‌without duplicating admin effort or fragmenting information. This is almost always the best solution for cross-functional collaboration.
  
• Org-wide channels: You can set any multi-workspace channel to be “org-wide” and accessible from every workspace across your Enterprise Grid organization. They can even be made default for all members‌—making them ideal for company-wide announcements, policy updates, and information everyone needs. Using org-wide channels helps avoid redundant disconnected announcement channels in each workspace and keeps workspace membership logical and simplified.
  
• User groups and private channels: Use these features to fine-tune notifications and access within a workspace, or to keep sensitive conversations limited to just those who need them.
  

Real-World Example

A services manager oversees both the Customer Support and Professional Services workspaces. Rather than creating a new workspace for a joint project, the project channel is set up as a multi-workspace channel. Only the services manager and a couple of technical leads are granted membership in both workspaces, as needed, for full resource and admin access.

When (If Ever) Should You Create a New Workspace?

There are only a handful of scenarios that justify spinning up a new workspace on Enterprise Grid.

• Strong regulatory or data separation: Legal, compliance, or privacy requirements absolutely demand a separate environment (for example, government contracts, M&A scenarios, distinct subsidiaries).
  
• Distinct admin and customization needs: The group requires radically different settings, policies, or integrations that can’t be managed by channel controls.
  
• Organizational identity and isolation: The workspace represents a persistent, semi-autonomous business unit (not just a project or temporary initiative).
  

Even in these cases, consider whether cross-workspace channels, user groups, and existing workspace settings can address your requirements.

Best Practices for Workspace Design on Enterprise Grid

• Start small, scale intentionally: Design your Grid environment around major organizational boundaries, not projects or ad hoc initiatives.
  
• Rely on multi-workspace channels: Use these to bridge departments, functions, or teams for projects that span business units.
  
• Keep administration centralized: Fewer workspaces mean simpler management, faster onboarding, and fewer mistakes.
  
• Manage multi-workspace membership: Give select power users access to multiple workspaces when admin/resource needs require it.
  
• Educate your users: Train members and stakeholders on the value of cross-workspace channels and why workspaces aren’t for every project.
  

Decision Flow

Recap

On Enterprise Grid, maintain a simple and unified workspace structure. Prioritize channels and multi-workspace channels for nearly all collaboration. Assign multi-workspace membership sparingly and review it regularly. Create new workspaces only when structural, legal, or policy requirements necessitate them. This approach effectively minimizes overhead, keeps knowledge discoverable, and enhances Slack's usability for all.

Resources

• Slack Help: Manage Multi-workspace channels
• Slack Help: Add a Channel to Multiple Workspaces in Your Organization