Design Workspaces on Enterprise Grid
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the four key considerations that inform Enterprise Grid design.
- Identify the benefits of a thoughtful Enterprise Grid design for admins and members.
- Summarize the best practices for designing an effective Enterprise Grid org.
Workspaces on Enterprise Grid
Workspaces play an important part in the overall design of your Enterprise Grid. The structure and design of your Enterprise Grid org should make your members’ working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. It isn’t meant to be static—your design should adapt and change over time, and be totally unique to the needs of your company.
In this module, you learn the details of workspaces to help you understand the strategic, high-level decisions and design to set up your Slack org for success.
While this module is heavily focused on Enterprise Grid, many of the concepts and best practices can also be applied to the Pro or Business+ plans. Regardless of how your organization is structured, you can customize Slack to reflect the needs of your business.
What’s Enterprise Grid Design?
Enterprise Grid design is a series of design decisions around workspaces, channels, and settings that impact how users work within your Slack environment. The design decisions you and your stakeholder team make directly shape the quality of your members' experience in Slack.
Consider these four key components when approaching your Enterprise Grid design.
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Model and structure: Consider how the quantity, organization, and potential maintenance of workspaces and channels will impact your members. How might this change as your organization scales or evolves?
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Roles and responsibilities: Rather than decide ad hoc, have a clear strategy in place for how responsibilities and permissions cascade from the Org Owner to Workspace Admin for your entire org.
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Policies and settings: Align with stakeholders on key policies and settings. Have a strategy for settings that affect members the most, including workspace access, creation and management; channel creation and management; external guests; and apps and integrations.
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Architecture and security: Align with your internal team on how best to support your company's security policies when designing workspace and channel strategy, roles, and permissions.
Benefits of a Thoughtful Enterprise Grid Design
For Members
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Frictionless onboarding into the right place to get work done.
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Increased collaboration by bringing together workspaces with multi-workspace channels.
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Reduction in irrelevant noise and increased ability to focus.
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Easy access to services and knowledge through channels and org-wide search.
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Increased efficiency with preapproved apps and automation via Slack workflows.
For Admins
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Decreased overhead through clear roles and distributed responsibilities at the org, workspace, and member levels.
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Automated management for assigning members to the right place for the right work.
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Higher return on investment (ROI) by aligning with stakeholders to create an environment that promotes user adoption and long-term maturity.
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Increased security and compliance through holistic security settings that align to your organization's specific security policies.
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Ability to scale easily over time with a clear and flexible structure.
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Enhanced analytics to measure and promote success across the org.
Best Practices for Enterprise Grid Design
An effective Enterprise Grid design won’t necessarily map to your org chart, unless that model makes sense for you. Consider these best practices in designing the best workspace structure for your team.
Create workspaces based on how information is shared.
Identify the existing information and collaboration networks at your organization. It might or might not mirror your org chart today. This should be the foundation of your workspace structure and strategy.
Create the minimum number of workspaces to meet your users’ needs.
It’s much easier on you and your members to create new workspaces as your company grows rather than consolidate at a later date. More workspaces also mean more overhead for admins, so be sure the benefits outweigh these additional “costs.”
Target 80%+ time in a “home” workspace.
Every member should have a workspace that serves as their primary home to get work done.
Provide an overarching, easy-to-follow structure to your Enterprise Grid.
Take the time to plan a workspace structure that makes it easy for your members to find the right places and people.
Use multi-workspace channels (versus a new workspace).
Not every project warrants a workspace. Consider factors like scope, lifespan, and audience to determine if a multi-workspace channel would be a more appropriate solution.
Consider your approach to external collaboration.
Do your security practices require a dedicated space for collaborating with external organizations (for example, vendors, partners, service providers)? Options like Slack Connect channels and guest accounts allow for external collaboration. For some organizations, it makes sense to contain these in their own workspace with specific security settings.
Establish workspace naming guidelines.
All workspaces need a name, URL, and icon. Assign distinctive workspace icons to match the workspace name. This makes it easier for users to navigate their work in Slack.
Core Considerations for Enterprise Grid Design
Consider the way your organization currently works to inform the design of your Enterprise Grid.
Consideration 1: Organization Structure and Size
Informs the potential degree of change and employee enablement required.
- How many people do you have at your organization?
- In what business units are they located?
Consideration 2: Existing Slack Workspaces and Usage
Informs where the Enterprise Grid design may mirror or differ from the existing structure.
- Are there any existing Slack workspaces?
- Are there any other tools whose setup you might want to mirror or diverge from with Slack?
Consideration 3: Existing Knowledge Networks
Informs the grid model, policy decisions on workspace and channel creation, and so forth.
- Are there specific people at your company who can tell you how people are truly working and where knowledge networks exist?
Consider sending out a survey, or conducting a focus group to gain insight into these knowledge networks if you have time.
Consideration 4: Cultural Dynamics and Other Factors
Informs a wide variety of decisions, from channel strategy and policies on discoverability to admin roles, and so on.
- Is your company transparent?
- Have there been a lot of changes or is there change fatigue?
- Are people reluctant to adopt new technology?
All of these cultural dynamics affect how your company takes to Slack and if there are any specific considerations to take into account.