Workspaces

A Workspace is a self-contained tenant inside your DropAFinder account — a container for Finders, Locations, Maps, Sets, Tags, Custom Fields, and members. Free and Bronze accounts have one implicit Workspace; Premium accounts can have several.

Most teams need only one Workspace. The feature exists for agencies, consultancies, and larger teams managing multiple distinct brands, clients, or business units side-by-side under a single account.

What a Workspace contains

Everything you build in DropAFinder lives inside a Workspace:

• Finders — the embeddable widgets you configure
• Locations — the data backing those Finders
• Maps and Sets — groupings of Locations
• Tags — workspace-scoped labels on Locations
• Custom Fields — workspace-scoped typed attributes on Locations
• Members — the people with access to this Workspace

Each Workspace is fully isolated. A Tag in Workspace A doesn’t show up in Workspace B; a Finder built in one Workspace can only attach Maps from the same Workspace; renaming a Custom Field in one doesn’t affect the others.

💡 Tip: If you’re not sure whether you need multiple Workspaces, ask: “do I want this data and these people kept separate?” If yes, multiple Workspaces. If you just want to organize within a shared dataset, use Sets and Tags inside a single Workspace instead.

Free, Bronze, and Premium

Workspace creation is gated by subscription tier:

Server-side, the dashboard’s /workspaces API endpoints are protected by middleware that returns a 403 to non-Premium users. The dashboard reflects this — Workspace controls are hidden or disabled below Premium.

🔒 Internal only: The gating is enforced via the subscription_tier:premium middleware on the /workspaces route group. See internal/codebases/backend/auth-and-roles for the mechanism. Non-Premium users still have an implicit Workspace — the gating prevents managing more than one, not having one at all.

For pricing detail and the full per-tier feature matrix, see Billing.

Creating a Workspace (Premium)

If you’re on the Premium plan:

1. Open the Workspace switcher in the sidebar
2. Click Create workspace
3. Enter a title (e.g., Acme Coffee — Retail Stores) and an optional description
4. Save

The new Workspace is empty — no Locations, no Finders. You can either start from scratch or import data via Add locations.

🟡 [SCREENSHOT: Workspace creation modal with the title field populated and the description field empty, plus the “Create” action.]

Switching between Workspaces

The Workspace switcher lives in the sidebar. Click it to see your Workspaces; pick one to switch.

🟡 [SCREENSHOT: Sidebar with the Workspace switcher open, showing two Workspaces (one active, one inactive) and a “Create workspace” action at the bottom of the menu.]

When you switch:

• The dashboard’s data — Locations panel, Finders list, Maps, Sets, Tags, Custom Fields — all refresh to show only the new Workspace’s data
• Your URL doesn’t necessarily change (the Workspace context is implicit)
• API calls automatically scope to the new Workspace via a workspace_id query parameter

Switching is fast — there’s no save state to confirm. Pending edits in one Workspace are not lost when you switch; they’re kept in your browser’s session.

Members

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Confirm member roles, invitation UX, per-Workspace member limits, and whether members are tied to the parent account’s billing or invoiced separately. The codebase has invite-token infrastructure (Invite model, /register/{token} endpoint), but the in-product member management UX wasn’t fully surfaced in the digest.]

Workspaces support inviting other people. Each member has a role within the Workspace (admin, editor, viewer — roster TBD). Members are scoped to the Workspace; an admin in Workspace A is not automatically an admin in Workspace B.

The invitation flow:

1. From the Workspace settings page, click Invite member
2. Enter their email and pick a role
3. The invitee receives an email with a link
4. They click the link and either log in (if they have a DropAFinder account) or register a new one
5. After acceptance, they appear in the Workspace’s member list

Tutorial mode

A Workspace tracks two onboarding-related flags:

• tutorial_enabled — whether the in-product tutorial is shown
• tutorial_completed_steps — which steps the user has finished

These drive a guided onboarding experience for new Workspaces. Existing Workspaces typically have the tutorial disabled or fully completed.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Is the tutorial visible/applicable to all tiers, or only to specific ones? And what steps does it cover? The schema is clear from the digest; the UX side isn’t.]

Common patterns

Agency managing multiple clients

One Workspace per client. Each client’s data is isolated; if a client leaves, you delete or archive their Workspace without affecting others.

Multi-brand company

One Workspace per brand. Each brand has its own theme, Locations, and Finders. Members may be added to multiple Workspaces if they manage more than one brand.

Production / staging separation

Some teams use two Workspaces for the same data: one for production Finders, one for experimentation. This gives stronger isolation than just duplicating Finders within one Workspace, at the cost of maintaining the data in two places.

💡 Tip: If you have multiple Workspaces and find yourself manually mirroring changes between them, that’s a sign your data should probably live in one Workspace with multiple Sets or Maps as the differentiator. Workspaces are best when the data is genuinely separate.

Edge cases and limitations

• No cross-Workspace data. A Location in one Workspace cannot be referenced from a Finder in another. If you need shared data, you need a single Workspace.
• Finders carry their Workspace’s domain context. Authorized URLs configured on a Finder belong to that Finder, not the Workspace as a whole. Same Finder, same authorized URLs across Workspaces (if you duplicate it).
• Per-Workspace billing isn’t separated. All your Workspaces are part of the same DropAFinder account, billed as one. To split billing across teams, you’d need separate accounts.
• Workspace switching doesn’t preserve filters. If you’d narrowed the Locations panel to a specific country and switch Workspaces, the filter resets.
• Deleting a Workspace is destructive. All Finders, Locations, Maps, Sets, Tags, Custom Fields, and member memberships are removed. Backup or export anything you want to keep before deleting.

🔴 [NEEDS CLARIFICATION: Confirm the deletion semantics — soft-delete with grace period, or hard-delete immediately? Affects whether to position deletion as recoverable or not.]

Where to next

• Pricing and tier matrix: Billing
• Conceptual primer: Concepts
• Onboarding into a new Workspace: Add locations