Workspaces, a bit like project management, is a term which can mean different things to different people. It is not a feature like blog or discussion forum which is clearly defined and easy to code.
What a workspace should do really depends on the use case. So workspaces will be defined by profiles where depending how features are configured, they will generate a Tiki for one of the following scenarios (and new ones yet to be thought of!). These underlying features need to be flexible!
Workspace-type profiles
Software project spaces à la *Forge
Software project has hundreds of third party extensions (not Tiki model!). Each extension has file gallery, discussion forum, but trackers and some wiki pages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)
TikiForge
International association of X. Have central site but want to make it easier to have special interest groups and for people to regroup by interest, language, geography, etc.
Add a way for people to make "transactions" and/or rate other people to have a trust network and you can have a Job board / Dating site /
Hospitality_Exchange / Car Pooling / etc.
Social_Networking
Project Management / business unit workspaces
50 000 person company. A dozen divisions, and hundreds of departments.
This extends to also having spaces where non-employees can participate to (external consultants, partners, customers, etc.)
Project_Management (let's build an airplane type of project management.)
Product support
- A company sells hundreds of products. They want easy access to support information for each (download manuals, support tickets, etc.) while have general common space for customers (discussion forums, new product suggestions, etc.)
- Book publisher has a website for each book, with distinct domain and micro-communities for each, yet all managed in one Tiki.
E-learning / Learning Management System (LMS) / classroom / course management system (CMS)
One school has thousands of students, dozens of teachers, hundreds of classes.
Classroom
Multi-site deployment.
- Election campaign. 100 candidates. Each candidate has individual website, with own domain name, and with local management. Yet, National level party can publish news on all or selected candidate sites.
WikiFarms / SaaS
Using Tiki as Software as a Service (SaaS) platform and easy way to create new spaces. myprojectA.wikifarm.com, myprojectB.wikifarm.com, etc.
http://tikiwiki.org/SWOT#Working_groups_Special_interest_groups_local_user_groups_p2p_leadership_D_
Marketplace
Tiki doesn't yet offer ecommerce. But if it did, marketplace is where anyone can setup a shop and sell (so emerging workspace), vs a single-source seller classic shopping cart.
You have a database of customers managed by head office. But salespeople are only allowed to manage their customers
Workspace features
To illustrate, here are features which are needed in various workspace types. (and thus why there is no one answer fits all and profiles are needed)
- Can workspace admins manage user accounts (change password, change email) vs just add or remove from group
- Can workspaces emerge and die on their own, or they need admin
- etc.
Related links:
http://tikiwiki.org/SWOT#Working_groups_Special_interest_groups_local_user_groups_p2p_leadership_D_