Spaces are project containers or work areas which allow you to logically compartmentalize work, control user access and collaborate with others. Most of the work you do in Aperture Data Studio will be within a context of a Space.

To create a new shared Space:

  1. Click on the drop-down arrow in the top menu and click Create new Space.
  2. Enter a name and an optional description for the Space.
  3. Give the Space an External label (or use the suggested default) to uniquely identify it when making API calls. The external label is also used in the folder path for the dataset dropzone and file exports.
  4. (Optional) Allow Datasets within the Space to be published to the ODBC server using the Publish to ODBC option.
  5. (Optional) Share the Space with other users. By default, the user who creates the Space is given Admin permissions on it, but that can be modified.
  6. Click Apply to save changes.

To access all the Spaces available to you, click on the drop-down arrow in the Space menu and select View all Spaces.

Your Space

Every user automatically gets their own personal Space called Your Space. This is only accessible to that user. It cannot be edited or deleted, but will be automatically deleted should the user be deleted.

Permissions on Spaces

When creating or editing a Space, you can optionally give other users or groups access to it. You can assign the following permissions to each user:

  • Admin: Add, modify or remove other users' access to the Space, edit the Space definition and all of its contents (e.g. Views, Functions and Workflows).
  • Writer: Access the Space and edit the contents.
  • Reader: Access the Space and view (but not edit) published content only. Objects such as Views, Functions and Workflows that are in draft state will not be visible.

Spaces List

To access all the Spaces available to you, click on the drop-down arrow in the Space menu at the top of the screen and click View all Spaces.

External label specifications

Note that external labels for Spaces must:

  • contain only alphanumeric characters or underscores,
  • be less than 255 characters long and
  • not start with a number or an underscore.

System Space

Each Environment has its own System Space which can be accessed using the Space menu. By default, it can only be managed by users with the 'Installation manager' capability.

The System Space is created at the same time as the Environment. It's a Space used to define default settings for the Profile step and the Find duplicates Workflow step as well as to create global object tags.

To create the step settings, go to: Step settings > Find duplicates settings / Profile step settings and click Create new step settings.

To create global object tags, go to: System > Object tags > and click Create new tag.

Step settings created in the System Space are automatically shared to all Spaces.

Sharing to other Spaces

A Dataset cannot be shared with another Space, so the data will only be visible to users with access to that Space.

However, Data can be shared through the use of Views. To give a user or group of users access to a View but not its underlying source data, you can share a View into a Space which they have access to.

The ability to share a view to another Space is a particularly useful way to filter out or obfuscate sensitive data before making it available for processing by another set of users. It allows also data owners to create different representations of a given dataset to suppress irrelevant columns or run logical sorting in advance so downstream users can get more immediate value from the data.

You can also export data from any Dataset in a Space and import it to another Space, either in the same Environment or a different one.

Functions can be published and shared to all Spaces. Other objects can be published and shared to all Spaces or to specific Spaces where appropriate.

To prevent breaking changes, updates made to shared objects will only impact the Spaces they are shared with once they are published.

Adding shared objects

Space users can click Include from other Spaces to see a list of all objects that have been shared and choose which would be useful in the Space, which keeps the Space free of clutter.

Copy/clone Spaces

Spaces can be copied from the Spaces list, which will duplicate all of the objects within the Space and include the same shared objects.

To copy a Space, you have to have Admin or Writer permissions for that Space. The user copying will become the Space Admin of the newly created Space. Datasets in the new Space will not contain any batches of data. Any published objects will be reset to Draft status and will not be shared to other Spaces.

Enabling and Managing Workflow steps

A newly created Space will have all default Workflow steps enabled, and any custom steps disabled. This can be changed by the Space administrator(s) to simplify the types of Workflows that can be created in the Space.

To access the Workflow step list configuration panel:

  1. Click the menu next to the Space drop-down in the top menu.
  2. Select Workflow steps.
  3. Enable/disable individual Workflow steps as required.