Open a project in Workspace

Before you start#

• You need Workspace development access in the organization of the project, current membership of it, and a role in the project that allows what you want to do.
• You need your Beyond Workspace address, or a project opened from Beyond Projects. Workspace is not hosted, so there is no public address.

Arrive from Projects and sign in#

1. In Beyond Projects, open the project and choose Open on Develop in Workspace. The address carries the project identity and nothing else.
2. Signed out, Workspace shows "Sign in to Beyond Workspace" and "You sign in with your Beyond account. If you arrived from Projects, the project you chose opens afterwards." Choose Sign in with Beyond.
3. After signing in, the project opens by itself. The identity is checked before it is used, survives the sign-in, and is removed from the address once it has been used.

Opened without a project, Workspace says "Choose a project": "Your projects are on the left. Each one keeps its own tabs, drafts and conversations." The list holds the projects you have already opened here. A project that you never opened in Workspace is opened from Beyond Projects the first time. With none, it says "No projects yet" and "Projects are created in Beyond Projects. Once you create or join one, open it from there."

When you do not get in#

Each way of not getting in is a different answer, and Workspace never words one as another. The service's own code is always shown beside the sentence.

Choose another project leaves a refusal. Workspace also refuses to open an environment for a project that is archived or deleted in Projects; nothing of that project is destroyed by it.

Your own environment#

Opening a project starts your development environment of that project. There is one per person and project:

• it has its own container, its own storage and its own branch of the project, so two members of one project never share files that are not integrated;
• only you attach to it, read its state or start it. To anyone else it does not exist, whatever their role. A project administrator can stop it, and nothing else;
• a colleague who opens the same project gets their own environment. You share work by integrating it, not by sharing an environment.

The first time anyone opens a project that was created from a template, its empty working copy is filled from the template at the recorded revision. A working copy that already holds anything is never touched, so a newer template never changes it.

Watch it start#

While it starts, the header says "Starting your environment of {project}" with the name of the project, then "Connecting to your environment", then Ready. Stages lists seven steps as the service reports them, each Waiting, In progress, Done, Failed or Skipped:

Authorize → Capacity → Provision → Restore → Synchronize → Start → Ready

If it fails, the screen says "Your environment did not start" and "Failed at:" with the stage that really failed and the service's code. Try again is safe: see The environment failed to start.

Start and stop it yourself#

Start and Stop are in the header. While it stops it says "Stopping your environment", and then "Your environment of {project} is stopped": "Stopping keeps all your work: files, unsaved drafts and conversations. Start it to continue."

Before an environment stops, your saved files are committed to your own branch automatically. Stopping never integrates anything.

When you are away#

An environment that nobody uses is stopped by the service, exactly as if you had chosen Stop. Inactivity deletes nothing: the container is removed and your storage, your branch, your drafts and your conversations stay.

• Using the editor counts as activity. Workspace reports it at most once per interval, and only when you actually did something.
• A running Codex conversation keeps the environment from being stopped.
• Someone looking at your preview is not activity. An environment is stopped under continuous visitor traffic.

If your access ends while you work#

Access is asked again while you work, not only when you open the project. If it ends, a banner says why: "Your development access was revoked.", "Your development access expired.", "Workspace development is no longer enabled for you here.", "Your role no longer allows development here.", "Your session ended." or "The environment is shutting down."

Under it: "Nothing is being written. Unsaved files kept:" with their number. Autosave pauses, nothing is sent, and every open file keeps its text. Request access again asks for a fresh connection when the cause is gone.

Find your way around#

Limits#

• The client's run against the real administration did not include Beyond Accounts, Beyond Projects, the access gate, containers or a real development server. Those parts are verified against a fixture of the services, or by the services' own suites.
• Workspace has no list of the projects you could open and never did. Open a project from Projects the first time.
• A terminal is not offered: "A terminal is not part of this Dev Server version (process control is not implemented)."

Next action#

Edit files, or work with Codex.