Atlas provides a number of different workspace templates to meet different sets of requirements. When managing permissions for a particular workspace you should first understand which type of workspace it is. If you are unsure you can always use the Workspace type filter in ConneX to determine it. If you are still unsure please contact your CSM or support team.
Please be aware that after upgrading to Atlas 3.0 some of this information is no longer applicable. If you are on an Atlas 3.X release please use this article instead: Managing permissions for Atlas 3.X workspaces
In this article:
Permissions Best Practice
In general, all permissions management should be done using Active Directory Groups rather than by granting permissions to individual users. This allows the permissions for a specific workspace to be easily understood and managed via other processes that are already in place, such as your IT team adding new users joining the organisation to Active Directory Groups for their Department or Office Location. If those Departmental groups are already added to the groups used for Atlas permissions then when new users join the organisation they automatically get the expected access to workspaces.
If you want to give all users inside your organisation access to a specific workspace, you can use the Everyone except external users group to provide that access. All internal users in your organisation are part of this group automatically, and no Guest or External users will be included. Usually we only recommend using such a wide group to provide Read access to workspaces, but it is supported to use it for Edit access too, for example if you want to have a workspace that all users can contribute their knowledge to. We do not recommend using this group to provide Ownership of workspaces - ownership should be shared between as few users as possible.
In general we do not recommend breaking the permissions inheritance, but if you need to do so in order to restrict access to specific lists, libraries or individual folders or items in a workspace this can be achieved by following the instructions found here: Checking permissions and breaking permissions inheritance
Communication workspaces
Communications workspaces are often made visible to the entire organisation via the Everyone except external users group as you can see above, which automatically grants users access to view the workspace and its content. However, managing the Members and Owners will be specific to the requirements for your organisation.
Permissions management for Communications workspaces is done entirely via SharePoint, except for any Members or Owners added during the creation process in ConneX.
To get started, navigate to the workspace whose permissions you want to manage, then go to the top right settings menu and click on Site permissions:
This will open a panel on the right side of the page. You can expand each permission level here to see the current Owners, Members and Visitors:
To add Users or Groups to the workspace, click the Share site button, then find the User or Group you need using the search box. Once you choose a User or Group you can click the dropdown to choose their permission level (Read, Edit or Full Control).
In most cases we recommend unchecking the Send email option since users will most likely be navigating to Atlas via other means, but if you want to send an email to the users you're adding, you can type a message to those users in the box.
When you're ready, click the Add button at the bottom of the panel to add the chosen User or Group with the selected permission level. If you made any mistakes you can click Cancel and start again.
Knowledge Workspaces
Permissions for Knowledge Workspaces can be managed in a number of different ways. When creating a workspace via ConneX you can add Members and Owners, but they will get immediate access to the workspace so you would only want to add users who will be helping to build out the go-live content.
You can also choose whether a workspace is Public or Private - Public workspaces can be discovered and joined by users from within inside Microsoft Teams, while Private workspaces require that the user is added by administrators.
In future Atlas versions workspace permissions will be able to be updated via ConneX by choosing Edit Workspace from the ConneX card. Until then, you have some options.
Add Members via Teams
Adding Members using this method will give them access to both the Team and the Atlas Workspace. To add members to a workspace via Teams, the workspace must have been created using the "Knowledge Workspace (Teams)" template and you must be an Owner of the Team.
Go to the next section in this article if you only want to give access to the Atlas Workspace.
To get started, click the ellipsis (...) next to the Team you want to manage then choose Add Member:
Now you can start typing the names of the users or groups you want to add to the Team. If available you should always add groups rather than individual users.
Click Add to add the selected users and groups to the Team and workspace:
These users will get a notification in Teams and/or via email to let them know they have been added.
Add Members via the Atlas Workspace
If you add members to a Knowledge workspace via Atlas you can either add them as Team Members with full access to the Team and Workspace, or add them only to the Workspace itself. Members added only to the Workspace will be able to contribute to it and see documents uploaded via Teams in the document library, but they will not have access to the Team behind it and any conversations within that Team.
First, go to the Atlas workspace then go to the top right settings menu and click on Site permissions:
This will open a panel on the right side of the page. You can expand each permission level here to see the current Owners, Members and Visitors:
To add permissions for a user or group, first click the Invite people button. You will have two options:
- Add members to group will give access to both the Atlas Workspace and the Team or Microsoft 365 Group associated with it depending on the template used to create the workspace.
- Share site only will give access only to the Atlas Workspace.
Add members to group
If you click Add members to group you will see the following panel showing the current Members and Owners of the Team and Workspace:
To change the role assigned to an existing User or Group, click the dropdown under them and change the role between Member and Owner. You cannot assign Visitors at this level because Teams does not support visitor access. To add Users or Groups, click the Add members button.
If your workspace is based on the "Knowledge Workspace (Teams)" template you will only be able to add Members or Owners. If you workspace is based on the "Knowledge Workspace (SharePoint)" template you can either add Members or Owners, or you can click the go to Outlook link to add guests. Adding guests via Outlook is documented by Microsoft here: Adding guests to Microsoft 365 Groups - Office Support
You will not see this link if your workspace uses Microsoft Teams (right hand side):
vs. 
To add Members or Owners type the User or Group name into the box and click them to add them. You can add many users or groups at a time, just keep adding them to the list. Once you're ready, click Save to add them.
Once you have added Members, you can change them to Owners from the original Site permissions panel using the dropdown menu.
Collaboration workspaces
Collaboration workspaces are based on Microsoft Teams, so the permissions for these workspaces should always be managed directly from Microsoft Teams.
As an Owner of the Team, go to Microsoft Teams, find your Team, then click the ellipsis (...) next to it and choose Manage team. To add members, click Add member in the top right and search for users or groups to add. To change the permissions for a user or group (between Member and Owner), click the dropdown next to their Role and choose the one you want to give them.
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