Workspace for OpenSearch Dashboards

Introduced 2.18

The Workspace feature in OpenSearch Dashboards enables you to tailor your environment with use-case-specific configurations. For example, you can create dedicated workspaces for observability scenarios, allowing you to focus on relevant functionalities. Additionally, the Workspace feature enables organization of visual assets, such as dashboards and visualizations, within a workspace with isolated storage.

Workspace data model

The Workspace data model is defined by the following structure:

  1. interface Workspace {
  2.   id: string;
  3.   name: string;
  4.   description?: string;
  5.   features?: string[];
  6.   color: string;
  7.   uiSettings: Record<string, unknown>;
  8. }

copy

The Workspace data model is composed of the following key attributes:

  • id: String type; unique ID for each each workspace.
  • name: String type; designates the name of the workspace.
  • description: Optional string type; provides contextual information for the workspace.
  • features: Optional array of strings; contains use case IDs linked to the workspace.

Example Workspace object

The following object shows a typical Workspace configuration:

  1. {
  2.   id: "M5NqCu",
  3.   name: "Analytics team",
  4.   description: "Analytics team workspace",
  5.   features: ["use-case-analytics"],
  6. }

copy

The configuration creates the Analytics team using the use-case-observability feature set. Use cases map to specific feature groups, limiting functionality to the defined set within each workspace.

The following are predefined use case options:

  • use-case-observability
  • use-case-security-analytics
  • use-case-search
  • use-case-essentials
  • use-case-all

Associating saved objects with workspaces

Saved objects in OpenSearch Dashboards, such as dashboards, visualizations, and index patterns, can be associated with specific workspaces, improving organization and accessibility as the volume of objects grows.

The workspaces attribute, an array of strings, is added to saved objects to be linked with one or more workspaces. As a result, saved objects such as dashboards and visualizations are only accessible within their designated workspaces.

The following saved object shows a dashboard object associated with the workspace M5NqCu:

  1. {
  2.   type: "dashboard",
  3.   id: "da123f20-6680-11ee-93fa-df944ec23359",
  4.   workspaces: ["M5NqCu"]
  5. }

copy

Saved objects support association with multiple workspaces, facilitating cross-team collaboration and resource sharing. This feature is useful when an object is relevant to multiple teams, projects, or use cases.

The following example shows a data source object linked to multiple workspaces:

  1. {
  2.   type: "data-source",
  3.   id: "da123f20-6680-11ee-93fa-df944ec23359",
  4.   workspaces: ["M5NqCu", "<TeamA-workspace-id>", "<Analytics-workspace-id>"]
  5. }

copy

Non-workspace saved objects

Not all saved objects in OpenSearch Dashboards are associated with a workspace. Some objects operate independently of the workspace framework. These objects lack workspace attributes and serve system-wide functions. For example, the global user interface settings object manages configurations affecting the entire OpenSearch Dashboards interface in order to maintain consistent functionality across all workspaces.

This dual approach allows OpenSearch Dashboards to balance granular, context-specific customization with overall system consistency.

Enabling the Workspace feature

In your opensearch_dashboards.yml file, set the following option:

  1. workspace.enabled: true
  2. uiSettings:
  3.   overrides:
  4.     "home:useNewHomePage": true

copy

If your cluster has the Security plugin installed, then multi-tenancy must be disabled to avoid conflicts with similar workspaces:

  1. opensearch_security.multitenancy.enabled: false

copy