In this guide
- 1. Organize your sidebar to make information accessible
- 2. Bring your team into the fold
- 3. Encourage collaboration and ownership
- 4. Build out databases for your team's work
- Use database templates to scale
- Pick the properties you want your team using
- Create database views for specific work
Getting your team’s Notion workspace organized starts by creating centralized systems for accessing information, managing projects, and enabling cross-functional collaboration.
Once you’ve set the foundation, your team can go about customizing these workflows depending on their needs. From engineering product roadmaps to your marketing team’s wiki, the baseline systems you establish when onboarding your team to Notion support the growth of your team — and their work.
1. Organize your sidebar to make information accessible
To get your Notion workspace up and running, start at thesidebar. This is where your company’s projects and information live, so keeping it clean, clear, and organized makes finding and using information easier. If info is inaccessible, it might as well not exist.
You'll first want to set your teamspaces and information architecture, which occupy theTeamspaces
section in your sidebar.
Think of these as homepages at your company, acting as the broadest level of categorization possible.
Create teamspaces for your main departments, like one for marketing and another for engineering.
Use the default “General” teamspace for pages you want everyone to be able to access — like meeting notes, docs, mission, and values.
Then, start adding pages to your teamspaces. The fastest way to get these top-level pages started is using Notion’s templates.
Duplicate and add any of our templates
into your team’s workspace.
To manually add new top-level pages from scratch to yourteamspaces, click+
to the immediate right. A blank page will appear giving you the option to either create a database, empty page, import information, or work off an existing template.
But maybe you don't want teammates changing top-level pages in teamspaces. In theTeamspace settings
section in your sidebar, findSecurity
. Once there, you'll be able to toggle off the ability for teammates to edit the sidebar. However, this feature is only available onEnterpriseplans and you must be an admin to activate it.
After your sidebar has been locked, this helps reinforce the keeping of relevantnested pageswithin your top-level pages. For example, your top-level company home page might have nested pages for benefits info or how to request PTO. Having these as sub-pages keeps the information organized and easily accessible.
Don't forget — teams can also customize their pages. From headers and columns, to Figma files and code snippets, each team wiki can be tailored to the work at hand. Learnwriting and editingbasics, then tacklestyles and customization.
Read more about teamspaces
To manually add new top-level pages from scratch to your WORKSPACE
section, click +
to the immediate right. A blank page will appear giving you the option to either create a database, empty page, import information, or work off an existing template.
But maybe you don't want teammates changing top-level pages. In the Settings & Members
section in your sidebar, find Security & identity
. Once there, you'll be able to toggle off the ability for teammates to edit the sidebar. However, this feature is only available on Enterprise plans and you must be an admin to activate it.
After your sidebar has been locked, this helps reinforce the keeping of relevant nested pages within your top-level pages. For example, your top-level company home page might have nested pages for benefits info or how to request PTO. Having these as sub-pages keeps the information organized and easily accessible.
Don't forget — teams can also customize their pages. From headers and columns, to Figma files and code snippets, each team wiki can be tailored to the work at hand. Learn writing and editing basics, then tackle styles and customization.
Other elements of your sidebar
2. Bring your team into the fold
Once your initial top-pages are up, invite your team to the workspace. In the sidebar, click Settings & Members
. Under Workspace
, select Members
. Tap the Add members
button. Enter their email address.
Before inviting teammates, you’ll have the option to set each person you invite into your workspace as:
Member— can't change workspace settings or invite new members into the workspace.
Membership admin — can invite new members to the workspace and edit groups but can’t change workspace settings.
Workspace owner — can change workspace settings and invite new members to the workspace.
Then clickInvite
.
If you want to add teammates even faster, in the Settings & Members
section of your sidebar, you can:
Allow everyone with your company's email domain to automatically join your workspace. Do this under
Allowed email domains
.Invite teammates en masse via a secret link, where they can automatically join when clicking on that link you send via an email or Slack message.
As your team grows, you might need to update permission settings for the folks in your workspace. You can learn more about , guest access, and creating permission groups to quickly and easily share pages with teams at your company.
3. Encourage collaboration and ownership
Now that you’ve set up your Notion workspace for success and invited all your teammates, you can inspire collaboration.
There are several ways to work with your team using Notion depending on the situation. Namely, you canuse the @
mention in several places within your Notion workspace to tag teammates and set reminders.
Establish a page's owner for any updates (here's our Guide to keeping your Notion pages up-to-date).
Help get teammates acquainted with the pages they’ll be using most. You can tag them at the top of a page (as a page comment) with high level remarks or to start a discussion.
Tag teammates in-line to get feedback or ask questions by hitting
Comment
on images, videos, text, etc.
Set reminders to ensure teammates chime in or follow up where needed.
Here's our Guide about using comments for better cross-functional collaboration.
4. Build out databases for your team's work
Whether it’s the engineering team’s tasks or the company-wide roadmap, Notion databases are essential for running projects and executing them with speed and precision. We suggest creating shared databases (as top-level pages) for:
Projects / Roadmap
Meeting Notes
Docs
For any shared documentation, whenever possible, use one big database. Why?
Because properties, filters, views, and more allow your team to slice information however they need. Having one big database fosters important company-wide transparency and learning, while individuals can customize what information they see and how they see it.
Here are a few more tips for getting the most out of your team's databases.
Use database templates to scale
Templates help ensure you’re running processes consistently. And as your team grows, they’re important for scaling those processes.
You can create any number of customized templates that spin up immediately, containing questions, prompts, or edge-cases. Because templates are so customizable, if your team learns something about how a project was done, the template can be updated. This promotes learnings across your team and takes those learnings forward into everything you do.
For your different databases, you might include:
Templates for different types of meeting notes — from 1:1s to standups, have everything in your template ready so the meeting can get under way. We’ve created some meeting notes templates you can use to get started, including some for remote teams (including standups and all-hands meetings) and for 1:1s.
Templates for recurring projects — you may need to regularly drum up more support articles or complete user research sessions. Make sure each project starts with the same criteria so you can execute consistently. Some of our pre-made templates for this work includes a product spec and a design spec.
Pick the properties you want your team using
Pages comprise Notion databases. And inside pages is where the work actually happens. But you need a way to spell out key facts around your team's work.
We have a whole Guide about how to use database properties and when to use them. Of course, they should be customized to your team's needs, based on your work and your processes.
Properties to try in your projects database
Create database views for specific work
Database views are also customizable, helping you and your team surface relevant information your database.
Let's say you have a company-wide roadmap. Want to see all projects organized by status? Create a view for it. Want to see a table organized by project priority? You can make a view for that too. What about a calendar of all the launch dates? Yep, you can create a view for that.
Try these database views
We have a whole Guide about how to use different views ofa Notion database to see the status of projects, deadlines, and more.
Resources for setting up your team’s workspace
Navigating with the sidebar
Intro to workspaces
Invite teammates
Intro to databases
Templates for setting up your workspace
Product Wiki
Projects / Roadmap
Meeting Notes
Docs
Share this guide
FAQs
How to set up your Notion workspace for your team? ›
What are Teamspaces? Teamspaces are effectively a small Workspace within your Workspace. They have their own set of permissions and security settings. Each Teamspace can have Teamspace owners (similar to Workspace owners) and Members.
What is the difference between teamspace and workspace? ›What are Teamspaces? Teamspaces are effectively a small Workspace within your Workspace. They have their own set of permissions and security settings. Each Teamspace can have Teamspace owners (similar to Workspace owners) and Members.
How do you Share Notion with a team? ›On the page, go to Share at the top right. Click the Add people button. Enter the person's email address in the space provided, choose a level of access from the dropdown (i.e. full access, can view, can comment), and click Invite .
How do you make a group Notion? ›Click Group at the top of your board and choose the property you want. You can group by nearly any property type: Select, Multi-select, Person, Text, Number, Date, etc. The columns of your board will change to the values you've defined for that property.
How do you manage Notion workspaces? ›Access workspace settings
To see your workspace management options, go to Settings & members at the top of the left sidebar. In the window that pops up, click on the Settings tab. In this window, you can: Change your workspace name: We recommend keeping it short and simple!
Creating a Personal Workspace
You will need to create a new team. When you select Join or create a team, you will be given the option to create a team, join a team with a code, or select some of the pre-created teams to join. To set up your personal workspace, select Create a team.
- Select Join or create a team.
- Select Create team to create a new team.
- Type in a team name.
- Add members. To add people outside your company, type their email address to invite them as guests.
- Select Add > Close.
- To create a new channel, select.
Share with everyone in your workspace
You can collaborate with other people in Notion by adding them as members to your workspace. These can be your teammates at work, friends, or anyone you want to work with on pages.
Setup the Notion API trigger to run a workflow which integrates with the Microsoft Teams API. Pipedream's integration platform allows you to integrate Notion and Microsoft Teams remarkably fast.
Can multiple people use the same Notion? ›You can edit the same page at the same time with an unlimited number of people. Their profile photos will show you where they're looking or working on the page. Edits and comments made by everyone will appear to you instantly.
How do I set up a Notion workspace? ›
- Open the workspace switcher at the top left of your Notion window.
- Choose which email account you'd like the new workspace to be associated with, and click the. ••• to the right of that email address.
- Click Join or create workspace .
With teamspaces, you can organize your entire company in one place, while giving each individual team their own space to organize docs & projects.
How many workspaces can you have in Notion? ›Notion lets you have as many workspaces as you want with a free plan. If you get a paid version of Notion, keep in mind that your subscriptio only applies to one workspace at a time.
How do you maximize the use of Notion? ›- Create Blocks Instantly. ...
- Move Blocks With Ease. ...
- Use Toggles Smartly. ...
- Navigate Around Your Workspace Easily. ...
- Change the Location of Pages and Blocks. ...
- Open Pages in New Tabs and Windows. ...
- Use Markdown Shortcuts. ...
- Manage Your Workspace's Environment.
At the highest level, you can share Notion pages publicly or with individual users. Among those individual users, you can share pages with guests or members of your workspace. Within those members, you can share with all members, specific members or groups.
What is the difference between Myworkspace and workspace? ›In essence, the workplace is where you go to work the workspace is where you do your work. While they are both constantly evolving and can both be continuously improved.
What is the difference between a workspace and a work place? ›Workplaces and workspaces
A workplace is a location where you turn up for work five days a week. It is an office space where you meet your co-workers, discuss work, brainstorm, conduct meetings, and get work done. On the other hand, a workspace is the space where you work.
A team workspace is a shared space for team collaboration. Team workspaces provide new roles for granular permissions to manage content and manage members inside a team workspace.