Navigating the workspace

SPARK's layout is deliberately simple: a left sidebar to move between areas, and a main area for whatever you are working on. The sidebar is laid out in three tabs. Once you know where each piece lives, everything in these docs is easy to find. This page is your map.

The left sidebar at a glance

The left sidebar is stacked top to bottom:

1. The workspace menu: your workspace's name (its colour dot shows when you point at it), then the bell for your Notifications and the Search button, on the same line.
2. Three icon tabs, Threads, Ecosystem and Settings, which switch what the rest of the sidebar shows.
3. The panel for the tab you are on.
4. At the very bottom, your user menu: your picture and display name.

You can collapse the sidebar to a narrow rail of icons with the toggle in the page header, or with ⌘B (Ctrl+B). Its width is fixed: dragging its edge does not resize it.

The three tabs: Threads, Ecosystem, Settings

The tabs are icons only; hover one to see its name and shortcut.

Threads and Ecosystem remember where you were. Threads reopens the channel or thread you had open last; click it again while you are on it to go to the Threads page, every thread in your channels. Ecosystem reopens the last page you had open there; click it again to go to the Ecosystem page. Settings always opens on Agent Studio's Agents page, the one people open it for most.

The New Thread page

When you open a workspace, SPARK lands on its New Thread page. It has three parts:

• A greeting for the time of day, such as Good afternoon, with your first name, beside SPARK's mark in the workspace's colour.
• The composer. Type a message and send it to hand work to an agent. The placeholder reads Ask Spark or name an agent…: a message that names no agent goes to Spark, the agent built into every workspace, and typing the start of an agent's name offers that agent instead, as @ does. The thread opens in your direct message with that agent.
• Recents: the last three things you opened, such as a thread, a canvas, a task or a data view, so you can jump straight back in. Each shows how long ago you opened it.

New Thread, at the top of the Threads panel, brings you back to this page from anywhere; its shortcut is ⌘⇧O (Ctrl+Shift+O). See Start a thread.

The Threads tab

The Threads panel holds the workspace's conversations, top to bottom:

• New Thread, then Threads: every thread in your channels, the latest written in first.
• Pinned: the threads and messages you pinned.
• Private Channels, shown only while you are in one, and Channels, every public channel. Each post in a channel starts a thread. Everyone reads the public channels; only an administrator creates and manages them.
• Direct Messages: your conversations with people, the newest first, then every agent you can talk to.
• Archived Messages, folded, shown only when you have archived a conversation.
• Spaces: the workspace's Spaces, as on the Ecosystem tab.

Each group shows eight rows, then More. A row with something unread reads in bold, with a count. An agent answers only a message that names it, except in your own direct message with that agent, where it answers every message. See Start a thread, Channels and Direct messages.

The Ecosystem tab

The Ecosystem panel starts with a short list:

• Studio opens Agent Studio, where agents and everything they use are configured. Rest the pointer on it to see every Agent Studio page beside it: Agents, Models, Skills, Tools, Memory, Connectors, Vaults and Guardrails.
• Tasks and Canvas, the areas most people open every day.
• Workflows, Data and Files, which Less folds under More. More opens on its own when you are on one of its pages, so the page you are on always shows in the sidebar.

Below that come three sections that fold from their names:

• Pinned: pages you pinned for one-click access. Click Pin in the page header to pin the page you are on, such as a task, a canvas, a workflow, a run or a data view. Pinned items can be grouped into folders with New folder and Move to folder…. The section is hidden while it is empty.
• Spaces: one row per Space, each opening that Space's page. The section's + (New space) creates one, and its settings icon (Manage spaces) opens the Spaces page in Settings.
• Agents: the workspace's own agents, three and then More. Clicking one starts a new thread with that agent. The agents built into SPARK, such as Spark, are not listed here; you find them under Direct Messages on the Threads tab.

The Ecosystem page

Click Ecosystem while you are already on it, or open it with nothing to reopen, and the Ecosystem page shows what the workspace holds, a section each:

• Spaces: a card per Space.
• Agent Studio: a card per Agent Studio page, with what it is for.
• Features: Tasks, Canvas, Workflows, Data and Files.
• Agents: a card per agent of the workspace's own. Click one to start a new thread with it.

Each card opens what its row in the sidebar opens, and each section folds from its name.

The workspace menu

The button at the top of the sidebar shows your workspace's name and colour. A workspace is your team's tenant: its own data, members, and settings. Click it to open the workspace menu:

• At the top, the name of the organisation you are signed in to. If you belong to more than one, Switch organisation lists the others; choosing one signs you in to it.
• Workspaces: every workspace you can open in this organisation, with a tick on the one you are in. Click one to switch to it. Data never crosses between workspaces, so each switch gives you a clean, separate context.
• Create workspace, where your organisation allows it.
• Settings and Members, shortcuts to the current workspace's settings and its people.

Workspaces live inside an organisation. See Organisation for how the two relate.

Search and notifications

The Search button beside the workspace name opens a search across the workspace: threads, Spaces, tasks, canvases, workflows, data objects, files and settings. Its box reads Search features, threads and settings.... Press ⌘F or ⌘K (Ctrl+F or Ctrl+K) to open it from anywhere. See Search.

The bell beside it opens your Notifications: when someone mentions you, replies in a thread you are in, or assigns you a task. It shows how many are unread. See Notifications.

The user menu

Your picture and display name sit at the foot of the sidebar. Click them to open your user menu. Your email sits at the top, then:

• Theme: System, Light or Dark.
• Density: Comfortable or Compact. Compact draws text and spacing smaller, so more fits on screen.
• Profile: your own settings. See Profile.
• Learn more: the User guide (these docs), Support and Terms, each in a new tab.
• Log out.

The main content area and the page header

Whatever you select in the sidebar opens in the main area to the right. This is where you browse records in a data object, arrange widgets on a canvas, work through tasks, build a workflow, or follow a thread.

Across the top of most pages, the page header carries:

• The sidebar toggle and a breadcrumb of where you are.
• The Pin button, to add the page to Pinned.
• Page activity: the faces of the people on the page in the last half hour. Hover them to see what happened on it in the last day.
• A new thread about the page's item, for example New thread about this space on a Space or New thread with this agent on an agent: the thread starts with that item in its context.
• At the right end, a hammer, Build with Solutions Engineer. It asks Build with Solutions Engineer? and, on Start thread, starts a thread with the built-in Solutions Engineer, which proposes a setup for the workspace and creates it once you approve the plan.

Right-click menus and person cards

Wherever a row, a card, or a sidebar item has a ⋯ menu, a right-click on it opens the same menu at the pointer. The menu reads the same way everywhere: open and edit first, then the item's fields, run, copy, move and share, then archive and remove, with Delete last. An item that opens a page also offers Open in new tab.

People are shown by the display name they chose, not their email. Hover a person's face, for example a task's assignee, a file's owner, or a member in a picker, to see a card with their picture, full name and email.

The right sidebar

Some pages open a second sidebar on the right, the full height of the window. In a thread, an item you open from the thread's context (a canvas, a task, a file, a data object) docks there beside the conversation, at about half the window's width, so you can read both at once. Drag its edge to resize it. While it is open, the left sidebar folds to its rail of icons. On a narrow screen the item opens over the thread instead.

The Settings tab

The Settings tab groups configuration, in this order:

Each group folds from its name. Several "create" actions in this guide start here, because things like agents and data object settings are managed in Settings. For the Mailbox and Managed SFTP, see Extensions.

At the bottom of the Settings panel, SPARK prints the version it is running, with the build reference beside it, for example v0.36.2 · 80c53129. Quote that when you report a problem; it tells support exactly which build you were on. See Getting support.

Language

SPARK's interface is available in English and French. Pick yours under Interface language on your Profile.

Where to go next

• Ready to do something concrete? Follow the Quick start.
• Find anything fast: Search.
• Talk with people and agents: Start a thread.
• Want to group your work by use case? See Create a Space.
• Need the vocabulary? Skim Key concepts.