What Is a Workspace in Dharayana? A Beginner's Guide

A workspace in Dharayana is the account that everything else belongs to — your team, your clients' projects, your GST invoices, and your client portal all live inside one workspace. If you signed up and immediately saw a screen asking you to "create a workspace" or "activate a workspace" and weren't sure what that meant, this guide explains it in plain terms.

What is a workspace in Dharayana?

Think of a workspace as your business's home inside Dharayana — the same way a company has one Google Workspace or Slack account that everyone on the team belongs to, rather than every employee having their own separate copy of the tool. Everything you do — creating projects, sending GST invoices, inviting teammates, giving clients portal access — happens inside a specific workspace.

When you sign up, Dharayana walks you through creating your first workspace: you give it a name (say, "Meridian Design Co.") and it gets a unique slug used in its URLs. From that point on, that workspace is where your projects, invoices, and client relationships accumulate — not scattered across your personal account, but organized under one place your whole team can see.

A workspace is free to start, and one workspace is enough for most solo freelancers and small agencies — see Dharayana's plans if you're deciding what tier fits your team size.

What actually lives inside a workspace

A workspace isn't just a folder — it bundles together everything that makes Dharayana useful for running client work:

• Members — everyone with access to the workspace, each with a role (more on this below).
• Installed apps — the tools your workspace actually uses. Dharayana ships as a catalog of apps (project management, GST invoicing, the branded client portal), and a workspace admin chooses which ones are turned on. Not every workspace needs every app switched on from day one.
• Projects — the actual client engagements or internal initiatives your team works on. Every project belongs to exactly one workspace; it's never shared across two.
• Billing — each workspace has its own subscription. A free plan is provisioned automatically the moment you create a workspace, and upgrading is a workspace-level decision, not an account-wide one.

This is also the most useful mental model for the difference people usually get stuck on: a workspace is the business, a project is the engagement. If you run a two-person design studio with four active clients, you have one workspace and four projects inside it — not four workspaces.

Workspace roles: who can do what

Every person in a workspace has exactly one role, and the role controls what they're allowed to do:

A couple of rules worth knowing so they don't surprise you later: the owner role can't just be walked away from — it has to be transferred to another member first, from the Danger Zone in workspace settings. And nobody, including an admin, can demote or remove the owner — that protection is built in so a workspace can never accidentally end up without one.

How to create your first workspace in Dharayana

Creating a workspace takes under a minute and doesn't require any setup beyond a name.

1. Go to your workspaces dashboard

From the main app, open the workspaces list — this is where every workspace you belong to (owned or invited to) shows up.

2. Click "Create workspace"

This opens a short form asking for a name and an optional description.

3. Choose a name and check the slug

Your workspace name generates a URL-friendly slug automatically (for example, "Meridian Design Co." becomes meridian-design-co). Dharayana checks slug availability as you type, so you'll know immediately if you need to adjust it.

4. Submit the form

You're added as the workspace's owner and admin immediately, a free subscription is provisioned automatically, and you're dropped straight into the new workspace — no separate activation step needed the first time.

5. Activate it if you have more than one workspace

If you already belong to other workspaces, use the "Activate" or "Open" button on the workspace you want to work in. Dharayana remembers which workspace is active so every project, invoice, and client you see afterward belongs to that one — until you switch again.

Inviting your team into the workspace

Once your workspace exists, an admin or owner can invite teammates from the workspace's Members page. Each invite gets assigned a role up front (admin or member — owner is never handed out through an invite). The invitee sees the pending invite on their own workspaces dashboard and can accept or reject it; once accepted, they show up as a full member with whatever role they were given.

This is also how you'd bring an external collaborator — a subcontractor, a part-time designer — into a specific workspace without giving them access to any other business you run through Dharayana. If you're also using the branded client portal to work with clients, note that a client's portal login is separate from workspace membership — clients see a scoped, external-facing view rather than joining your workspace as a member.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between a workspace and a project?

A workspace is the container — it's tied to a business or team and holds everything: members, installed apps, billing, and every project inside it. A project lives inside a workspace and represents one piece of work (a client engagement, an internal initiative). You always create projects inside a workspace, never the other way around.

Can I be a member of more than one workspace?

Yes. A freelancer who does contract work for two different agencies, for example, can be a member of both agencies' workspaces with a different role in each, plus run their own workspace for their own clients. You switch between them from the workspaces list — each one has its own members, projects, and invoices, completely separate from the others.

Who can invite new members to a workspace?

Only a workspace admin or the owner can send invites. Once invited, a person shows up as a pending member and can preview the workspace, but they only get full access after they accept from their own workspaces dashboard or a direct invite link.

What happens if the workspace owner leaves or deletes the workspace?

The owner can never just leave — ownership has to be transferred to another accepted member first, which happens instantly from the workspace's Danger Zone settings. Deleting a workspace is a separate, owner-only action, and it's permanent: every project, task, and invoice tied to that workspace is removed along with it, so it's worth being sure before using it.

Do I need a new workspace for every client?

No — that's one of the most common points of confusion. One workspace usually represents your whole business, and each client gets their own project inside that same workspace, not a separate workspace. Multiple workspaces are for genuinely separate contexts, like running two different businesses, or being a contractor inside someone else's team.

Ready to set one up? Creating a workspace is free and takes under a minute — see Dharayana's plans if you want to check what's included before you start.