Close a workspace
When a project ends, its workspace is closed. Here is what that involves.
When a project ends or its conditions change, the principal investigator closes the workspace; access is removed, and the data controller keeps authority over the data throughout.
When a workspace is closed
A workspace is closed when its project ends, or when the conditions it was approved under change.
Projects are not open-ended. A collaborative workspace exists for a defined piece of work, and closing it at the end is part of the governance the project was approved under - not an afterthought.
What closing does
Closing a workspace tears down the environment. This is a deletion, not an archive-in-place:
- Access is revoked for everyone, and the workspace-level roles people held in it are removed.
- Any running sessions end, and the tools and services the workspace was running are removed with it.
- The workspace disappears from the platform.
Because a workspace is the unit of isolation, it is also the unit of cleanup: everything the project used goes in one step, and nothing is left behind in a shared corner of the platform.
What happens to the data
The data does not stay. It will not remain in the workspace, and it will not remain on the platform.
What it does require is a decision: where the data continues to live once the project is over. Depending on the project, that may mean archiving it somewhere appropriate, returning or transferring it, or destroying it. There is time to take that decision - closure does not mean everything vanishes the same afternoon - but it does have to be taken, by the people accountable for the data.
Exactly how this runs varies from project to project, and follows the agreements the project was set up under rather than a single platform-wide rule. If you are approaching the end of a project, this is a conversation to have with whoever administers your instance, and to have before the closing date rather than after it.
Anything you need to keep has to leave through the normal export review while the workspace is still open. Plan for that - export requests are reviewed, and review takes time.
Who keeps authority over the data
The data controller - usually the institution that collected the data - retains authority over it throughout, and afterwards. Closing a workspace changes where the data lives and who can reach it; it does not change who is accountable for it.
Who can close it
Closing a workspace is a workspace administration action - in most projects, the principal investigator.