Athena Spaces and Assets: Organize Your Work

Spaces is where you open and arrange your Athena work. You can open several assets side by side in panes, drag them into place, and find everything from the sidebar’s Workspace, Projects, Sessions, Email and Calendar views. Everything you work with is an asset, such as a document, sheet, presentation or uploaded file.

Spaces
Assets

What is Spaces?

Spaces is a dynamic workspace for interacting with multiple assets simultaneously. You can drag-and-drop components, arrange panes, and create a personalized work environment that adapts to your workflow.The workspace structure on the left side of your Spaces view provides a comprehensive framework for managing your professional activities and information resources. This sidebar is your primary navigation tool, giving you instant access to all your work.

Spaces sidebar listing workspace folders and assets

The sidebar has a Workspace tab and additional views, including Projects, Sessions, Email and Calendar. Use the overflow menu to reach views that are not shown as tabs:Projects - Your collaborative workspaces where you can organize related assets, team members, and AI capabilities. Projects provide a dedicated space for focused work on specific initiatives or goals. You can access Recent Projects and All Projects from expandable menus, and create new projects using the ’+’ icon.Sessions - Active work instances and communication tools for ongoing activities:

Conversations: All historical conversations you have had with Athena
Meetings: Your latest meeting recordings and transcripts
Desktop: Desktop Sentry recordings and screen captures
Mobile/Phone: Mobile device sessions and interactions

You can create new sessions by clicking on the ’+’ icon beside Sessions.Workspace - Document management and organizational features for all your resources:

Your Recents: The most recent assets you’ve worked with for quick access
Catalogs: Your connected data sources and external integrations
Drive: A comprehensive collection of all the assets in your workspace

You can upload or create new assets by clicking on the ’+’ icon beside Assets.

Key Features of Spaces

Drag-and-Drop Interface

Drag and drop workspace components to arrange your view.

Customizable Panels

Tailor panels and components to your specific needs, enabling you to design a workspace that aligns perfectly with your workflow and preferences.

Interaction

Leverage Athena’s intelligence through the sidebar Chat to interact with your documents, ask questions, and gain insights without leaving your workspace. For configuring session tools and models in Spaces, see Your First Chat.

Multi-Asset Support

Work with a diverse range of assets simultaneously, from documents and spreadsheets to images and browse sessions, all within a single, cohesive environment.Right-click an asset to see the actions available for its type and your permissions. This menu provides quick access to common actions without interrupting your workflow.

Available Actions

The context menu offers a variety of operations for managing and working with your assets:Information & Navigation:

Details: View detailed metadata, properties, and information about the selected asset including creation date, last modified, owner, and file size
Find in Asset Tree: Quickly locate the asset in the sidebar file structure, useful when you have many assets and need to see where something is organized

AI & Knowledge:

Ask in chat: Open a focused conversation about the selected asset with Athena, bringing the asset into context automatically
Add to Knowledge Base: Include this asset in the agent’s long-term knowledge, allowing Athena to reference it across different sessions and conversations
Add to Workbench: Add the asset to the current project context for focused work, making it part of your active working set
Ingest to Knowledge Graph: Process the asset for semantic search and relationship mapping, enabling advanced queries and connections

Organization:

Add to Collection: Organize assets into custom collections for better categorization and grouping
Link to Project: Associate the asset with a specific project, making it easier to find related work
Move: Relocate the asset to a different folder in your workspace organization

Sharing & Collaboration:

Copy Link: Copy a shareable link to the asset that you can send to workspace members
Share: Open sharing options to share the asset with workspace members or generate public links with configurable permissions
Duplicate: Create a copy of the asset, useful for creating templates or preserving versions

Workspace Management:

Close Tab: Close the asset from the current Spaces view without deleting it
Archive: Archive the asset from the current workspace view.

To access the context menu:

Right-click on any asset tab in your Spaces workspace
Or right-click on an asset in the sidebar
Select the desired action from the menu

The context menu is designed to keep you in flow - you can perform most asset operations without leaving Spaces or opening separate dialogs.

Understanding Assets

Assets are the building blocks of your work in Athena. An asset can be any file, document, or resource that you work with, from documents and spreadsheets to emails, meeting recordings, and data from external sources.

Types of Assets

Athena supports a wide variety of asset types:

Supported document, spreadsheet, media, database, and code file types

Regular Assets vs Live Assets

Understanding the distinction between regular assets and Live Assets is crucial for effective workflow management:

Regular Assets

Regular assets are files that you upload directly to Athena:

Uploaded directly to Athena’s secure storage
Static content that doesn’t change unless explicitly updated
Permanently stored with dedicated storage keys

File upload dialog with selected files ready to upload

Live Assets

Live Assets are external files and folders from third-party providers that are dynamically integrated into Athena, providing real-time access to your organization’s data without requiring migration or duplication.

Drive selector showing internal files and a SharePoint catalog

Unlike traditional assets that are uploaded and stored within Athena, Live Assets remain in their original systems, such as SharePoint sites, Gmail inboxes, Google Drive folders, and other enterprise platforms, and are accessed on-demand through secure API connections.

How Live Assets Work

Live assets use a special identifier format that combines the catalog ID with the external file ID:

asset_{catalog_uuid}_{external_provider_id}

This allows Athena to:

Fetch files on-demand from the provider
Cache content for performance
Maintain references without permanent storage
Update automatically when external files change

Live asset catalogs are perfect for accessing company files stored in SharePoint or Google Drive without duplicating them into Athena.

Asset Versioning

Asset versioning allows you to create named snapshots of your collaborative documents at specific points in time. Think of versions as “save points” that you can return to whenever needed, providing a safety net for experimentation and collaboration.

Key Capabilities

Versioning enables you to tag important milestones in your work with descriptive names, restore documents to any previously saved version, and track who created each version and when. This is particularly valuable when multiple team members are collaborating on the same asset, as it allows you to experiment freely knowing you can always revert to a known-good state.

How It Works

When you create a version, Athena captures a complete snapshot of your document’s current state. Each version is stored separately from the live document, ensuring that your version history remains intact even as you continue editing. Versions are read-only snapshots, meaning they cannot be accidentally modified.To restore a version, simply select it from the version history panel. The system will replace the current document content with the selected version’s content, and all connected collaborators will see the update in real-time.

Supported Asset Types

Versioning works with all collaborative asset types including spreadsheets, documents, AOPs, and user interfaces. Any asset that supports real-time collaborative editing automatically supports versioning.

Create versions before making significant changes to your documents. This gives you a reliable rollback point if the changes don’t work out as expected.

Working with Multiple Assets

Spaces excels at managing multiple assets simultaneously in a flexible, multi-pane view that adapts to your workflow. Open assets together to compare information and provide context for a task.

Opening Multiple Assets
Arranging Your Workspace
Athena's Multi-Asset Awareness

You can open various asset types together in Spaces to create a comprehensive workspace:To open assets:

Browse the sidebar on the left side of Spaces
Navigate through the Assets section to find documents, spreadsheets, emails, browse sessions, and other content
Click on any asset to open it in the main Spaces view
Each asset opens in its own pane within the workspace
Continue clicking additional assets to add more panes to your workspace

Documents, a spreadsheet, and chat arranged together in Spaces

Organizing your Assets

Organize workspace assets with folders and collections, and connect external sources through catalogs.

Folders

Folders in Athena provide a hierarchical structure for organizing your assets, similar to traditional file systems. They support parent-child relationships, allowing you to create nested folder structures that match your organizational needs.

Folder context menu with creation and upload actions

Key Features:

Hierarchical Organization: Create nested folder structures to organize assets logically
User Sandbox: Each user has a protected sandbox folder (sandbox/{username}/) for personal assets
Sharing & Permissions: Control who can view and edit folder contents
Asset Management: Move assets between folders with drag-and-drop or bulk operations

Creating Folders:

Navigate to Spaces and find the location where you want to create a folder
Click the + icon and select New Folder from the menu
Give your folder a descriptive name
Drag and drop assets into your folder, or use the context menu to move multiple assets at once

Your personal sandbox folder is automatically created and provides a private space for your assets. Other users cannot access your sandbox unless you explicitly share assets from it.

Collections

Collections allow you to group related assets together without changing their folder location. Think of collections as custom tags or playlists for your assets - an asset can belong to multiple collections while remaining in its original folder.

Collection view listing related Formula 1 assets

Key Features:

Asset Grouping: Combine assets from different folders into a single view
Descriptions: Add rich text descriptions to document the collection’s purpose
Dynamic Membership: Easily add or remove assets without affecting their original locations
Multiple Collections: Assets can belong to multiple collections simultaneously

Creating Collections:

From Spaces, open the asset creation menu and select Collection.
Give your collection a meaningful name and add a description explaining its purpose or contents
Click Add Assets to select items from your workspace
View and interact with all assets in the collection

Collections are perfect for organizing assets across folder boundaries. For example, create a collection of all Q4 reports even though they’re stored in different department folders.

Catalogs

Catalogs provide connections to external data sources, enabling you to access data without importing it into Athena. There are two types of catalogs: Database Catalogs for structured data sources and Live Asset Catalogs for external file providers.Database Catalogs connect to structured data sources like Snowflake, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, or other SQL databases. They provide a hierarchical view of your data: Catalog → Schema → Table → Columns.

Live Asset Catalogs connect to external providers like SharePoint, Google Drive, and Gmail. They enable you to access and work with files that remain in their original locations.

People and group panes

Type @ in chat and select a workspace member or group to insert a reference.
Open the reference to view that member or group in a Spaces pane.
In a group pane, review Members and select a member to inspect their details and group memberships.
Select Mention in chat to insert the group into your current composer.

Workspace members can view these panes. Owners and managers can use Manage in workspace settings to manage groups. Mentioning a group does not share an asset or send a group notification.

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Athena Spaces and Assets: Organize Your Work

What is Spaces?

The Spaces Sidebar: Your File Directory View