Workspaces
Shared document workspaces with RAG-powered retrieval, member management, and AI chat integration.
Workspaces are shared document repositories that power Fabric's Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities. Upload documents to a workspace, invite collaborators, attach it to AI conversations, and let the AI reference your documents when responding.
Workspaces organize uploaded documents for search and document chat. Pages are the separate interactive experiences Fabric Agent builds. Older /libraries links redirect to Workspaces; existing Workspaces API and MCP tool names stay unchanged.
What is a Workspace?
A workspace is a container for documents that can be shared with team members and attached to AI chat conversations. When a workspace is attached to a conversation, the AI can search and retrieve relevant content from all documents in that workspace.
Creating a Workspace
Navigate to Workspaces
Click Workspaces in the left sidebar to view your existing workspaces.
Create New Workspace
Click New Workspace and provide:
- Name — A descriptive name (up to 100 characters)
- Description — Optional summary of the workspace purpose (up to 500 characters)
- Document Limit — Maximum number of documents allowed (1 to 100)
Upload Documents
Add documents to your workspace using drag-and-drop or the upload button. Documents are automatically processed through a pipeline of extraction, chunking, and embedding.
Document Management
Upload Process
When you upload a document, Fabric automatically processes it through several stages:
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Pending | Document uploaded, waiting to be processed |
| Uploading | File transfer in progress |
| Uploaded | File stored, awaiting extraction |
| Extracting | Content being extracted from the file |
| Chunking | Content being split into searchable segments |
| Embedding | Vector embeddings being generated |
| Storing | Embeddings being stored in the vector database |
| Ready | Document available for RAG retrieval |
| Failed | Processing encountered an error (can be retried) |
Maximum file size: 50 MB per file
Retrying Failed Documents
If a document fails processing, you can retry it from the document list. Fabric starts a new processing workflow that picks up where the previous one left off.
Document Statistics
Each workspace shows document statistics including total count, status breakdown, and storage usage.
Reuse documents in a project
Open a project’s Context tab and choose Add from Workspace under Workspace documents. Select a Workspace, choose up to 12 ready documents and click Add to project context. You can select documents from several Workspaces before adding them.
The original stays in its Workspace. Preview reads the current source, Open Workspace opens its home, and the unlink action removes only the project reference. Updated since added means the source changed; it does not mean Fabric retained the old document. Other members must already have access to the original Workspace to see its document details or read its contents. Unavailable sources appear without private names. Linking does not automatically add these documents to project-wide search or send them to a remote agent.
External agents can use the same authorized references through the SDK’s contexts resource,
fabric context documents commands, or the Portal MCP server’s project Workspace-document tools.
Workspace and project permissions remain separate on every interface.
Member Management
Workspaces support three access levels organized into groups:
| Group | Permissions |
|---|---|
| Administrators | Full control: manage members, upload/delete documents, update settings, archive/delete workspace |
| Contributors | Upload and manage documents, view all workspace content |
| Stakeholders | View-only access to workspace documents and content |
Adding Members
Open Members Panel
Navigate to your workspace and open the Members tab.
Search for Users
Type a name or email to search for users. The search is scoped to organization members.
Assign a Group
Select the user and choose their group: Administrators, Contributors, or Stakeholders.
Changing Roles
Administrators can change a member's group at any time or remove them from the workspace entirely.
Agents in Workspaces
You can attach AI agents to a workspace, giving them access to the workspace's document context. Administrators can add or remove agents from a workspace.
This enables agents to use workspace documents as reference material when executing tasks.
Conversation Integration
Workspaces can be attached to AI Chat conversations to provide document context during your interactions.
Attaching a Workspace
- Open an AI Chat conversation
- Select the workspace attachment option
- Choose one or more workspaces to attach
- The AI now has access to all ready documents in the attached workspaces
How Retrieval Works
When you send a message in a conversation with attached workspaces:
- The AI identifies relevant document chunks using vector similarity search
- Matching content is included as context in the AI's prompt
- The AI references this context when generating its response
You can detach a workspace from a conversation at any time without losing the conversation history.
RAG Settings
Each workspace has configurable RAG settings that control how documents are processed and retrieved:
| Setting | Description | Default Range |
|---|---|---|
| Chunk Size | Size of text segments in characters | 100 - 10,000 |
| Chunk Overlap | Overlap between adjacent chunks | 0 - 2,000 |
| Split Method | How text is divided into chunks | Paragraph, Sentence, Fixed, Recursive, Document, Semantic |
| Embedding Model | Model used for vector generation | text-embedding-3-small, text-embedding-3-large |
| Top K | Number of results returned per query | 1 - 50 |
| Similarity Threshold | Minimum similarity score for results | 0.0 - 1.0 |
| Enable Reranking | Whether to rerank results for relevance | On/Off |
Changing RAG settings affects future document processing. Existing documents retain their current embeddings unless reprocessed.
Workspace Lifecycle
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Active | Workspace is in use, documents accessible |
| Archived | Workspace hidden from default views, documents preserved |
- Archive a workspace to hide it without deleting data
- Reactivate an archived workspace to restore it
- Delete a workspace to permanently remove it and all its documents
Workspace Types
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Personal | Default workspace created for each user |
| Custom | User-created workspace with configurable settings |
Multi-Tenant Support
Workspaces belong to an organization:
- They live at
/app/{org}/workspaces, shared among the members you add - Each organization has separate workspaces with strict data isolation
- Members can only be added from the same organization
- Document uploads are isolated by workspace ownership