Workspaces in Google Tag Manager

Exciting news in the world of analytics! Recently, Google has launched a new feature called Workspaces for both GTM and GTM 360 users.

The goal of this new feature is to solve workflow challenges for multi-user teams working within the same container.

Workspaces allow you to make changes in a specific instance of GTM, while others can work in a separate instance of the same container. Basically, when a Workspace is created, a new Container Draft is separated from the latest GTM container version, and this becomes your new Workspace. For example, you can have one person from your team creating custom HTML tags, while someone else could be implementing advertiser tags.

Creating a new Workspace

This is pretty straightforward; you just have to add a Workspace name and a Description. Keep a consistent naming convention within your team.

All your variables, triggers and tags you had already will be available in your new Workspace. Any changes that you make within the Workspace will only apply after you publish them.

Publishing a Workspace

As Workspaces are Container Drafts, you can either Create a Version or Publish the Workspace (this will automatically create the version and then publish it). If you haven’t updated your Workspace, GTM will automatically update it when you want to publish your version.

Built-in conflict resolution

Let’s say that you want to update your Workspace or that you are prompt to do an update, you might get an orange pop-up bar saying “Conflicts found”. This happens when a Variable,Trigger or Tag was changed in the Latest Container Version, and you have also modified that same item in your current Workspace. In order to update to the latest version, you will need to fix all conflicts either in the favour of the Latest Version or your Workspace.

Limitations:

There’s a limit of three Workspaces per container for standard GTM users, while Tag Manager 360 users can create unlimited workspaces. Don’t worry! Having a limit of three workspaces means that you actually have to be more efficient when making changes to the container.

Workspace-related user permissions

If you go to Admin – > User Management you will see some changes to the container permission level.

• View – Read-only access to the container
• Edit – Can create and edit Workspaces, but can’t create Versions or publish them
• Approve – Can create and edit both Versions and Workspaces,  but not publish them
• Publish – Full rights to create Versions, Workspaces, make edits, and publish them

Conclusion:

Though the interface redesign in GTM will take some time to get used to, Google has solved an important request of the Google+ community by launching the “Workspace” capability.

To sum up: the new GTM workspace feature will make your life better either way.