Agencies and teams rarely operate in isolation — the work requires cooperation between multiple groups, and situational awareness has to extend beyond any single team’s map.

Most people know the QR code pathway: sharing an individual map, or spinning up a Mutual Aid Incident for a single event. That works well for one-off situations. But it doesn’t cover something just as common — standing, ongoing collaboration between teams, where groups need regular access to each other’s work, not just a single shared map.

Typical examples:

• A SAR team and its supporting Sheriff’s Office
• Two neighboring counties that work together regularly
• Fire and police departments serving the same community

These groups need a real, ongoing connection to each other’s data — not a one-time share.

The Current Setup

Honestly, it’s hard to describe — and that’s part of the problem. It’s hard to use a feature if you can’t understand what it does.

Here’s how it works today: a workspace is a team folder, or data storage location. Workspaces can belong to a team, a subteam, a mutual aid incident, or an individual.

This is all great in concept, but the existing method of managing these workspaces has some challenges:

• Visibility is poor. It’s genuinely hard to see who has access to what.
• Inconsistent join methods. Different codes exist for individuals versus teams joining a workspace.
• Permissions are confusing. Many teams have accidentally granted outside teams access to their main workspace — not realizing that meant those teams could see through it into other connected workspaces too.
• It’s buried. The feature itself is hard enough to find that many teams never discover it, let alone use it well.

The Change

The new system is designed to make setup and sharing easier, especially between teams. Eventually, you’ll be able to see exactly who has access to your data right from Your Data — no more trying to remember which teams joined, or digging into the admin page to check.

Three Workspace Flavors

Team Workspaces: These are available to your core team members and direct users of your account. While data can be shared from these workspaces, it’s on a per-map basis rather than sharing an entire group of data as a whole. 

Shared Workspaces: Non-expiring, shared data storage. You’ll be able to connect outside teams to a shared workspace to exchange data — without everyone scanning a QR code every time a new incident comes up.

Flex Workspaces: Mutual Aid Incidents under a new name! Teams using First Response subscriptions get unlimited guest membership on Flex Workspaces, with a time limit. You can add outside teams to a Flex workspace, and you can add individuals and temporarily “power up” their access to the full set of CalTopo features — guests become temporary team members for the duration. 

Here’s When This is Happening

Changes are rolling out in stages. We’ve already made some — both temporary and permanent — and some teams have already been contacted about adjustments to their current collaboration setup. The goal of these changes is to convert existing collaboration arrangements into shared workspaces over time, without forcing anything unexpected on you along the way.

What’s Actually Different in a Shared Workspace

A couple of behaviors are new compared to the old team-collaboration design, and they’re worth understanding:

• No upward visibility. A user in a shared workspace can only see that workspace — not anything above it. When you share a workspace with another team, that team sees only what you’ve added to the shared workspace, nothing else.
• The parent team can always see downward. The parent team is required to be able to see into the shared workspace — this isn’t optional.
• No downward travel. Shared workspaces can’t contain their own subteams. You can still use account folders to keep things organized, but you won’t be able to nest a subteam inside a shared workspace.

Together, these changes close the loophole where teams could unintentionally expose more than they meant to — while making it much easier to actually see, and control, who has access to what.