Shared Spaces Overview

Overview

Shared Spaces are secure, branded collaboration environments in Harvey that allow teams to organize and share tools, data, and work product in one place. They support multiple modes of collaboration:

• Internal Spaces — Organize resources (Workflows, Playbooks, Vaults, Assistant Threads) for teams within your own workspace. Great for practice groups, project teams, or knowledge management.
• External Spaces — Co-owned environments shared between two Harvey organizations (e.g., a law firm and its client). Both sides can contribute and access shared resources while maintaining strict data controls.
• Guest Accounts — Invite non-Harvey users into a Shared Space via a free, limited-access account. Guests authenticate through a secure email link and can only access the Spaces they're invited to.

When to Use Shared Spaces

Use Shared Spaces when you need to:

• Centralize work for a matter, client, or internal initiative
• Share curated resources with external partners
• Control access at both the Space and resource level
• Validate permissions before inviting collaborators

How Shared Spaces Work

Shared Spaces act as containers. You add specific resources, and all users in the Space can access them based on their permissions.

Permissions and Access

Access is controlled at two levels:

• Space access — Determines who can enter the Space
• Resource access — Determines what each user can do within a resource

How this works in practice:

• All users in a Space can see added resources
• You can grant higher access (for example, Edit or Full Access) to specific users on individual resources
• Start with limited Space access, then increase access only where needed

How to Use Shared Spaces

Create a Shared Space

1. Go to Spaces
2. Select Create Space
3. Select the correct processing region — this must match the region of the organization you’re collaborating with
4. Name your Space with a clear naming convention such as: Firm | Client — Matter name or Practice Group — Internal Hub
5. [Optional] Customize the Space (for example, choose a logo, background image, and color)
6. Invite collaborators by entering their email addresses

Add Resources to a Space

You can add resources from either the Space or the resource itself

Option 1: From the Space

1. Open the Space
2. Click Add
3. Select the vault, Workflow, or Playbook

Option 2: From the Resource

1. Open the resource
2. Select Share
3. Toggle to the Spaces tab in the Share options
4. Search or select your space
5. Assign an access level
6. Click Share

Work Inside the Shared Space

Inside the Space, collaborators can:

• Run shared Workflows and Playbooks
• View shared threads, view and edit shared review tables.and edit shared drafts and review tables
• Use Assistant to query over the entire space for summaries, analysis, and quick Q&A

How External Approval Works

When sharing with another organization:

1. A share request appears in Spaces > Requests
2. Connection Admins must approve on both sides.
3. Access is granted only after both approvals. Note: Internal Spaces do not require approval.

View As Collaborator

Use View As Collaborator to preview exactly what external users or guests will see before or after sharing.

What You Can Do

• See the Space as an external collaborator or guest
• View access levels for each resource
• Confirm what actions collaborators can and cannot take
• Update permissions directly from preview mode

How to Use View As Collaborator

1. Open a Shared Space
2. Click View as in the header
3. Select a persona:

   • External Collaborator
   • Guest Account

A banner confirms you are in preview mode. You can exit at any time.

Why This Matters

Use View As Collaborator to:

• Prevent accidental overexposure of sensitive content
• Validate permissions before inviting collaborators
• Ensure a clean, professional experience for clients

Resource Behavior in a Space

Access to each item is determined by a combination of Space-level and resource-level settings.

• Visibility: Adding a resource makes it visible to all users at the Space’s access level.
• Direct sharing: You may grant higher access to certain users on a specific resource than given at the Space-level.
• Sharing externally received resources: Users cannot share resources they received from an external workspace with another workspace. They may only share within their own workspace if they have Full Access.
• Removal: Deleting the host resource or removing a user from the Connection immediately removes external access.

Privacy and Activity Visibility

Shared Spaces are designed to preserve workspace sovereignty.

Learn more: Security, Data, and Privacy for Sharing in Harvey.

Current Capabilities

Shared Spaces currently support:

• Collaboration between two organizations only
• Same-region sharing
• Vault-level (not document-level) permissions
• Guest accounts
• View-only Assistant Threads across organizations

Troubleshooting

Tips for Success

Using External Spaces

• Share and publish only the resources required for collaboration.
• Start with the minimum necessary access. Begin with conservative, Space-level access, sharing only the resources required for collaboration. Elevate select users via direct sharing only when needed.

Using Internal Spaces

• Use Spaces for internal projects too. Curate all relevant vaults, workflows, playbooks, and artifacts for a matter or vault to simplify discovery and build shared context.
• Create an onboarding or best-practices Space. Knowledge teams can develop a model Space that demonstrates how your organization recommends using Shared Spaces and other Harvey capabilities.
• Give all users access to internal Spaces. This promotes feature discovery and exposure to power-user workflows, helping them to better understand how to leverage Harvey.

FAQ