Optilogic Teams – User Guide

Teams is an exciting new feature set on the Optilogic platform designed to enhance collaboration within Supply Chain Design, enabling companies to foster a more connected and efficient working environment. With Teams, users can join a shared workspace where all team members have seamless access to collective models and files. For a more elaborate introduction to and high-level overview of the Teams feature set, please see this “Getting Started with Teams” help center article.

This guide will cover how to use and take advantage of the Teams functionality on the Optilogic Platform.

For organization administrators (Org Admins), there is an  “Optilogic Teams – Administrator Guide” help center article available. The Admin guide details how Org Admins can create new Teams & change existing ones, and how they can add new Members and update existing ones.

Becoming a Team Member

When your organization decides to start using the Teams functionality on the Optilogic platform, they will appoint one or multiple users to be the organizations’s administrators (Org Admin) who will create the Teams and add Members to these teams. Once an Org Admin has added you to a team, you will see a new application called Team Hub when logged in on the Optilogic platform. You will also receive a notification on the Optilogic platform about having been added to a team:

1. When logged into the Optilogic platform, click on the notifications bell icon at the top right of the screen.
2. If an Org Admin has added you to a team, there will be an “Added to Team” entry in the notifications list for it. It details the name of the team and when clicking on See Details, it will open the Team Hub application, which will be covered in the next section.

Note that it is possible to invite people from outside an organization to join one of your organization’s teams. Think for example of granting access to a contractor who is temporarily working on a specific project that involves modelling in Cosmic Frog. An Org Admin can invite this person to a specific team, see the “Optilogic Teams – Administrator Guide” help center article on how to do this. If someone is invited to join a team, and they are not part of that organization, they will receive an email invitation to the team. The following screenshots show this from the perspective of the user who is being invited to join a team of an organization they are not part of.

The user will receive an email similar to the one shown below. In this case the user is invited to the “Onboarding” team.

Clicking on the “Click here” link will open a new browser tab where user can confirm to join the team they are invited to by clicking on the Join Team button:

After clicking on the Join Team button, user will be prompted to login to the Optilogic platform or to create an account if they do not have one already. Once logged in, they are part of the team they were invited to and they will see the Team Hub application (see next section).

They will also see a notification in their Optilogic account:

Clicking on the notifications bell icon at the top right of the Optilogic platform will open the notifications list. There will be an entry for the invite the user received to join the Onboarding team.

Should an Org Admin have deleted the invitation before the user accepts the invite, they will get the message “Failed to activate the invite” when clicking on the Join Team button:

Using the Team Hub Application

The Team Hub is a centralized workspace where users can view and switch between the teams they belong to. At its core, Team Hub provides team members with a streamlined view of their team’s activity, resources, and members. When first opening the Team Hub application, it may look similar to the following screenshot:

1. If you are part of one or multiple teams, a new application named Team Hub automatically becomes available to you on the Optilogic platform. Here we have opened the Team Hub application.
2. In the toolbar at the top of the Optilogic platform you will always be able to quickly see where you are working on the platform. Here it shows the organization (Optilogic), followed by the active application (Team Hub). This is called a breadcrumb trail.
3. The teams this user is part of are listed in card format:
   1. My Account – this is the user’s personal account, which is unchanged from before being added to a team. When working in My Account, all files and the context are all limited to this individual user. In the screenshot, the My Account card has a different background color (grey-purple) than the other cards (white background). This means that My Account is currently active and if the user is going to go into a different application, that application will also be using their personal account. To do work within one of the teams, user can click on the team they want to switch context to and then the active team will be shown with the colored background. Please note that for a user to always be able to quickly find their My Account:
      1. The appearance of the My Account card (the dark green frog) cannot be changed by the user.
      2. The My Account will always be at the top left in the Team Hub.
   2. This user is part of 2 teams: 1 named Cosmic Frog Team with the green frog icon, and 1 named Onboarding with the purple rocket icon. We will have a closer look at a team card in the next screenshot below.
4. There is a search box where user can type text to quickly filter out the team(s) with that search text in the team’s name, especially useful if user is part of many teams.

Next, we will have a look at the team card of the Cosmic Frog Team:

1. The team name, “Cosmic Frog Team” here, is listed underneath the team’s icon.
2. The team’s unique identifier is also listed below the team name, it consists of an at sign (@) followed by the team’s name without spaces and in all lower case, then a pound sign (#), followed by the organization’s name, again without spaces and in all lower case.
3. The members of the team are represented here by circles with either the member’s avatar or a solid color with the initial of their first name written in. One can also tell how many members a team has, here that is 8: 5 individual circles are shown, and the last circle shows that there are 3 additional users.
4. If you are an administrator for the team (i.e. Team Admin, explained in more detail further below), then an Edit Appearance icon is available in the right bottom corner of the card. Clicking on it will bring up the following Customize Team Card form:

1. We are on the Customize Team Card form of the “Cosmic Frog Team” team.
2. User can choose an icon in the Select Icon part of the form; a frog icon is selected here.
3. User can choose a color in the Select Color part of the form; green is selected here.
4. A Preview of what the team’s card will look like is shown.
5. If user is happy with the icon and color, they can click on the Save Changes button. Otherwise, they can click on the Cancel button to leave the icon and color as they were prior to opening this form.

Note that changing the appearance of a team changes it not just for you, but for all members of the team.

When clicking on a team or My Account in the Team Hub, user will be switching into that team and all the content will be that of the team. See also the next section “Content Switching with Team Hub” where this is explained in more detail. When switching between teams or My Account, first the resources of the team you are switching to will be loaded:

Once all resources are loaded, user can click on the Close button at the bottom or wait until it automatically closes after a few seconds. We will first have a look at what the Team Hub looks like for My Account, the user’s personal account, and after that also cover the Team Hub contents of a team.

1. We are in the My Account area of this user. Clicking on the arrow pointing left will take the user back to the Team Hub overview page where their My Account and all teams that they are part of are shown.
2. In the center part of the screen a list of recent actions is showing in the Activity section. The activities can be shown in list view, as is selected here, or in card view. In list view, the list can be sorted by clicking on the column headings: click once to sort ascending, click again to sort descending, and click a third time to take the sort off. For each activity, the details include:
   1. File Name: the name of the file or database involved.
   2. User: the team member who performed the action.
   3. Date: indicates when the action occurred.
   4. Action: the type of action performed. This can for example be viewed, edited, created, deleted, or executed.
   5. Category: the category of the action, which can be the name of the Optilogic application used for the action for example.
3. Three different types of activities are outlined by the green box:
   1. A Cosmic Frog model with a name starting “Multi Stop Routes with…” was viewed in the Cosmic Frog application 6 days ago.
   2. The same model was also viewed in the SQL Editor application on the same day 6 days ago.
   3. A query was run (executed) on this same model on the same day.
4. On the right-hand side of the screen the usage in terms of the number of Compute Hours this user has used under their personal account is shown. These are the all-time compute hours. In case you want to get the compute hours for a certain timeframe or to export them, this can be done from the Run Manager or from the Usage tab under Account, see the “Hour Usage Tracking” help center article for more details.
5. To collapse the Usage pane, click on the icon with the 2 greater than signs. After the pane is collapsed, the icon will change to one with 2 less than signs and clicking on it will expand the Usage pane again.
6. Since we are in the My Account area of this user, when expanding the File Explorer by clicking on the greater than icon at the left top in the Optilogic Platform, all files that will be shown here will be the personal ones of this user.

The overview of a team in the Team Hub application can look similar to following screenshot:

1. User clicked on the “Cosmic Frog Team” team card to switch content to this team. Again, clicking on the arrow pointing left will take the user back to the Team Hub overview page where their My Account and all the teams they are part of are shown.
2. In the Optilogic toolbar user can always keep track of where they are working on the platform using what is called a breadcrumb trail , which consists of the following information: the name of the organization (Optilogic), the name of the team (Cosmic Frog Team), and the name of the application (Team Hub).
3. Since we are now in a team and not the user’s personal My Account, an additional section of the Team Hub application is visible: all the members of the team are listed here in the Members list. For each member, their avatar or initial of their first name is shown, followed by their full name (blurred out here). The icons to the right of the member’s name indicate the role of the user in the team:
   1. The yellow icon indicates that the user is an Admin for this team. The role of Team Admin will involve managing the team and its members in the near future. It is however limited to being able to change the team’s appearance in this first release of the Teams feature set. Note that this is a different type of admin than Org Admins, who can create/change Teams and add/update Members, see the “Optilogic Teams – Administrator Guide” help center article for details.
   2. The dark blue person icon indicates that this member’s role is that of a User – they can work in the team and have access to all the team’s contents, but they cannot perform actions like adding/removing team members or changing the appearance of the team.
4. The Activity area of this team is shown in card view:
   1. This activity at the top left in the Activity area was the viewing of a database / Cosmic Frog model named China Exit Risk Strategy-1 in the SQL Editor application. This happened 21 days ago, and the avatar of the team member who viewed this file is shown at the left bottom of the card.
   2. A model named “X-border to FR_Phase2” was viewed in Cosmic Frog by team member “G” 23 days ago.
   3. Team member “A” ran a query on a database named “Fleet Size Op…” 7 minutes ago.
5. Since we are in the “Cosmic Frog Team” team, when expanding the Explorer by clicking on the greater than icon at the left top in the Optilogic Platform, all files that will be shown here will be those of this team.

Note that as a best practice, users can start using the team’s activity feed instead of written / verbal updates from team members to understand the details of who worked on what when.

Content Switching with Team Hub

One of the most important features of the Team Hub application is its role as a content switcher. By default, when you log into the Optilogic platform, you’ll see only your personal content (My Account)—similar to a private workspace or OneDrive.

However, once you enter Team Hub and select a specific team, the Explorer automatically updates to display all files and databases associated with that team. This team context extends across the entire Optilogic platform. For example, if you navigate to the Run Manager, you’ll only see job runs associated with the selected team.

By switching into a team, all applications and data within the platform are scoped to that team. We will illustrate this with the following screenshots where user has switched to the team named “Cosmic Frog Team”.

1. User has opened the Run Manager application.
2. In the toolbar of the Optilogic Platform, the Organization (Optilogic) – Team (Cosmic Frog Team) – Application (Run Manager) breadcrumb trail tells the user exactly where they are working on the platform currently.
3. Browser tabs will also show the Team (Cosmic Frog Team) – Application (Run Manager) part of the breadcrumb trail. When working on the Optilogic platform within different teams across multiple browser tabs, users can easily see which tab belongs to which team and what application is being used.

1. User has now moved into the Cosmic Frog application and the breadcrumb trail shows this, with the name of the model that is open added to it: Organization (Optilogic) – Team (Cosmic Frog Team) – Application (Cosmic Frog) – Model (Global Supply Chain Strategy).
2. Again, the browser tab also indicates the team the user is in, and which application is active.

Besides the “Cosmic Frog Team” team, this user is also part of the Onboarding team, which they have now switched to using the Team Hub application. Next, they open Resource Library application:

1. User has gone into the Resource Library application.
2. The toolbar shows where we are: Organization (Optilogic) – Team (Onboarding) – Application (Resource Library).
3. The browser tab also lets the user know the team and application they are in.
4. The file explorer has been expanded (clicked on the greater than icon at the left top of the Optilogic platform) and the “Explorer – Onboarding” text confirms that these are folders and files associated with the Onboarding team. Users will only see files/folders associated with the active team here, personal files/folders from My Account and those of other teams are not visible.
5. User has clicked on the Brazil Tax Model Example resource to select it.
6. Using the Copy to Account action from the Actions drop-down menu will copy the file(s) associated with this resource to the Onboarding team’s workspace.

Note that it is best practice to return to your personal space in My Account when finished working in a Team, to ensure workspace content is kept separate and files are not accidentally created in/added to the wrong team.

Adding Content to Teams

Once an organization and its teams are set up, the next step is to start populating your teams with content. Besides adding content by copying from the Resource Library as seen in the last screenshot above, there are two primary ways to add models or files to a team.

Method 1: Team Hub Upload and Creation

Navigate to the Team Hub and switch into your team space. From here, you can create new files, upload existing ones, or begin building new models directly within the team. Keep in mind that any files or models created within a team are visible to all team members and can be modified by them. If you have content that you would prefer not to be accessed or edited by others, we recommend either labeling it clearly or creating it within your personal My Account workspace.

When user is in a specific team (Cosmic Frog Team here), they can add content through the Explorer (expand by clicking on the greater than icon at the top left on the Optilogic Platform): right clicking in the Explorer brings up a context menu with options to create new files, folders, and Cosmic Frog Models, and to upload files. When using these options, these are all created in / added to the active team.

Method 2: Enhanced Sharing

You can also quickly add content to your team by using Enhanced Sharing. This feature allows you to easily select entire teams or individual team members to share content with. When you open the share modal and click into the form, you’ll see intelligent suggestions—teams you belong to and members from your organization—appear automatically. Simply click on the teams or users listed to autofill the form. To learn more about the different ways of sharing content and content ownership, please see the “Model Sharing & Backups for Multi-User Collaboration” help center article.

Please note that, regardless of how a team’s content has been created/added:

• Within a team:
  • Every member of the team has access to all the contents in the team’s workspace.
  • Users can be working on the same file, say a Cosmic Frog model, at the same time.
  • If multiple users work on the exact same part of the same file/database simultaneously, then the last committed change “wins”. Say that 2 users are both updating the 10^th record in the Customers table in a Cosmic Frog model at the same time, then the change(s) of the user who commits their change(s) last will persist. (You commit changes by hitting the Enter key to go to the next record in the table, for example).
  • If a user deletes a file, it will be deleted for all users. Teams are encouraged to frequently backup Cosmic Frog models, how to do this is described in the “Model Backups” section of the model sharing & backups help center article.
• Users/Teams may still have a need to share files/models with users/Teams outside or their Team or organization, which can still be done too.
• To facilitate getting help quickly when needed, all users are provided with the additional automatic suggestion of Optilogic Support when sharing a file/model.

FAQs

1. If I create a file or model in a Team, who owns the resource?
   1. Any model or file created or uploaded while working in a Team is owned by the Team, not by an individual user.
2. Does a team own my files if I share them with a team?
   1. It depends on the method of sharing that you chose. If you simply sent a copy of a file or model to the Team, then the team will own the copy. If you transfer ownership of a model to a team, a team will also own the model. However, if you share access of the model with a team, you will still remain the owner of the model (see the “Model Sharing & Backups for Multi-User Collaboration” help center article). 
3. Can I invite users to my team that do not belong directly to my organization?
   1. An Org Admin can invite users from outside your organization and add them directly to a Team, see the “Optilogic Teams – Admin Guide” help center article.
4. A user of my Org. no longer works for my company, how can I remove them from my Org, and any teams that they belong to?
   1. An Org Admin can go to the Organization Dashboard and remove the user, see the “Optilogic Teams – Admin Guide” help center article. This action removes them from the organization and any Teams they were part of.
   2. If a file or database is still owned by an individual who has left your company, the user will still retain the file or database in such event. You will need to work with the individual in order to get everything transferred over prior to such events. 
5. Can I assign different permission levels (e.g., read-only, editor) to team members?
   1. Not currently, but future iterations will include the ability to manage read/write privileges at the user level within a team.
6. Can a user belong to multiple teams?
   1. Yes! Users can be members of as many teams as necessary. They can simply switch between teams via the Teams Hub.
7. What happens if an Org Admin removes a user from my organization or team—will they still have access to team data?
   1. Once a user is removed from the team or organization by an Org Admin, they will immediately lose access to any associated files, models, or databases.
8. I have switched into a team, but now I want to get back to my personal content, how do I do that?
   1. In the Teams Hub, click on ‘My Account’ to return to your personal space. Only you have access to content in ‘My Account’.
9. If I share a copy of a file with a team and later update it in my personal space, does the team’s version update too?
   1. Sharing a copy means the team has its own version, which is independent of your personal file. If you need to sync changes, you’ll need to re-share the updated file.
10. Can I move files or models between teams after they’ve been created?
    1. Yes, you can move files or models between teams by sending a copy, transferring ownership, or sharing access with other teams (see the “Model Sharing & Backups for Multi-User Collaboration” help center article).
11. How do I ensure external users can’t invite others into my team or organization?
    1. Only Organization Admins can invite new users or add them to teams. External users cannot invite others or make admin-level changes.
12. If I dismiss a notification on a team, will other members on my team still see that notification?
    1. Dismissing a notification only affects your view. Other Team members will still see the notification until they dismiss it themselves.
13. If I run scenarios of a model in a Team, which bucket of compute hours does it use?
    1. By default, if you are running a model in a Team, the compute hours will be siphoned from the organization’s pool of compute hours.

Once you have been added to any teams and have added content, you are ready to start collaborating and unlocking the full potential of Teams within Optilogic!

Let us know if you need help along the way—our support team (support@optilogic.com) has your back.