As your research practice grows, consistency becomes critical. A single, well-organized project is great, but a workspace with 50 projects using different metadata becomes a “digital junk drawer.” It’s impossible to find what you’re looking for or connect insights across studies. Workspace Fields solve this problem. They are like global spreadsheet headers that allow you to create a single, consistent “language” for organizing data across your entire workspace, turning it into a powerful and searchable research repository. In this lesson, you will learn how to create and manage workspace fields to bring structure, consistency, and discoverability to your team’s research.

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Create workspace fields to capture metadata

Without a standardized system, every project is its own island. Researchers recreate the same fields over and over, often with slight variations. This makes it impossible to search, compare, or synthesize findings across studies. Your workspace becomes a collection of disconnected files, not a powerful knowledge base. Use Workspace Fields to create a single, standardized set of metadata (like Product Area, Research Method) that can be applied consistently across all relevant projects. Workspace fields are housed within workspace field groups. These groups can be linked to multiple projects at once and appear on your data alongside project-level fields.
  • To create a workspace field group, go to ⚙️ Settings → Fields.
  • From there, you can populate this group with note fields and/or insight fields and select the project/s you wish to link to this group to.
Workspace field groups are live, and any changes made will impact all connected projects. For example, when you add a new workspace field to a group, it will also be added to all projects linked to that group.

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What are some examples of workspace fields should we use?

When creating workspace fields, it’s crucial to distinguish between fields for your raw data and fields for your findings.Here are some examples of fields you can use at a global level:

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Note fields: Organize your raw data

Use note fields to answer the question: “Who gave us this feedback and under what circumstances?” These fields add context to the source material.
Field titleField typeField value examples
DataSingle selectInterview, Survey, Document
Region or MarketSingle selectAPAC, EMEA, AMER
Interview stageSingle selectScheduled, Conducted, Analyzed
Interview roundSingle selectRound 1, Round 2, Round 3

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Insight fields: Organize your findings

Use insight fields to answer the question: “What did we learn and what should we do next?” These fields add business context to your analysis.
Field titleField typeField value examples
Report typeSingle selectFinal, Atomic finding
Research methodSingle or multi selectMixed methods, Surveys, Secondary, Exploratory
Business unit or Product areaSingle or multi select
Company focus area or initiativeSingle select
Region or MarketSingle selectAPAC, EMEA, AMER
Action requiredSingle select or check box
PrioritySingle selectLow, Medium, High

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Prevent changes to a workspace fields

Even with a shared set of fields, a well-meaning team member could accidentally edit or delete a crucial field or option, breaking the consistency for everyone and corrupting your repository’s structure. You can prevent others from making changes to a workspace field group in ⚙️ Settings → Fields or within a linked project by restricting its access.
  • To do this, open the workspace field group, select Share and assign View only access to the workspace. You will be the only user with Full access to the board.
  • From there, you choose to invite other team members to share Full access or Edit access to the board.
Any manager or contributor with View only access to the group can link this to a project, but cannot add or remove fields from this group. This ensures data integrity and governance. It allows everyone to use the standardized fields while preventing accidental changes. This guarantees that your repository’s structure remains reliable over time, protecting the long-term value of your team’s accumulated research.

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Using workspace fields alongside contact fields

Think of workspace fields as the standardized backbone of your research data, ensuring consistency across all projects. Within this framework, contact fields are your dedicated toolkit for capturing crucial demographic and identifying information about your customers. The key to a powerful Dovetail setup is not to view them as separate entities, but to leverage contact fields as a well-defined group within your broader workspace field structure.
FeatureWorkspace fieldsContact fields
DefinitionA set of standardized fields that can be used across all projects in your workspace.A user-defined group of workspace fields specifically for capturing customer contact and demographic data.
PurposeTo ensure consistent data collection and enable cross-project analysis.To create a detailed and reusable profile for each research participant or customer.
ExamplesResearch Method, Date of Interview, Product Area, Feature RequestEmail, Company, Role, Persona, Customer Since, Industry, Plan, Region
The true power of this system comes to life during analysis. By consistently using both your general workspace fields and your specific contact fields, you can ask nuanced questions of your data. Imagine you’re analyzing a series of customer interviews in a project. Because you’ve used a standardized workspace fields and contact fields, you can easily filter your data to see:
  • All feedback from the “Product Manager” persona across all usability tests.
  • How feature requests from “Enterprise” customers differ from those from “SMB” customers.
  • The most common pain points mentioned by customers in the “EMEA” region.
This level of segmentation allows you to move beyond general observations and uncover specific, actionable insights tailored to different customer groups. By treating contact fields as a specialized and crucial component of your overall workspace field strategy, you’ll build a robust and scalable system for understanding your customers in Dovetail.
To put this lesson into practice, create a workspace field group and populate this with data and insight fields for your workspace. Create workspace fields →