Working in a shared workspace

A colleague has added you as a collaborator on their cloud workspace. This page walks through what you can do there, what to expect when Harriet checks your messages, and who to ask when you need more.

You have been added to a workspace

The workspace appears in your sidebar next to your own, marked as shared, with the owner's name on its Workspace tab. You also get an email, or a Slack or Teams message, unless you have turned those off. You can open it in Harriet Desktop or on the web at /bots/cloud/.

If the message box is greyed out, you were added as a viewer, not a collaborator. Ask the owner to change your role. Collaborator access depends on the owner having turned on screened sharing for the workspace.

You want an answer or a piece of work

Start a new task and describe what you need, as you would in any chat. The workspace holds your conversation, and the owner can read it.

Before your message reaches the AI, Harriet checks it against the owner's sharing policy. The check usually takes a few seconds and assumes you are a trusted colleague, so ordinary requests go straight through. The AI answers you as you: if you ask "what's my email?", you get yours, not the owner's.

The AI can do for you what it does for the owner. It uses the workspace's tools and learned memory in your conversations, except any tools the owner has blocked. Asking about earlier conversations is only available in the owner's own chats. If the AI says a tool is blocked, ask the owner.

A conversation you started before 11 October 2026 has no tools at all. Start a new one.

You want to add to something already running

You can write in any conversation in the workspace, including the owner's and other collaborators', and in the conversations that scheduled and triggered runs produce. Each message shows who sent it, so the AI and everyone reading know whether it was you or the owner. Your conversations appear in the owner's sidebar marked with your initials.

If you write into a run that is still working, you may see "The agent is still working". Wait for it to finish its current turn, then send again.

Your message says it is waiting for the owner

A message that might cross the line, for example one that could expose other people's personal information or credentials, is held for the owner to decide. You are told you do not need to send it again. You are not told why it was held. You get a notification while it waits, and another if it ends up not being sent.

A message that clearly breaks the policy is not sent at all. Rephrase it and try again.

You have been paused

If a message clearly tries to get at other people's personal information or credentials, Harriet pauses you, and only you. Opening the workspace says so and names the owner to contact. On the web page it also says who you are waiting on and since when. Press Remind owner to send the owner a short nudge, at most once every six hours. The nudge does not say who you are or why. Everyone else keeps working normally.

You want to change or run a scheduled task

You can open the workspace's scheduled tasks and read what each run said in its conversation. You can edit a task's instructions and triggers, and press Run now on an active task you are allowed to start (the groups under From Chat & Ticket, or Anyone in the organisation).

After you edit a task, its runs are screened, and the owner's blocked tools apply to them, as they do to your messages, until the owner saves the instructions as reviewed. You cannot create or delete tasks, see a task's webhook address, or see a run's delivery details. For how tasks and triggers work, see Triggers for cloud workspaces.

You need something the AI cannot do for you

Collaborators cannot attach files, answer permission prompts, or open the workspace's files, skills, connectors or settings. You can read the text of conversations, but not the files, the details of what the AI ran, or its private reasoning. If a job needs any of those, ask the owner, who can do it for you or unblock a tool you need.

A response has stalled

You can stop a response in any conversation you started. In someone else's conversation, you can stop one that has been running for more than five minutes without finishing.

Your access ends

When the owner removes you, access ends within a few seconds, even if you have the workspace open. If you leave the company and your Harriet account is deactivated, you lose every shared workspace automatically.

Choose how you are told

In your profile, under Notification, Email me about cloud workspaces shared with me and Also message me on Slack or Teams about cloud workspaces shared with me control the messages about being added, requests that are waiting or were not sent, and access coming back.