Workspaces enable R&D teams to manage their workflow. It is possible to capture important patents and annotate them, set up automatic alerts, and share all of this among colleagues. Lists of patents can be assigned to, shared between, and edited by anyone in an organization with a PatSnap account. The reviewing process of a list of shared patents can be easily tracked as well, enabling teams to work from the same dataset avoiding duplication of efforts.
Introduction to Workspaces
PatSnap's Workspaces provides an ideal forum for you to capture and manage what you find on the platform, including your IP portfolio, competitors' portfolios, and general technology searches. Within each Workspace, you can create multiple folders that allow you to store up to 20,000 patents.
In this part of the guide, we will explore in detail each of the multiple features available in Workspaces, but before we do that, take a moment to watch this video that serves as a quick introduction to the use and functionality of Workspaces.
Creating a Workspace
The starting point before creating a Workspace is to establish the associated strategic objectives. These can either relate to internal projects, such as managing the current R&D pipeline, or external goals that encompass commercialization via licensing and M&A targets. The Workspaces that you create will stem from the type of searches you originally conduct. Whether you are looking into different companies' patent portfolios or delving into new technology areas, make sure you store your results in a Workspace with a clear label that easily relates back to key objectives.
You will find the option to save patents to a workspace in multiple places of PatSnap. For now, we are going focus on the most used one, from the results screen. Once you have conducted a search, you will see at the top of your results page the "Save to Workspace" button. Keep in mind that the maximum amount of patents you can save per folder is 20,000. If your number of results is higher, the button will be grayed out.
After you click on the "Save to Workspace" button, you will be asked to select the folder where the patents will be saved. You can choose from existing workspaces and folders, or you can create new ones. If you hover your mouse over the workspaces/folders on the list, you will also have the option to rename then or to create sub-folders. At the moment of creating a new workspace you can choose to enable alerts, or automatic updates.
If you click on "Advanced Options", you will be able to indicate how many patents to save to your workspace, and to see the query that would be used to keep your workspace updated.
You will also be given the option to add either the selected patents only, or the selected patens and their family members as well.
Managing Workspaces
It is possible to access your Workspaces at any given time. Just click on the "Workspace" button located on the top left corner of the screen.
Once you have clicked on the Workspace button, this is the screen you should see:
You'll notice that on the left side of the screen there are multiple sections to choose from. The first page you will see after accessing the workspaces area is "My Workspaces"
My workspaces
On the center of the screen, you'll find the existing workspaces. Each one will display an Icon, the given title, the number of folders and how many of them are being automatically updated, the number of patents within the workspace, and the date it was created, or the date it was last edited (depending on your view settings).
If you hover one of the Workspaces, a button with an ellipsis (...) will appear on the top right corner. if you click on it, the options to "Edit", "Share", and "Delete" will appear.
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It is also possible to create a new Workspace from "My Workspaces". All you need to do is to click on the "+New Workspace" button, and enter a relevant Name and Description.
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Views and Sorting
The "Thumbnail view" is selected by default, but it is possible to change it to "Table View" using the buttons located on the right side of the screen.
The information displayed per workspace is the same on both views. Here is how your Workspaces would look using the table view:
| You can also choose to sort the workspaces by created time, or by last updated. |  |
Shared Workspaces
The next section is "Shared Workspaces". Here, you will find all of the workspaces that other PatSnap users have shared with you. Each workspace will display the who originally created it.
All of the options are the same as the "My Workspaces" page.
My Analysis
My Custom Fields
While we have mentioned custom fields a couple of times in the previous parts of this guide, they are an essential part of workspaces, and before we start learning about the things you can do inside a workspace, it is important that we take some time to learn what custom fields are, and some of their uses.
Custom fields are designed to be a helpful tool for recording your thoughts on a patent. They will allow you to add information that is not normally part of the data contained within a patent. You might want to indicate if a patent is relevant to your research, or flag what patents are similar to an invention you have been working on in order to avoid infringement. Using custom fields, you can categorize your patents based on internal metrics, which is one step towards customizing and classifying your search results within a workspace.
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Creating and Managing Custom fields
Custom fields can be created either within, or outside of a workspace using the account drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner of the screen. These fields are global to your entire account and can easily be shown or hidden in the different workspaces based on your needs and objectives.
Recycle bin
In the Recycle bin section, you'll find recently deleted items. They will indicate the type ( workspace, folder, or patent), name, the time they were deleted, and their original location.
Review
In this section, you will be able to track the patents that someone else has assigned to you, or that you have assigned to one of your colleagues. We will talk about how assign patents at a later point in this guide.
Assigned to me
Here, you will find a list of the different assignments you have received from someone else. Each assignment will indicate how many patents you have to review, who assigned them, when they are due, and the progress made so far. It is also possible to reassign them to a different person. If they were marked as having a high or urgent priority, they will be tagged.
When you open one of these assignments , at the top of the screen you can see a who it comes from, and if a short message was included, it will be displayed as well. You can also find the progress made so far, and the due date.
On the right side of the screen you'll find the workspace that the patents come from, and the custom fields that were assigned along them. After you have reviewed a document, and filled out the necessary custom fields, you can click on "Complete Review" to save your progress.
You can also click on a patent to open the "Patent View". The custom fields and "Complete Review" button will remain on the right side of the screen. The navigation arrows will allow you to move back and forth between the patents you need to review.
Patents I Assigned
Similar to the "Assigned to me" section, will be presented with relevant information regarding the patents you have assigned. Here, you will have the option to reassign the patents to someone else, send a reminder of the assignment to a user, edit the details of the assignment, or delete it completely.
Inside a Workspace
When you first open a Workspace, you'll realize that they are very similar looking to the results screen. Even some of the options and tools available are the same, but the more you use and explore workspaces, the more differences you will notice. This is how a workspace look:
To deliver a better user experience while navigating workspaces, PatSnap has implemented options similar to those of the most popular Spreadsheet programs out there.
| Move Columns by clicking on a column header and dragging it to a new position. |  |
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| Adjust the width of any column simply by clicking on the right side line of a column header, and dragging it left or right. |  |
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| Freeze and unfreeze columns by clicking on the arrow pointing down located in the column header, and then selecting freeze/unfreeze. Frozen columns are always placed on the left side of a table. |  |
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| Edit the contents of a cell by double-clicking on it. |  |
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Copy the contents of a custom field by clicking on the lower right portion of the cell and dragging it down. |
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In the following paragraphs, we will explore the multiple options that are available to you while making use of workspaces. We are going to start by describing the functionality of all the tools located at the top of the screen.
Settings
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The "Settings" button is located on the top left corner of a workspace. |
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Inside settings, there will be 3 different sections on the left side of the screen. "Page Settings", "General", and "Folder Management". The first section you will see is Page Settings. "View Preferences" lets you choose the fields that will be displayed in your workspace. There is a tab for each one of the available views (Table,Standard, and Full Images), while the "Overview" tab lets you customize the overview screen of the "Analyze Patents" section. "Other Display" contains the options for grouping, tagging, sorting, and translating the patents within your workspace. |
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Under General, you can change the Icon, title, and/or description of your workspace. |
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| As its name implies, in the Folder Management section you can make changes to the folders inside your workspace. |  |
| You can create new folders by clicking the "+New Folder" button. |  |
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| You can edit a folder's name and description, create a subfolder, or delete it altogether by using the buttons on the right-hand side of the screen. |  |
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| If you select one or multiple folders, a menu will appear on the lower right corner. It will give you the options to delete them, or move them to a different workspace. |  |
Views and sorting
Just like in the results screen, you have the ability to change between views, and to sort the patents inside the workspace.
| You can choose between the views Table, Standard, Full Images, and Thumbnail. |  |
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| Most of the sorting options are the same as the ones found in the results screen. Order by "Most Relevant" is not available since that option can only apply to search results, and it is replaced by "Latest Added" and "Oldest Added", referring to the time the patents were saved to the workspace. |  |
Sidebar - Folder,Refine, and Tree
Analysis
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The "Analysis" drop down menu will allow you to make use of the "Analyze patents", "Landscape", and "Insights" tools that we described before. In addition to the Analysis tools that you can also find in the results page, you'll notice the addition of the option "Matrix". Matrix analyses are unique to workspaces. |
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Matrix Analysis
Matrix charts can be used to analyze and compare various different metrics between each other, including any custom fields that you have set up in your workspace. You can learn more about the Matrix Analysis in the following video.
Export, Import, and Email Alerts
The next set of options you will find in a workspace, are Export, Import, and Email Alerts. While exports and alerts work almost exactly the same way they do in the results screen, imports are unique to workspaces.
Export
The main difference between exporting patents from the results screen, and exporting them from a workspace, is that in a workspace export you are able to include the custom fields that you are currently using.
Import
"Import" will allow you to upload an xls/xlsx file with a a maximum of 20,000 patents at a time. PatSnap will match this list of patents to the corresponding entries in our database, and add them to your workspace. The patents must be contained in a column with the title "publication number".
With the exception of "drop-down tree" fields, you can include any of the custom fields as part of an import. You just have to make sure that the custom fields used in the xls file, are also present in your workspace folder, and that they have the same title. 
Alerts
The Alerts in workspaces work the same way they do in the results screen. The only option that is unique to workspaces, is the "Comments" alert. It will alert you when a new comment has been added to a patent within the workspace.
Sharing Workspaces
In the "Managing Workspaces" section above, we already described one way to share workspaces, and where to find the workspaces that have been shared with you.
Assigning Patents
Automatic Updates
Custom Fields
Training Webinar - Part 3
In this final part of the webinar series, Hannah goes over the many features Workspaces have to offer. While we have already described everything you will see in the following video, it is always good to see these features in action. Please take the time to watch.
Collaboration using Workspaces
In the following video, we'll take a look at the best ways you can share your research and work with other members of your team and engage in collaborative work using Workspace.
We will go through the following topics: Why Collaborate Using Workspace?, Alerts, Custom Fields and Comments, Shared Workspaces, Patent Review Tracker, Best Practice.
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