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Mobius - How to: Manage workspaces
Mobius - How to: Manage workspaces

Learn how to manage your workspace in Ecochain Mobius.

Emily Lalonde avatar
Written by Emily Lalonde
Updated over 2 months ago

Effectively managing your workspace in Mobius is crucial for obtaining accurate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results and maintaining an organized environment for your projects. Workspace settings determine how environmental impacts are calculated. Choosing the right settings is essential, especially if you focus on specific standards (e.g., Single Score specifications influenced by the Dutch NMD Bepalingsmethode method).

Additionally, as you model more product footprints with various components and materials, your workspace can become cluttered. To help you stay organized, Mobius offers tools like tags, filters, and folders. This article answers the most common questions related to managing your workspace!

Don't feel like reading an article? Watch video tutorials on workspace settings, tags, folders, and filtering instead!

Feel like you're missing information? This article builds upon the following articles - check them out if you want to learn more:


Workspace management & settings

How to add & delete workspaces

How to add workspaces?

Follow these steps to add a workspace. Adding workspaces is useful if you’re working on a separate project to add a workspace.

  1. Access the workspace menu: Click on your current workspace name in the top left of Mobius to open the workspace menu dropdown.

  2. Add a workspace: Click on ‘Add workspace’ - a pop-up will appear in which you can give your new workspace a new name.

Note - Workspace limits: If you’re currently using a Mobius Professional subscription, you have a limit of up to 3 workspaces in your account. Contact Virginie Leheup if you want to upgrade your account!

How to delete workspaces?

  1. Access the workspace menu: Similar to creating a new workspace - if you’d like to remove a workspace, click on your workspace’s name in the top left of Mobius to open the workspace menu.

  2. Remove the workspace: In the opened dropdown, click ‘Delete workspace’ to remove a workspace.

Note - Deleting newly created workspaces: if you just entered a workspace, you usually need to wait ~10 seconds for the workspace settings to load before being able to delete it.

Note - Workspace management: Certain workspace management activities, like deleting workspace settings, require you to be assigned an Account Admin role within your account. You can check this by going to your Account Settings, in the bottom left of your Mobius environment.

Why are workspace settings important?

Workspace settings determine how your LCA model is calculated. When you create a new workspace, the LCA impact method is set to the default settings - the Environmental Footprint Method. However, it is always good practice to make sure they align with the goal of your LCA, as they do affect your results. If the goal of your LCA is to comply with a specific standard, check to see their specifications around impact methods.

Caution - Incorrect workspace settings: If your workspace settings are set incorrectly, your results may be wrong or missing entirely. Results may be incorrect because different methods use different methodologies for some impact categories (e.g., biogenic carbon is calculated differently across different methods). Impact results for objects may be missing or have zero impact because certain LCI databases (versions) are not always compatible with all impact methods.

How to manage workspace settings?

Follow these steps to make adjustments:

1. Access the workspace menu: Navigate to the workspace menu to begin customizing your impact settings (Figure 1). Here you will find the workspace you are currently working in, as well as a list of the other workspaces your account is attached to.

Figure 1: Accessing the workspace menu in Mobius.

2. Navigate to the Workspace settings: Below the list of workspaces in your workspace menu, are your workspace settings. Click on this category - your workspace settings will appear on the right side of your dashboard (Figure 2). Your workspace settings consist of three different sections - name, settings, and permissions.

Figure 2: Accessing your workspace settings in Mobius.

Workspace name: Here, you can change the name of your workspace by clicking on the pen icon.

Impact settings: Impact settings are the most important aspect of your workspace settings. These settings determine how your results are calculated. The components of the impact settings are described below.

  • Impact method sets: Many impact calculation methods exist that are based on different scientific models for calculating environmental impacts. The default impact method is the Environmental Footprint Method, and this is a suitable standard for European products that are not construction-related. However, Mobius offers many other methods.

Pro tip - Choosing impact settings: Selecting the best impact method for your model can be confusing. Consider factors like the sector you’re operating in, the type of LCA you’re conducting, and how you’re using your results. Mobius offers the following impact methods:

  • EN15804+A2: The main method for the building and construction sector in Europe.

  • Environmental Footprint Method (EF3.0): The primary method for consumer goods in Europe.

  • IPCC Method (2021): The main scientific method for carbon footprinting. Limitation: It only reports on CO2 impacts.

  • SBK Bepalingsmethode: The Dutch interpretation of the EN15804+A2 (above).

  • OpenLCA LCIA: Various other impact methods can be found here.

  • Impact assessment method: The impact assessment method determines the database used to calculate the footprint. Read more about impact assessment methods here. It is important to be consistent and use the same database throughout your LCA model.

Caution - Choosing impact assessment methods: It is important to be consistent with LCI database usage when selecting your impact assessment method. New database versions may use different calculation methods. This has implications for adding impact (via datasets) to your model and must be considered at that stage as well.

  • Preferred databases: In this dropdown, you can select the database (versions) you prefer to use throughout your LCAs. Your preferred databases will be preselected when working in the Database Search environment. For instance, if you select ecoinvent 3.8 as a preferred database in your workspace settings, this will be reflected in Database Search as only datasets from this preferred database version will be shown. Naturally, you can always add, or remove preferred databases in your workspace settings, or you can change the filters in Database Search. 

Pro tip - Database filtering: If you don’t know, or are unsure, of which database (version) to use, we recommend choosing the most recent version of Ecoinvent, when possible. The most recent version will have more options, more up-to-date, and more reliable datasets. You will find the most recent version of Ecoinvent at the top of the dropdown listing all currently available LCI databases in Mobius.

  • Impact category: This is the default impact category for which your results will be displayed. Choose an impact category that focuses on the specific environmental aspects relevant to your study. Mobius provides a range of categories to choose from allowing you to tailor your analysis accordingly. You can change the impact category at any time via the impact category switcher in the Product inventory view (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Changing the impact category displayed in the Product inventory.

  • Single score: The single score toggle affects normalization. Leave it at the default setting unless you have specific requirements.

Note - Configuring the single score: We offer two ‘types’ of Single Scores in Mobius. One is based on the Product Environmental Footprint Method, while the other is based on the Dutch NMD Bepalingsmethode. In the former method, it is simply called the Single Score and is measured in Points (Pt). While in the latter method, it is called the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI; Milieukostenindicator, MKI in Dutch), and is measured in Euros (EUR). Configure your workspace settings as shown in Figure 4 and 5 if you’d like to view your total environmental impact in terms of the Single Score or the ECI respectively.

Figure 4: Configuring your workspace settings to view the environmental impact as a Single Score in Ecochain Mobius. For the ‘Normalizations and weighting’ dropdown, use the last option.

Figure 5: Configuring your workspace settings to view the environmental impact in terms of the Dutch ECI / MKI in Ecochain Mobius. Be mindful that currently, this configuration is only compatible with ecoinvent v3.6.

  • Exclude long-term impacts: Unless you have a specific reason to change this, leave this toggle untouched.

  • Save changes: Once you've adjusted your impact settings, remember to save your changes to apply them to your workspace.

  • Workspace permissions: This is where you can change the permissions of who can view or edit the workspace. This function is only relevant if you’re working in your account with multiple users, and is best left unchanged. Click on the “+” to edit the permissions. Please reach out to us ([email protected]) in case of any questions or doubts regarding roles and permissions in your Mobius account.

Workspace settings video tutorial

Watch Emma explain these concepts in our tutorial:


Workspace organization

What is the difference between tags & folders?

Both tags and folders help keep your workspace organized and ensure you can find a product or object effectively. However, there are some (minor) differences between these features.

1. You can use tags to search and filter within your workspace. However, you can’t filter or search in (created) folders. Therefore, tags are beneficial if you have multiple products or objects that belong to the same ‘group’ and you want to search for them based on these similarities. Nevertheless, a similar outcome can be achieved by grouping those similar products in one folder.

2. Folders are a great tool to keep your Object library or Product overview organized. As you work more and more in Mobius, you will notice that your libraries become very long, filling many pages with your objects/products. Folders are a great way to cluster objects based on categories and avoid having endless pages of loose, separate objects.

How to find objects and products quickly?

Of course, adding tags and folders helps organize your workspace, but it also helps you find objects or products quickly using searches and filtering in Mobius. This process is intuitive - watch the video below to learn more.

Using Tags

What are tags and why use them?

Tags are a versatile tool for organizing your workspace, allowing you to categorize and group products and objects based on specific criteria. Tags are especially helpful when you have a lot of information about your LCA models in your account. By applying tags, you can create a more structured and visually appealing workspace. You can then filter for specific tags, making it easier to locate and manage items.

How to create tags?

Tags can be applied to objects and products. Below, we outline the steps needed to create tags for products. However, the same steps apply to adding tags to objects.

1. Select the product: In the Product overview, click on the product you want to apply a tag to.

2. Navigate to the product Detail panel: Once in the Product inventory, click on the product name. The Detail panel will appear on the right side of your dashboard.

3. Apply a tag to the product: Find the Tags section at the bottom of the Detail panel. Click on the + to add a tag (Figure 1). Create a tag that helps categorize the product effectively (e.g., a product group like T-shirts for your clothing factory). Select a color for the tag to help distinguish between tags. Click save when you are done.

Figure 1: Adding a tag in Mobius.

4. Add additional tags to the same product: If necessary, you can create multiple tags for each product. Depending on your use case, add additional ones that help keep your workspace organized (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Adding multiple tags to a product in Mobius.

5. Find the tags on the Product overview page: Navigate back to the Product overview page to find the tags you created attached to the product (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Tags visible in the product card on the Product overview page in Mobius.

Note - Applying tags to objects: As mentioned, tags are added to objects in the same way as products - by navigating to the Object inventory via the Object overview page. However, you can also add tags to an object in a Product inventory. Simply select the item line of the object you want to add a tag to. The Detail panel will pop up and you can add your tags at the bottom of the panel.

How to use tags for filtering?

If you add the same tag(s) to multiple products and objects, you can use filters to quickly find these objects and products, streamlining your search process in your Product and Object overview pages. Like the subsection above, we outline the filtering steps using the context of products, however, follow the same steps for filtering objects.

1. Navigate to the Product overview page: Once multiple of the same tags are applied to a product, go to the Product overview page.

2. Filter on tags: Select the desired tags from the Tags dropdown list (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Applying filters in Mobius.

How to remove tags?

Want to remove a tag from a product or object? Follow these simple steps:

1. Locate the product: Find the product with the tag you want to remove. Click on the product name to get to the Detail panel.

2. Remove the tag: Simply click on the x next to the tag in the Tags section.

Tags video tutorial

Watch Emma explain these concepts in our tutorial:

Using Folders

What are folders and why use them?

The folders feature is an organizational tool that allows users to categorize and group their projects, products, or objects within their workspace. They function similarly to folders on a computer, providing a way to keep related items together and easily accessible. Users can create folders, assign descriptive names, and move items in and out of folders to keep their workspace organized. Additionally, folders enable users to search within them, ensuring that items can be quickly located when needed. Folders are a helpful tool for maintaining a tidy and efficient workspace in Mobius, avoiding having a long list and many pages of items in your workspace.

Caution - Folders and tags: While folders and tags help organize your workspace, these are not currently importable or exportable to or from Mobius. These features are to be used manually in Mobius.

How to use folders?

In Mobius, you can use folders in the Product overview and Object library. Below, we outline the steps of using folders for products. However, the same steps apply to using folders for objects.

1. Access folders: Look for the folder icon to add a new folder to your workspace. This icon is located in the toolbar at the top right of the Product overview page (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Accessing the folders feature in Mobius.

2. Create folders: Click on the folder icon to create a new folder. Give your folder a descriptive name that reflects its contents or purpose - you can always change the folder's name at a later stage. You might create folders for different projects, product categories, or stages of development (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Creating and naming a folder in Mobius.

3. Organize products into folders: Once you've created a folder, move products from the Product overview page into a folder by selecting the three dot menu on its product card and choosing the folder you wish to move it to (Figure 7). This helps to declutter your workspace while still keeping important items easily accessible.

Figure 7: Moving a product to a folder in Mobius.

4. Search within folders: Use Mobius's search functionality to find a specific product. Simply enter the name or keywords associated with the product you're looking for, and Mobius will display all relevant results, including items within folders.

5. Retrieve products from folders: If you need to retrieve a product from a folder, you can easily do so by navigating to the folder and selecting the desired item. To remove products from folders, select the Move to folder button from the product card’s three dot menu in the Product overview page, then select the location you wish to move the product to.

Folders video tutorial

Watch Emma explain these concepts in our tutorial:


Next steps

Understanding how to manage your workspace settings and effectively organize your projects in Mobius empowers you to conduct more accurate and insightful LCAs. By mastering the use of tags, filters, and folders, you can maintain a clear and organized environment, enhancing your productivity and overall efficiency.

Ready to explore more features within Mobius? Check out our comprehensive help center articles for additional guidance on maximizing your ecodesign potential. If you need further assistance, our support team is here to help. Dive deeper into Mobius' features and take your LCA skills to the next level.

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