Archiving Workspaces & Authorizations

When a workspace closes for good or an authorization is no longer issued, you archive it. Archiving takes the resource out of the active list without deleting any of its history — and before anything happens, MakerVera shows you exactly who and what will be affected so there are no surprises.

This guide is for makerspace administrators. Archiving is an admin-only action.

What archiving does

Archiving is more than hiding an item. Depending on what you’re archiving, it can cancel upcoming bookings, refund the members who paid for them, take the workspace’s equipment offline, revoke members’ access, and notify everyone affected. MakerVera previews every one of these consequences and lets you decide how to handle them before you confirm.

You can archive two kinds of resource today:

You archive…	And MakerVera can…
A workspace	Cancel and fully refund its upcoming bookings, cancel and refund the classes scheduled in it, take the equipment inside it offline, and email affected members.
An authorization	Revoke it from current holders, repoint the equipment, workspaces, and classes that required it onto a different authorization, and notify members who lose access.

Note

Archiving a single piece of equipment on its own is coming in a later release. For now, equipment is taken offline automatically when you archive the workspace it lives in.

Archiving a workspace

Open the workspace, go to its Settings tab, and choose Archive. The confirmation dialog shows you:

• Upcoming bookings — every booking in the next 14 days, with the member, the equipment, and the time. If there are more than four, choose See all to expand the full list in place.
• An equipment callout — how many pieces of equipment will be taken offline along with the workspace.
• Affected classes — how many class series scheduled in the workspace will be affected.
• A booking choice — what should happen to those upcoming bookings.

You pick one of two options for the bookings:

Option	What happens
Notify members and cancel (default)	Upcoming bookings are canceled, the members who paid are fully refunded, and everyone gets a cancellation email. The classes scheduled in the workspace are also canceled and refunded the same way, and registered members are notified.
Let existing bookings complete	No new bookings can be made, but the ones already on the calendar still go ahead. Nothing is canceled or refunded, and scheduled classes are left in place.

Tip

When you choose Notify members and cancel, the dialog tells you up front how many bookings will be canceled and refunded, so you know the impact before you commit.

You can add an optional note to affected members — it’s included in the cancellation email.

When you confirm, you’ll see a summary toast such as “Laser Lab archived · 7 bookings canceled · 7 members notified · 4 equipment taken offline.”

Archiving an authorization

Open the authorization, go to its Settings tab, and choose Archive. The dialog shows you:

• Current holders — the members who hold this authorization right now (with a See all for long lists).
• What requires it — the equipment, workspaces, and classes that currently require this authorization for access.
• A holder choice — what should happen to the people who hold it.

You pick one of two options for the holders:

Option	What happens
Keep existing grants intact (default)	No new grants are issued, but current holders keep their access.
Revoke from all current holders	Members lose access immediately and receive a revocation notice.

If you choose to revoke, the optional note becomes a reason sent to revoked holders so you can explain why.

Handling what required the authorization

If equipment, workspaces, or classes required the authorization you’re archiving, those resources would be left without a requirement. The dialog lets you handle that in the same step:

• Replace the requirement on everything with another active authorization, or
• Remove the requirement entirely, or
• Mix and match per resource if some should be replaced and others cleared.

This happens together with the archive — either it all applies or nothing does.

Restoring an archived resource

Archived items aren’t gone. To find them, turn on the Archived filter in the resource list — archived rows appear with a gray “Archived” badge. Open one and its detail pane is read-only, with a Restore button in place of the usual Archive button.

Restoring returns the resource to active status. A few things to know before you do:

• Workspaces: restoring brings the workspace back and re-enables the equipment that went offline because of this archive. Equipment that was offline for some other reason stays offline. The toast tells you how many pieces came back online.
• Canceled bookings and classes do not come back. If you canceled bookings or classes when archiving, you’ll need to re-create them and invite those members to re-book or re-register manually.
• Authorizations: restoring reactivates the authorization, but previously revoked grants are not reinstated. You re-grant access to members manually.

The Restore confirmation spells out these consequences for the specific item you’re restoring.

A note on safety

If two admins try to archive the same resource at once, only the first succeeds — the second is told the item was just archived by someone else, and the list refreshes. You can’t accidentally cancel a booking or refund a member twice by double-clicking.

Troubleshooting

I don’t see an Archive button. Archiving is admin-only. If your role doesn’t include managing the resource, the button is hidden.

A member says they didn’t get a refund. Refunds are issued automatically when you choose to cancel bookings, through the same refund engine as the rest of MakerVera. If a refund couldn’t be completed (for example, a payment issue), it’s flagged for review rather than silently dropped — the resource still archives. Check the order or transaction for the refund status.

I archived a workspace but some equipment is still offline. Restoring only re-enables equipment that went offline as part of that archive. Equipment you’d taken offline separately stays offline by design — bring it back online from the equipment itself.

I restored an authorization but members still can’t access anything. Restoring reactivates the authorization template; it does not re-grant it to members whose grants you revoked. Re-grant those members manually.

Related

• Resource Authorization Management — how workspace and equipment authorizations control access.
• Refunds & Reversals — how MakerVera handles refunds across the platform.