Workplace & CollaborationWorkplace & Collaboration GlossaryPart 1 of 11
The Business Glossary
35 terms from the Workplace & Collaboration book's The Business part, each defined in a line and linked to the chapter that explains it.
- Account: A person's identity (one email, one login), either personal or managed by an organization (The Workplace Software Business).
- Add-on: A separately priced capability attached to a plan, such as an AI assistant or customer-managed keys (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- AI credits: A per-seat or pooled allowance of AI usage included in a plan, consumed by members and paid for by the organization (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Annual recurring revenue (ARR): The annualized run rate of a customer's active recurring contracts at a point in time (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Best-of-breed: A standalone product chosen as the best in one category, run beside a suite (The Collaboration Landscape).
- Bottom-up adoption: Growth in which end users adopt a product first and the organization buys later (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- CAC payback: The months of a customer's gross margin needed to repay the cost of acquiring it (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Commitments (EU): Remedies a company offers to close a Commission antitrust case, made binding without a finding of infringement (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- Container: A place content lives (channel, space, project, board, folder, drive, canvas, meeting series) that carries visibility and policy (The Workplace Software Business).
- Controller and processor: The customer organization decides how its content is used (controller); the vendor processes it on the customer's instructions (processor) (The Workplace Software Business).
- Discount symmetry: The Teams commitment that discounts on suites with Teams can't exceed those on suites without it (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- Fair billing: Slack's policy of billing only members active in the last 28 days and crediting the rest by the day (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Feature gate: A plan entitlement that turns a limit, feature or admin control on or off by tier (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Freemium: A free plan with limits designed to be outgrown, as the first step of product-led growth (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Gross retention: Net retention with expansion capped at zero, isolating churn and contraction (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Inversion of duties: The workplace pattern in which the customer organization, not the vendor, moderates, retains, holds and answers legal requests (The Workplace Software Business).
- Item: One piece of content of any kind (message, page, file, work item, comment, design, recording) (The Workplace Software Business).
- Land and expand: Selling a small first deal to one team, then growing seats, products and editions inside the customer (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Listed Providers: The clouds (Microsoft, Alibaba, Amazon, Google) on which Microsoft licenses without mobility rights can't be redeployed (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- Member: An account inside one workspace, with a kind (full, guest, external, bot, service), a role and a status (The Workplace Software Business).
- Net dollar retention (NDR): A cohort's recurring revenue now divided by the same customers' revenue a year earlier, including expansion, contraction and churn (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- New commerce experience (NCE): Microsoft's CSP purchasing platform with monthly, annual and three-year terms and a seven-day reduction window (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Organization: The customer: the billing entity that owns domains, contracts and org-wide policy (The Workplace Software Business).
- Product retirement: A dated end of sale or end of life with notice, read-only, deletion and export dates (The Collaboration Landscape).
- Product-led growth (PLG): A go-to-market in which the product, not a salesperson, makes the first sale (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Remaining performance obligations (RPO): Contracted revenue not yet recognized (Business Models & Unit Economics).
- Seat: A license for one user for one period, defined differently by each vendor (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Seat type: A per-role seat price on the same plan, such as Figma's Full, Dev and Collab seats (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- SMS (strategic market status): The UK CMA's designation under the DMCC Act 2024 that allows conduct requirements on a firm (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- SSO tax: The price difference between a base paid tier and the tier that includes single sign-on (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Suite: Many products sold under one contract, identity, admin console and price (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- Switch window: A dated opportunity for a customer to move to a suite without a product, required by the Teams commitments (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- Tying: Making one product available only with another, an abuse when the seller is dominant (Suites, Bundling & Antitrust).
- User tier: Atlassian's annual pricing band by number of users, fixed for the term (Plans, Pricing & Seats).
- Workspace: A tenant unit inside an organization (Slack workspace, Atlassian site, Notion workspace), where region and most settings live (The Workplace Software Business).