Associating a work area to a ProjectWise project has different purposes depending on which ProjectWise 365 service you want to use.

At the most basic level, associating a work area to a ProjectWise project provides the work area participants with a view of the available ProjectWise 365 services directly from ProjectWise Explorer (through the ProjectWise Project Portal tab in the Preview Pane). This lets users access the ProjectWise 365 services of the associated ProjectWise project without having to leave the ProjectWise Explorer window, and is the same as opening a browser and going to your ProjectWise project in the CONNECT Center.

For ProjectWise Web, associating a work area to a ProjectWise project automatically adds a work area connection (which exposes the work area and its contents) to the ProjectWise Web portal of the associated ProjectWise project. Note, this also assumes and requires that the datasource setting, WSG Work Areas URL for Connect services, has been configured in ProjectWise Administrator.

For ProjectWise Deliverables Management, associating a work area to a ProjectWise project (where ProjectWise Deliverables Management is turned on) lets work area participants who have the ProjectWise Deliverables Management connector for ProjectWise Explorer installed send and receive transmittals, submittals, and RFIs from ProjectWise Explorer.

For ProjectWise Project Insights, associating a work area to a ProjectWise project lets the ProjectWise Analytics Data Upload Service (the administrative tool that collects statistical information about documents in the datasource) know which ProjectWise project to upload data to, and it lets the ProjectWise project know which work area to display data for.