Organizing digital content with taxonomy: How we build digital workspaces that scale

If you’ve ever opened a Notion workspace and felt a wave of existential dread, you’re not alone. Most spaces start as organized dreams and end up as abandoned wiki graveyards—half-dead pages, zombie projects, and a dozen “About Us” docs with slightly different bios.

This isn’t a software problem. It’s a context problem.

That’s why at Notion Flows, we don’t start by building databases or pages.

We start by building understanding.

Taxonomy helps us name, sort, and structure information—so the system makes sense before it fills up.

🧬 From Species to Spaces: Redefining Taxonomy for the Digital World

In biology, taxonomy was born out of chaos.

Scientists needed a way to make sense of millions of lifeforms, so they started grouping things based on shared traits—kingdom, phylum, species. Not just to name things, but to see how they relate, where they belong, and what makes them different.

At Notion Flows, we’ve adapted that same idea to digital content.

Except we’re not organizing plants or animals—we’re organizing the lifeblood of a business: its knowledge, systems, and workflows.

We use a two-level taxonomy that underpins every system we build:

• Level 1: Business Area (Meaning)

What part of the business is this about?

HR. Sales. Marketing. Product. It’s the “where does this live?” layer.

• Level 2: Information Type (Structure)

What kind of information is this?

Policy? Guide? Workflow? Repository? Library? This defines how content should be treated.

When you apply both levels to every page, doc, and record in your workspace, information stops floating.

It gains weight. It knows where it belongs and how to behave.

Without Level 1, you have a flat list of chaos.

Without Level 2, everything becomes just another doc.

Together? You’ve got a living system.

🔍 How Taxonomy Actually Works in Practice

Once you’ve defined both levels, you can start seeing the system take shape.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

“Expense Reimbursement Rules”

• Level 1: Finance
• Level 2: Policy

→ Lives in: Finance → Policies → Expense Reimbursement Rules

“How to Publish a Blog Post”

• Level 1: Marketing
• Level 2: Guide

→ Lives in: Marketing → Guides → Blog Publishing Guide

“Customer Case Studies”

• Level 1: Customer Knowledge
• Level 2: Repository

→ Lives in: Customer Knowledge → Repositories → Case Studies

“Vacation Rules”

• Level 1: People (HR)
• Level 2: Policy

→ Lives in: People → Policies → Vacation Policy

Once you’ve named the meaning and the structure, the rest is just execution.

You can find it. You can tag it. You can maintain it.

You can trust it.

🧱 Building with Blocks

Once a company has defined what it knows and how it should be structured—the next challenge is turning that into a working system.

That’s where Notion comes in.

Most teams jump straight into building pages. We don’t.

At NotionFlows, we take a moment to step back, open Miro, and architect the system before writing a single word in Notion.

And we always start from the bottom with four foundational layers.

Each one supporting the next.

1. Central Databases — The Foundation

2. Dashboards — Smart Views, Not Static Pages

3. Templates — Guardrails for Consistency

4. Automations — Manual Where It Matters. Automated Where It Doesn’t.

1. Central Databases — The Foundation

This is where everything lives. We define the core databases your team needs:

• 📚 Knowledge – Docs, guides, policies, SOPs
• 📦 Workflows – Projects, pipelines, hiring funnels
• 📝 Records – Meeting notes, decisions, logs
• 🏷 Libraries – Tags, tools, roles, metadata

Each entry follows your taxonomy:

→ Business Area (Level 1)

→ Information Type (Level 2)

And each has structured properties:

• Owner
• Status
• Tags
• Visibility
• Dates
• Custom fields per type

These properties are the foundation for everything that follows.

2. Dashboards — Smart Views, Not Static Pages

Dashboards aren’t pages. They’re portals—filtered views into your structured data.

Examples:

• 👩‍💼 Marketing Team Home
• Shows only marketing campaigns, guides, and notes
• 📊 Executive View
• Company-wide policies, active OKRs, key cross-team workflows

Dashboards are built on structure—not on folder hierarchies. They give people access to what they need, when they need it, with context already applied.

3. Templates — Guardrails for Consistency

Templates protect your system from chaos.

Every Information Type has its own template:

• 📘 Guide – Structured steps, owner, related tools
• 📆 Meeting Notes – Auto-linked to the project, structured sections
• 📦 Project – Naming convention, default properties, task views

We also build recurring templates that generate automatically—like weekly team notes or monthly reviews.

Templates keep everything consistent, searchable, and automatable.

4. Automations — Manual Where It Matters. Automated Where It Doesn’t.

Once your system is stable, then you automate.

Because the structure is defined, automations actually work.

We create things like:

• Auto-generated pages for recurring rituals (e.g. standups)
• Notifications for review dates
• Workflow triggers that update status or notify collaborators
• Scheduled archiving for inactive projects

You’re not just saving time.

You’re creating reliability.

🏗 Organizing the Workspace: The Three Types of Team Spaces

Once the structure is in place, the final step is organizing it inside Notion—intentionally.

We use a three-layered approach:

🏠 1. Home (HQ) — The Digital Headquarters

The default starting place. It holds high-level, org-wide information:

• Announcements
• Org chart & directory
• HR, IT, and legal policies
• Company values, onboarding
• Global search-friendly knowledge hubs

This space is accessible to everyone.

It’s your organization’s digital front door.

⚙️ 2. Operating Systems — Where Cross-Functional Work Happens

This is where work that involves multiple teams lives.

• Strategic planning (OKRs, goals)
• Cross-team projects
• Company-wide rituals (all-hands, retros)
• Hiring & onboarding workflows
• Internal support systems

These systems keep everyone moving in the same direction.

We build them using shared databases and structured views so nothing gets lost or siloed.

🧱 3. Team Spaces — Where Micro-Goals and Autonomy Live

Each department—Marketing, Sales, Product—gets its own space.

This is where the day-to-day happens:

• Campaign tracking
• Docs and SOPs
• Meeting notes
• Retrospectives
• Playbooks

Teams can personalize these spaces with their own workflows.

And because the system is centralized, they can still link into company-wide data—like:

• Filtered OKRs just for their team
• Company wiki entries relevant to their function

Local autonomy. Global alignment.

And that’s the full picture

This is how we build Notion workspaces that scale—not just in size, but in understanding.

We don’t just organize information.

We give it structure, behavior, and a place in the bigger picture.

Because when everything has a home,

everyone can focus on the work that matters.

If your Notion system is starting to feel more like digital clutter than digital clarity, Let’s talk.

You don’t need another dashboard.

You need a foundation.

That’s what we build.