An online collaborative workspace system includes a set of first subsystems and a workflow subsystem. The first subsystems provide a project-oriented social network environment in which system users collaboratively interact with user-defined application objects that store user data and user-determined application functions executed to display the user data and interlink the application objects into project-scale organizations. The first subsystems can include commenting, task and status subsystems. The workflow subsystem includes a workflow builder and a workflow engine. The workflow builder provides a visual interface enabling a user to define custom workflows for the application objects, where a workflow is a cause-effect structure identifying a trigger event that causes the workflow to be executed and defining an action performed on or by an application object in response to the trigger event. The workflow engine receives system events and executes workflows having corresponding triggers.