I'm still wrapping my head around how to best use Activities vs Desktops for my workflow.

I'd be interested to hear your tips/tricks for how to best use them to improve workflow.

I use Activities as I have different workflows for different.....activities. Different wallpaper, widgets, and, via Latte Dock, individual panels and docks, in unique locations and configurations.

Closing an Activity saves applications and files open in it, which are restored when re-opened.

And to further complicate things, Activities have their own Virtual Desktops. In a sense, an Activity is a unique set virtual desktops, even if it only has one.

I was not aware I could setup multi desktops per activity.

Save me a little time digging thru documentation: How do I setup the desktops for an activity? And I can imagine these desktops could have their own unique set of panels?

Last qs: Keeping track of desktops: I know desktop1, 2, 3 etc is on my panel. And activities are showing to the right of that. How are you keeping track of desktops for separate activities? If I'm in an activity, and I want to step out of it, and go to my top level desktop view, is there a simple way to do that, without shutting down the activity?

"How do I setup the desktops for an activity? And I can imagine these desktops could have their own unique set of panels?"
Every activity has the same number of virtual desktops. I read a post somewhere that mentioned a conversation about how this is a technical limitation, but essentially: if your "Activity A" has 4 virtual desktops, then "Activity B" will also have 4 virtual desktops.
Each of your activities automatically has its own wallpaper and widget layout. You can change the wallpaper of your current activity by right clicking on the desktop and choosing "configure desktop and wallpaper". You can also make each activity show a different folder as the "desktop" folder, but I'm also very new here and don't know how that works yet.
Your panels are identical across all activities, so changing your panel in one activity will make it look different in all activities. Fortunately you can install Latte Dock, which I literally just learned about thanks to Claydoh, and that has way more options including the ability to choose which activities your panels will appear in.

"If I'm in an activity, and I want to step out of it, and go to my top level desktop view, is there a simple way to do that, without shutting down the activity?"
I'm unfortunately not sure how to answer that one, sorry. I'm not sure what you meant by "top level desktop view". Virtual desktops live within Activities, so changing your activity by pressing meta+q or meta+tab will change which set of virtual desktops you're looking at. You can also use the Activities Pager widget to change your activity.

Wolf Icefang wrote:"How do I setup the desktops for an activity? And I can imagine these desktops could have their own unique set of panels?"
Every activity has the same number of virtual desktops. I read a post somewhere that mentioned a conversation about how this is a technical limitation, but essentially: if your ...

Thanks for this, I'm still getting the hang of this and that helped!