Working as staff

For a member of staff who is not an administrator: signing in, what your role lets you see, and the parts of the panel that are yours alone.

Who this section is for

These pages are for the people who use the CRM every day but do not run it: somebody whose role is not Administrator. They describe the panel as you will see it — which is usually much shorter than the one in the rest of this manual — and why. For the full detail of a screen, each section links to the page that describes it for everybody (the CRM admin panel pages).

• Working as staff (this page): signing in, your role, the menu, your account and the top bar.
• Your working day: clocking in, leave, the calendar, announcements, the timeline, the wiki, goals, surveys and messages.
• Your own work: the records your role gives you, such as tasks, projects, time and tickets.
• Running a team: for somebody on the Manager role, or another role that looks after colleagues.

Signing in

Your workspace has its own address, which whoever set up your account will have given you. Go to /login on that address, type your Email address and Password, and press Sign in. Tick Keep me signed in on a computer that is yours alone. You land on your dashboard. The sign-in page is described in full under Signing in.

The customer portal has a sign-in page of its own, at /portal/login. That one is for your customers' contacts; a staff account signs in at /login.

Other ways in

• Continue with Google and Continue with Facebook appear under the form when your workspace has set them up under Integrations. They take you to Google or Facebook and back, and sign you in only if the address they confirm belongs to an active staff account here; they never create one. The same buttons on the portal sign-in do the same for customers' contacts.
• A one-time sign-in link (/handoff/…) signs an account in at the workspace's own address when it arrives from elsewhere: straight after somebody signs up for a new workspace, and when a platform super admin uses Sign in as on a staff member (see Workspaces) and later returns. Nobody types it: it works once, only at the address it was made for, and for two minutes. A used, old or misdirected link shows Page not found.

A forgotten password

1. On the sign-in page, press Forgot password?.
2. Type your Email address and press Send reset link. The page says If that address belongs to an account, a reset link is on its way. whether or not it does, so it cannot be used to find out who has an account.
3. Open the link in the email within an hour. Type a New password twice and press Save new password.
4. You are sent back to the sign-in page: Your password has been reset. Please sign in.

No email arrives for an account that has been deactivated. If that is you, ask an administrator: nothing on the sign-in page can switch an account back on. Customers use the same page from the portal sign-in, and are sent back there afterwards (see Getting into the portal).

To choose a new password while you are signed in, use My account.

Your role

Everything you can see and do is decided by the role an administrator gave you, shown under your name at the top right. A role is a list of modules (Leave, Invoices, Tickets…), and for each one two things:

• Abilities — what you may do: View, Create, Edit, Delete, Export, and on some modules Approve, Send or Sign.
• Scope — which records it applies to.

So two people can open the same screen and see different lists: with Their own records on leave, the leave screen lists your requests only; with All records, everybody's. Nothing about the screen tells you what is outside your scope, which is the point of it.

The Employee role, as shipped

Every workspace starts with three roles: Administrator, Manager and Employee. Employee is described as Sees their own team and nothing else. Out of the box it gives:

And nothing else. As shipped, an Employee has no leads, customers, quotes, invoices, projects, tasks, timesheets, tickets, knowledge base, files, surveys, campaigns, reports or settings. That is a starting point, not a verdict: the usual next step is to give each person the modules their job needs — a support agent the tickets, a developer the tasks and projects — either by changing the Employee role, by making a new role, or by overriding one person's permissions on top of their role. That is done by an administrator under Organisation → Roles and on your staff record; see Roles and permissions. What you do with those modules once you have them is on Your own work.

The Manager role, as shipped, sees everybody's attendance and leave, approves leave, writes announcements and the wiki, adds staff, makes teams and reads the activity log; see Running a team.

How the panel shrinks to your role

The menu

The menu down the left shows only what your role reaches. An item you have no access to is left out, and so is a heading with nothing left under it. With the Employee role as shipped, the whole menu is:

Compare it with the full menu under The menu: the CRM, Sales & Invoicing, Projects & Deliveries and Marketing & Communications headings are gone altogether. A few items need no permission at all and are there for everybody: Dashboard, Pages (the staff-only pages your business has published, such as a handbook; see Pages and the website menu) and Messages. Staff comes with the View ability on staff. Activity — the log of every change in the workspace — needs more: seeing all of the staff, not only your own team, because the log is as sensitive as every record in it. The Manager role has that; the Employee role does not.

Two more things take items away for everybody, administrators included: a module your workspace has switched off under Settings → Modules, and an item an administrator has hidden under Settings → Menu. Nothing done to the menu can show you an item your role does not reach.

Buttons that are missing

Inside a screen, each button asks for its own ability, so a screen you may open can still be missing buttons that are in the screenshots elsewhere in this manual. With the Employee role, for example:

• Leave has Request leave and Print, but no Export (no Export ability), no pencil to edit a request (no Edit), and no approve or decline buttons (no Approve).
• Attendance has Clock in and Clock out, but no Add a shift unless your workspace lets staff type in a shift they forgot, and no edit or delete buttons on a shift.
• Announcements, Goals and the Wiki are for reading: no Write an announcement, no Set a goal, and on the wiki no New page, Edit or page History.
• Timeline lets you post and reply, and remove what you wrote, but not pin a post or remove somebody else's.
• Staff is a list to read: no Add staff member, and nothing to edit.
• The dashboard has no New invoice or Add lead, and only the panels whose module you can see.

If a button you need is missing, it is your role, not a fault: ask an administrator for the ability.

An address you may not open

Typing an address by hand, or following an old link, does not get round a role. You see one of two pages instead of the screen:

Your dashboard

Dashboard is where you land. It greets you by name with today's date, then shows panels — and only the panels whose module your role can see. With the Employee role as shipped that is:

• Goals — the goals you have a stake in, with how far along each is. View all opens Goals.
• Coming up — the next events on your calendar. Calendar opens it.

The money, leads, tickets, delivery and other panels appear once your role reaches their modules. The dashboard is still yours to arrange: Customise picks and orders the panels you are allowed, and the period menu (This month) changes the dates they cover. You can keep several dashboards of your own; see Reports and dashboards. Nothing you arrange can show you a panel your role does not allow.

My account

Open the menu under your name at the top right and choose My account. Everybody has it, whatever their role; nothing on it changes what you may do. The card on the left shows your name, email address and role. Only an administrator can change your name, email or role, on your staff record.

• Language and Time zone — Only for you. Everybody else keeps the workspace settings. Choose from the languages your workspace has switched on, or leave Workspace default. Press Save changes.
• Password — your Current password, then the New password twice, and Change my password. You are emailed to say it was changed, “Keep me signed in” stops working on your other devices, and any app signed in with the old password (through the API) is signed out.
• My signature — only there if your role has Sign for the business, which the Employee role does not. It is where you draw the signature you then put on contracts.
• Recent sign-ins — your last ten attempts, successful or not, with the time, the result, how, the IP address and the browser. One you do not recognise is a reason to change your password now.

Each is described in full under My account.

The top bar

The top bar is the same for everybody; what is behind each button follows your role. The control-by-control list is under The top bar.

Search

The box at the top (/ jumps to it) searches every kind of record your role can view, and within each only the records in your scope — the same records the list would show you. A kind of record you cannot see is not searched at all, rather than searched and then hidden. With the Employee role as shipped, that leaves the Wiki: searching for a customer finds nothing, however many there are. See Search, filters and bulk actions.

Messages, reminders and the bell

• Messages opens your conversations with colleagues, with a count of those waiting for you. Nobody needs a permission to read and answer a conversation they are in; see Messages with colleagues.
• Reminders opens the reminders set for you, with a count of those that have come due. A colleague can set one for you on a record; you set your own with Remind me on a record you can open. See Personal reminders.
• Notifications — the bell, with notices about things that concern you. See The bell.

My list and Starred

• My list is your own to-do list. Everybody has one and nobody else can see it, including an administrator. Turn this into a task is only there if your role may create tasks. See Your own to-do list.
• Starred lists the records you starred. A star never shows you something you could not otherwise open, so with the Employee role as shipped (which has none of the records that can be starred) it stays empty. See Starring records.

Ask AI

When your workspace has AI assistance set up, and your role has Use the assistant (the Employee role does), an Ask AI button sits at the bottom right of every screen; Ctrl+K (⌘+K on a Mac) opens it too. The assistant works as you: it reads only what you could open yourself, offers only the actions your role allows, and prepares nothing until you press Confirm. Your conversations with it are yours; nobody else can open them.

Use the AI features is the AI help beside a record — scoring a lead, triaging and drafting a reply to a ticket, summarising a customer or a project. It appears only on those records, so it does nothing for you until your role reaches leads, tickets, customers or projects. See AI assistance.

Addresses on this page

For reference and for anyone scripting against the panel. Everything here needs somebody signed in to the workspace whose role allows it; anybody else is refused.