How to find your way around

Everything in Tideswell hangs off one sidebar down the left. This page is the tour, and it is the page to send anybody you invite.

What is at the top?

Your workspace name, with a Create button beside it that raises a task, project, campaign, cycle, document, channel or workflow from anywhere in the product.

Under that, a Search box, and then three pinned rows that are yours personally:

• Inbox: everything addressed to you. Assignments, comments, mentions, replies, and stock and order alerts.
• My tasks: everything assigned to you, from every team, grouped by when it is due.
• Callbacks: people you owe a phone call.

Those three are where most people start their day, and they are covered in How to see what needs you.

What is in the Workspace group?

The main areas, and which of them you see depends on what your workspace has switched on.

Home is the analyst: type a question about your business in plain English and get an answer from your own live data. It is worth trying on your first day, per What is the analyst?.

Chat, Tasks and Documents are the day-to-day. Store holds your Shopify analytics, stock, purchase orders, suppliers and approvals.

Brief is the written briefing each morning, and Decisions, Customers and Automations are the rest.

Two rows expand into more when you click them. Tasks views holds Roadmap, Calendar and Urgent. Store pages holds Analytics, Inventory, Purchase orders, Suppliers and Approvals.

What are Objects and Departments?

Below the Workspace group sit two more.

Objects lists the kinds of record your team has defined: Repairs, Sample requests, Fabric trials, whatever your business tracks that nobody could have shipped for you. See What is an Object?.

Departments lists your teams, each with its own tasks, board and calendar.

Departments matter more than they look. Nearly every permission in Tideswell is checked against a record's department rather than the workspace, which is why the same person can edit one task and not the next. How to work out who can do what in your workspace explains it properly and is worth ten minutes early on.

What is at the bottom?

Your avatar, which opens your account settings and signs you out, and Settings for admins.

Settings is admin-only. If you are not an admin you do not see a locked door; the section behaves as though it is not there. See What is workspace admin?.

Why can you not see something a colleague can?

Three possible reasons, and it is worth knowing the order to check them.

The module may be switched off for the whole workspace, which makes its pages unreachable rather than merely hidden. You may not hold the permission. Or you hold it in a different department from the one the record belongs to.

Why a button or section is missing walks all three in order.

What should you learn first?

Three things, in this order, and then everything else can wait.

The three pinned rows at the top, so you know what needs you. The @ menu in chat, which turns a message into something people can act on, per How to tag people, tasks, documents and products. And the analyst on the home page, which answers questions no dashboard was built for.