How to invite your team and set up departments

Departments and invitations both live in Settings. Do them in one order: departments first, then people. Departments are the shape almost every permission in Tideswell is checked against, and inviting somebody into the right team on day one saves them coming back to ask.

Before you start

Settings is for admins. If you created the workspace, you are its owner and an admin automatically.

Why departments before people?

Because a department decides who can edit what, as well as where work is filed.

Nearly every task, project and planning permission is checked against the record's own department, so the same person can be a lead in Marketing and a plain member in Warehouse. How to work out who can do what in your workspace explains it in full.

Invite somebody with no departments and they sign in to a workspace with very little in it.

How do you create a department?

Open Settings › Departments and press New department. The dialog sets it up in one go:

• Name, such as Marketing.
• What this team plans: the singular word for the things it plans, such as Editorial or Prep. Leave it blank for Item.
• Color and Icon.
• Team members: pick people, then tap Lead beside anyone who leads the team.
• Subtask templates: fills in the assignee, due date and priority of each subtask when a planned item becomes tasks.

Press Create department. Everything in it can be changed later.

On a brand-new workspace, Team members lists only you. That is fine: you add everyone else to their teams as you invite them.

Make one per real team, such as Marketing, Production or Warehouse. Projects end and departments do not, so a department per project soon clutters the menu. Full detail is in How to set up departments.

How do you invite somebody?

1. Open Settings › Members and press Invite member.
2. Type their Email and choose Member or Admin.
3. Under Departments, tick each team they join, and turn on Lead for any team they lead.
4. Press Create invite.

Tick the departments now. It is the difference between somebody being able to work when they sign in and somebody having to ask you for access.

Why send them the link yourself?

Tideswell reserves the seat without emailing them. The confirmation reads "Invite created." and tells you to have them sign in with the invited email.

This is the step people forget, and it is the usual reason a new starter is sitting waiting on their first morning. Send them the sign-in link, and tell them two things:

• Sign in with exactly this email address. A different address lands them in Tideswell with no workspace and a create-one screen, instead of joining yours.
• Read How to find your way around.

An invite lasts 14 days, and each email address can have one pending invite at a time. Pending invites on Settings › Members lists them, with Revoke to cancel one.

Who should be an admin?

Very few people. Admin is what opens Settings, and most of what people ask to be made admin for is a permission row that can be set to lead instead, per How to set who can do what.

Lead is not in the role choice. Somebody becomes a lead when Lead is on for one of their departments, and lead sits between member and admin.

What happens when they sign in?

Signing in with the invited email applies their role and departments straight away. Someone who signs in with an email code is first asked "What should the team call you?" under Welcome, types a Display name and presses Continue.

Someone who uses Continue with Google takes their name from Google and skips that step. Neither ever sees the setup questions, which belong to whoever created the workspace.

If an invite fails to apply on a first sign-in, they are still signed in but with no workspace. The screen tells them to reload and to ask an admin if access is still missing.

What if somebody leaves?

Press Deactivate on their row in Settings › Members and confirm. They lose access immediately.

Make sure before you confirm, and check first whether they own any workflows, since a workflow acts with its owner's access. See How to add people and set roles.