How to invite your team and set up departments

Do this 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

Both jobs live in Settings, which is admin-only. If you created the workspace, you are its owner and an admin automatically.

Why departments before people?

Because a department is not filing. It decides who can edit what.

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. That is the single most useful thing to understand about the product, and 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?

Settings › Departments, then create one. Name it, pick a colour and an icon, choose its starting members and leads, and set its sub-task defaults, all in one dialog.

Make one per real team: Marketing, Production, Warehouse. Not one per project, because projects end and departments do not.

Full detail, including what a team calls the things it plans, is in How to set up departments.

How do you invite somebody?

Settings › Members › Invite member. Type their email, choose Member or Admin, tick the departments they join, and flip Lead for any team they should lead.

Do 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.

Then send them the link yourself

Tideswell reserves the seat rather than emailing them. The confirmation tells you to have them sign in at your workspace's address 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 the link.

Two things to tell them when you do:

• Sign in with exactly this email address. A personal address instead lands them in Tideswell with no workspace and a create-one screen, rather than joining yours.
• Point them at How to find your way around.

An invite lasts 14 days, and there can be one pending invite per address at a time.

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 actually a permission row that can be set to lead instead, per How to set who can do what.

Lead is not in the role dropdown. Somebody becomes a lead by having the Lead switch turned on for a department, and lead sits between member and admin.

What happens when they sign in?

They land straight in the workspace with their role and departments already applied. They never see the setup wizard, which belongs 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, and the screen tells them to reload and ask an admin.

What if somebody leaves?

Deactivate them from the roster, which removes their access immediately. Read the confirmation: it is not something the roster undoes.

Before you do, check whether they own any workflows, since a workflow acts with its owner's access. See How to add people and set roles.