Getting started

Setup walks a new workspace through five steps. Each step is ticked when the thing it asks for exists, so you can leave and come back: the list picks up where you are. Owners find Setup in the main navigation, and the workspace home shows Continue setup with the next step until it is done.

Start a free trial on the public site opens Setup after sign-up, with the plan you picked marked on the plan step. Picking Personal starts at the location instead, since there is nothing to buy.

1. Your organization

Everyone starts with a personal workspace: free for one person, with everything in the app, and no card needed. To work with a team, enter an Organization name (at least 2 characters) and choose Create the organization. You become its owner, and the header switches to it; Setup keeps its steps on screen while it does. What you type in the name, or later in an invitation's email address, is kept if you reload the page or look at another page first.

The places you saved in your personal workspace are saved in the new organization too, each with the same governments, so its location step is already done and the organization opens on the place you had open. Places you found from an address stay in your personal workspace: the districts of your address are yours, not your team's.

Or choose Stay in your personal workspace. The step then reads Personal workspace at once, also after a reload. A personal workspace has no plan to choose and skips the team step.

You can create up to five organizations.

2. Choose a plan

Start a free trial of Organization or Research, or choose a plan. Organization comes first: it is the plan with the governments' institutions, meetings and weekly briefing. Research is for sources and research only; after a Research trial starts, the step says that it does not include institutions, meetings or briefings, and that you can change the plan on Billing. The step then says what started and when the trial ends; choose Continue to move on. See Plans and billing.

3. Choose a location

Find the place your organization works on and confirm it, exactly as on the Locations page (Locations and jurisdictions). It becomes the location in the header, and the app opens on it from then on. Setup says how many governments cover it, counting apart the ones only listed for the area (special districts without a boundary), which may not cover it exactly; open Which governments, and what is loaded for each for its jurisdiction stack and the public sources loaded for it, including the ones that are not loaded yet. Nothing is guessed from your IP address or browser.

4. Invite your team

Enter an Email address and the Role to grant when they join, then Send invitation. Invitations work as on the Team page and count against the plan's seats. Choose Done inviting, or Invite people later to skip the step.

5. Start the rituals

The five operating rituals keep work moving:

The times in the table are the defaults; Setup writes them the way your browser writes times (9:00 AM, or 09:00).

Choose the Time zone the rituals meet in, then Schedule the rituals. It starts at the time zone of the place open in the header (else of another saved place, else of your device). Suggested lists your places' time zones, each with the place's name, and your device's; the rest are grouped by region, your own region first, each written as a city and its offset ("Berlin, GMT+2"). Type a city in Find a time zone to narrow the list; Enter picks the first match.

Setup installs the five rituals on the Rituals page at these times, in that zone, and assigns you the starter onboarding checklist, the welcome checklist (Onboarding checklists). Once they are scheduled, the step says so: change a ritual's time or zone, or run one, from Initiatives › Rituals. Do this later leaves the step to do; the workspace home and the end of Setup offer it again.

Done

When every step is done or skipped, Setup says You’re set up, lists what each step set up, links your Welcome checklist with how much of it is done, and offers Go to your workspace. The workspace home shows the welcome checklist's next items, each a link to where it is done, with a link to the whole checklist. It also lists Your places, each with links to its institutions, meetings and weekly briefing (for the modules your plan includes) and to Sources and coverage, which lists the place's sources and what is monitored. On a plan without Statecraft (Research), the card says that bodies, meetings and briefings come with the Organization plan.