Coach clients

Coaching keeps each client's coaching in one place: the goals you agree, the actions and habits they work on between sessions, the check-ins they answer, and the wins along the way. Your client takes part from their own Client Portal and signs in with a link emailed to them, with no password to remember.

Add a client

Choose Add client in Coaching and enter the client's name and email address. Their coaching opens as a Draft, with a weekly check-in ready. Nothing is sent to your client while it is a draft, so you can add goals, actions and habits first.

To start every client the same way, choose a program when you add them: its goals, actions, habits, check-ins and schedule are copied into their coaching. See Coaching programs.

The client is found in your Contacts by email address, or added there, and gets a Client Portal of their own. Only the client's coaches and your team's admins can open that portal and their coaching.

Start coaching

Choose Start coaching beside the client's name. Choose the start date: check-ins and reminders begin on that day, in the client's time zone. Your client is emailed an invitation to their portal, with your welcome message if you wrote one in Edit details. The email names you as its sender, and replies come to you.

Starting coaching also gives your client a Magpie account at their email address, or uses the one they already have, so their portal is listed on their Magpie Dashboard. The account does not join your team. Your own email address must be confirmed before you can start coaching.

If you set a price or an agreement, Start coaching also sends them, and the drawer lists what will go; see Charge for coaching.

View as client opens their Coaching page as they see it, with every button turned off.

Sessions

Your client books sessions in their portal from your free times, or you schedule them with Schedule session. Set up session types and booking rules in Coaching settings first. Each session has a page for its prep, your private notes, the recap and the actions agreed; see Coaching sessions. To add sessions to a client's coaching, see Charge for coaching.

To show your screen to your client, choose Hide private notes beside their name or a session's. Private notes and Needs attention are hidden on both pages, in that browser, until you choose Show private notes.

Between sessions

Your client works on what you agree between sessions, and you see it all on their page:

• Goals, agreed together and measured as a number, a rating, done or five levels; see Coaching goals.
• Actions and habits, and the wins they add up to; see Coaching actions and habits.
• Check-ins, questions answered on a schedule; see Coaching check-ins.
• Resources and exercises from the library; see Coaching library and exercises.

Messages

Open Messages with your client on their page. You, the other coaches and observers named on their coaching, and your client read the conversation; a team admin reads it after naming themselves an observer. A message of yours unread for 15 minutes is emailed to your client, at most once in that time, and a message from your client unread for 30 minutes is emailed to each coach who keeps Unread messages by email on in Coaching settings. The emails say who wrote, never what. Anyone can delete their own message; it then reads "Message deleted", and its files are deleted with it. A message holds up to 10,000 characters.

Send later… under the message box writes a message to send at a date and time you choose, within a year. It is listed under Scheduled until then, where you can cancel it; your client does not see it before it is sent. Scheduled messages are text only.

A message can carry up to 10 files of up to 500 MB each, of any kind except programs and Office files that can hold macros, as in a client portal's Files. Use Add files, or drop files anywhere on the page: they wait under the message until you press Send, and pasting never adds one. If one file cannot be sent, the message is not sent, so your client never gets a message missing a file; the reason is shown under the box and what you wrote stays. Your files count against your storage; your client's count against the storage of whoever created their portal.

To answer something your client did, use Reply: on an answer on a check-in's page, or Reply in messages in the menu of a finished action or a win on your client's page. Messages opens with that item quoted above the box; Remove quote takes it away. The quote links to the item and shows it as it is now, so a quote of something since deleted says so.

Journal and takeaways

Your client keeps a journal in their portal. An entry is theirs alone until they share it with their coaches; shared entries are listed under Journal on your client's page and, until you open them, under Waiting for you on the Overview. You, the other coaches and observers named on the coaching read them; a team admin reads them after naming themselves an observer. Open one to read it as it is now, and use Reply in messages to answer it. If your client stops sharing an entry, it is hidden from you at once, and a reply already sent says the entry is no longer shared.

Takeaways are single lines your client keeps. Add them on a session's page; your client sees them with the recap. Your client adds their own from a recap or a journal entry, and stars the ones that matter most. Takeaways on your client's page lists them, starred first.

Every page where your client writes shows the line "Your coach does not read this as you write it. In an emergency, contact your local emergency services." Add your own line under it, such as a crisis line for your area, with Emergency line in Coaching settings.

Reminders to your client

Your client gets one daily email at the time they choose, listing what is due: actions due that day or overdue, open check-ins and the habits for the day, up to 10 of them. Each action has a Done link, each habit a Done today link, and a check-in a row of 0 to 10 for its first rating question. A link opens a page with one button, so a mail program that opens links does nothing. A link works for up to 7 days, and a habit's only while that day can still be logged. With nothing due, no email is sent. A weekly check-in not answered 48 hours after it opens is reminded once more, and a session is reminded the day before.

Nothing is sent to your client between 21:00 and 07:00 in their time zone; it comes at 07:00. Your client chooses their daily email time and which reminders they get; Daily email for new clients in Coaching settings sets the time they start with. Nothing is reminded while coaching is paused.

An item reminded 3 times with nothing done about it is left out of reminders, and the Overview says your client is not acting on reminders for it. Remind again starts its reminders again; so does your client doing anything with it.

Needs attention

The Coaching overview lists today's and tomorrow's sessions, sessions to mark and recaps not sent, messages from clients you have not answered, answers waiting for you, coaching that ends in the next two weeks, and clients who need attention, with the reason as a fact: check-ins not answered, actions overdue, no activity for two weeks, a goal behind, a message unanswered for a day, reminders being ignored, a low session rating, no session booked 21 days after the last one, one session left, coaching ending within two weeks with sessions unused, an invoice unpaid a week after it was due, or the agreement not signed five days after it was sent. Those times are the defaults: change them under Needs attention in Coaching settings. Seen hides a reason until it changes. Your client never sees this list.

Each Monday at 08:00 your time you are emailed your sessions that week and the clients who need attention. Turn it off with Monday summary in Coaching settings.

Progress reviews

Choose Start review under Progress reviews on the client's page, for the time since coaching started or since the last review. The review keeps the figures up to that day as they are: goals with their progress and the attainment score, habits, actions, sessions held, check-in averages, wheels and wins. Your client is emailed to write their reflection in their portal.

Write your summary on the review; it is saved as you type. Neither of you reads the other's text until both are marked done, or you choose Share review, which emails your client. Your client's reflection is never shown before they mark it done. Print prints the review alone. A review that has not been shared can be deleted from More.

Sponsors, cohorts and export

A client's employer can follow and pay for their coaching as a sponsor; see Coaching sponsors. To coach a group through a program together, see Coaching cohorts. To download a client's record, or the whole team's coaching, see Export coaching.

Pause, complete or end early

Use the More menu beside the client's name. Pausing stops reminders and check-ins until you resume. Completing, or ending early with an optional reason only coaches see, keeps everything readable for your client in their portal. You can reopen it.

Complete coaching… says how many sessions included were not used. It can start a final progress review, cancel the sessions still to come, and, when instalments or monthly payments are left, stop them; left alone, they are invoiced as planned. Ending early offers to stop them too.

Reports and the coaching log

Reports in Coaching shows your sessions held and hours by month for the last 12 months, your open coaching, coaching ending in the next 30 days, and how coaching ended. Team admins see every coach's and can choose one.

The coaching log lists each session held in the period you choose: the date, the client's name and email address, individual or group (with how many attended), the length in hours and whether it was paid or pro bono. Download CSV saves it with the columns an ICF credential application asks for. A session counts its booked length; no-shows and cancelled sessions are left out.

In the app

In the Magpie app, Coaching has your Overview, Clients, each client's coaching and messages, and your sessions. On a session you read the prep, write your private notes and the recap (saved as you type), mark it held or a no-show, send the recap and add the actions agreed. With notifications allowed, you are told when a client writes to you, books, moves or cancels a session, and when someone applies for your program. The app shows a Video Chat session's time but does not join it. Scheduling, programs, cohorts, the library and settings are not in the app.

Coaches and observers

In Edit details, add another member of your team as a coach or an observer. An observer can read the coaching but change nothing. Your client sees who can read their coaching. The lead coach and team admins start, end and manage coaching.

How many clients

On the Free plan you can coach 3 clients whose coaching has not ended. Pro and Team have no limit.

For coaching problems, Contact support.