Find your way around Magpie

Dashboard is the place to see what is waiting for you, resume work and open Magpie tools.

Assistant is at the top of Dashboard for everyone. It starts as a box to type in, and the conversation opens above it once you send a request. It can create an event campaign from one instruction. See Use the assistant for the supported actions and required configuration.

Notes is under the assistant. It shows your latest Notes from Personal and every team you belong to, newest first, whichever team is selected. When you are in more than one team, each note shows the team it belongs to. Each note shows its first line as its title and the next few lines. Select New note, or press N on a computer, to write one, or select a note to read or change it. The note opens in a window on Dashboard and is saved as you type; press ⌘S (Ctrl+S on Windows) to save at once. Select Done or press Esc to close it. The window's heading names where the note is kept: a new note goes in Personal or the selected team, as when you write a note in Notes, and a note you open stays in its own team. Open in Notes opens the same note in Notes, where you can format it and use its other options. To copy a whole note, right-click it on Dashboard, or press and hold it on a phone or tablet, and choose Copy text. To move a note to Trash, open it and select More, then Move to Trash. You can also right-click a note on Dashboard, or press and hold it on a phone or tablet, and choose Move to Trash. The note goes at once; select Undo in the message that appears to put it back. You can move notes you wrote to Trash, and a team's admins can move any of its notes. On a phone, swipe the notes sideways to see more. The last entry opens Notes with all your notes. See Write and organize notes.

Portals you were invited to is under Notes when your Magpie account signs you in to a business's Client Portal. Each row is a portal and who runs it, with what is waiting for you there: steps to do, invoices to pay and documents to sign. Select one to open it. A portal is listed on the Magpie account at the address you were invited with, or on another account once you connect it on the portal's sign-in page. On a device that is not signed in to the portal yet, select Continue as with your name.

Sent to you is next if you paid an invoice online in the last 30 days. It lists those payments, up to 5, whichever team is selected. Select Open Sent to you for everything; it is also in your account menu. See Sent to you.

Next, Dashboard shows what is waiting for you in Personal and in every team you belong to, whichever team is selected. When you are in more than one team, each row shows the team it belongs to, and it opens in that team.

• Unread mail lists each mailbox you can open that has unread mail in its Inbox, with the number unread. It appears only while there is unread mail. See Read and send mail.
• To-dos shows the start of your To-dos from Personal and every team: the To-dos in Today first, then the next ones planned after today. Tick one off from Dashboard, or select Open To-dos for the rest. + New To-do (or the T key) opens a window over Dashboard with the To-dos page's add field, so you can add a To-do, with its day, without leaving Dashboard. See Use To-dos.

Courses is next while you are taking a course at any school. It lists the courses you have not completed, each with its school and how far you are. Select one to continue at your next lesson, or Your courses for all of them. See Take a course.

To hide Notes, Unread mail, To-dos, Courses or Sent to you, select ⋯ at the top right of the section, then Hide Notes from Dashboard (or Unread mail, To-dos, Courses or Sent to you). The section goes at once; select Undo in the message that appears to bring it straight back. A line at the bottom of Dashboard lists each section you hid, with a button to show it again. The same choices are switches in Account settings, under Dashboard.

After signup setup, Start with links to the first thing to do in the tool you chose first, such as Create a board for Kanban Boards. It is removed once you have opened some work. If setup was left unfinished, Dashboard offers Continue setup. A context on the Free plan shows a single See plans line at the bottom of Dashboard to anyone who can change its plan.

Your tools contains the tools you pin. Select Customize to pin or unpin tools and move pinned tools into the order you want. In the sidebar, point at a tool and select its star to pin it straight away; select a filled star to unpin. Pins are personal to your account and apply to the selected Personal or team context. Magpie does not reorder pins from your activity.

Before you pin anything, Dashboard shows Recent tools when your recent work provides some. Recent tools change as you work and are not added to Your tools. To choose how many it shows, open Account settings and change Recent tools under Dashboard.

Recent work links to individual Documents, Forms, Kanban Boards, Invoices, Proposals, Agreements, E-Signatures requests, Spreadsheets, Screen recordings, Design files, Presentations, Message Boards and Books you have opened, in Personal and in every team you belong to. When you are in more than one team, each item shows the team it belongs to. A book is yours rather than a team's, so it shows under Personal whichever team you opened it in. An item from another team opens in that team. Magpie checks access again before showing an item, so deleted work and work you can no longer open do not remain as broken links. Before you open any work, Recent work says so. Select Clear to remove the recent work entries from Dashboard across all your teams. This does not delete the underlying work; new activity adds entries again.

All tools on Dashboard is the complete alphabetical list and remains available whether or not you pin anything.

The sidebar

The sidebar and the phone menu show, from the top: Search, Dashboard, Your tools when you have pinned some, the tools in folders, All tools A to Z and Trash, which lists what was moved to Trash (see Trash). Help stays at the bottom.

The folders are Schedule, Tasks and projects, Docs, Talk, Publish, Design and code, Business, Reading and study and Privacy and security. Each tool is in one folder, in alphabetical order. When Magpie has built a tool for the selected team, a Built for your team folder comes first; see Have Magpie build a tool for your team. The folder holding the tool you are in starts open. Select a folder's name to open or close it; several can be open at once. If you know a tool's name but not its folder, open All tools A to Z, or use Search.

Each tool has a small square in its colours beside its name. The tool you are in is shown on a white panel. Your tools shows only the tools you star; Magpie does not add tools to it from your activity.

The sidebar lists tools, not their pages. A tool with more than one page shows its pages in the tool itself, under the page bar: as tabs, such as Calendar and Settings in Calendar, or as one menu named for the page you are on in Accounting, Daily Operations, Expenses, Inventory, Issues, Staff Scheduling and Store. Tools whose pages already link to each other, such as PDF Editor and Mail, show nothing extra.

On Dashboard, tool links use the same colour wash as their Magpie section and appear in a compact grid on wider screens. They return to one column on narrow screens.

Dashboard is also a link at the left of the page bar, in the same place on every page, so returning to it never means opening a menu first.

Where a page's buttons are

Buttons that apply anywhere in a tool, such as New post in Social Media or Add contact in Contacts, are at the right of the page bar.

Buttons for the one post, issue, contact or other record a page shows are beside its name at the top of the page. More among them holds the less frequent actions, such as Duplicate, Archive, Move to Trash and Delete. A button with a small triangle after its name opens a menu.

Your account menu, and a running timer, are at the far right of the page bar, after a thin line.

Editors that fill the page, such as the Form builder, Presentations and Design Canvas, keep what acts on the whole file in More, the last button in the page bar: Duplicate, Import JSON, Move to another team, Move to Trash, and the editor's other pages, such as a form's Responses. Buttons you use while working on the file, such as Share, Present and Publish, stay beside it. On a phone More is ⋯, and the buttons that do not fit beside the name are its first items. Documents, Spreadsheets and Proposals have a File menu at the start of their editor instead, with Edit, Insert and Format beside it. In Notes, the open note's More menu has Move to Trash.

Press Command-K on a Mac or Control-K elsewhere to open the same search box as Search, described under Search below.

Tool links on the homepage

The homepage shows tool pictures near the top and lists every tool below them. Select an area in the list to open its public page when signed out, if that page exists. Otherwise, the link opens the tool and asks you to sign in if needed. When signed in, it opens the tool with your normal access permissions.

Search and the command palette

Search, at the top of the sidebar and of the phone menu, opens a search box, also called the command palette. On a computer, the button shows its keyboard shortcut: ⌘K on a Mac and Ctrl K elsewhere. When you are signed in, a magnifier in the top bar of the Magpie website, beside the account menu, opens the same box; pointing at it shows the shortcut.

The search box lists tools and pages whose names match what you type, and actions on the current page. On Dashboard it also lists your recent work. Once you have typed at least 2 letters, it adds the first few matches of each kind of work under Your work, matching settings under Settings (see Find a setting), and matching Help articles under Help. A mark beside each entry says what it is: a square in a tool's colours for the tool and its pages, a dot in a tool's colours for your work in that tool, and a question mark for Help. Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click, to open one. Esc closes the box. Its last entry, See all results, opens the Search page with what you typed. Each match from your work shows its kind and, when you are in more than one team, its team. One from another team opens in that team.

The Search page finds your work by its title or name in Personal and in every team you belong to. It covers Documents, Notes, the sections of your books, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Design files, Forms, Kanban Boards, Idea Boards, Flashcards decks and cards, Message Boards, Contacts, open and completed To-dos, Invoices, Proposals, Agreements, Accounting bills, Store products and orders, QR Codes and Websites, for the tools you have. Flashcards cards are matched on their front, and Proposals on their number and client too. Notes are also matched on their text, a book's sections on their synopsis, their text and the book's title, QR Codes on their destination, Websites on their address, Invoices on their customer and bills on their supplier, number or memo. Store products are matched on the SKU of any of their variants too, and Store orders on their number and the customer's name or email. Bills are listed only for teams whose books you can open, and not in the mobile app. Store products and orders are listed only for teams where you are an admin and can use Store. Search does not read the text inside a document.

A book is yours rather than a team's, so its sections are listed under Personal, as in Recent work. Each one shows a line of its text, with your search words in bold when they are in it, and its place, such as Chapter in Recipes or Set aside in Recipes. A section in the book opens the book at that section: in the public reader once the book is published, and in Web preview before. A section in Set aside opens in its editor. Search in the mobile app finds a book by its title, subtitle, author or description when Books is chosen in Search in, and does not search its sections.

Results are grouped by tool, and each result shows the team it belongs to. With Everything selected, each tool shows its 5 most recently changed matches; select Show all matches or choose a tool in Search in to see up to 50 of them. A result from another team opens in that team. A search needs at least 2 letters.

The sidebar can open as a panel over the page or stay open beside it. It starts as a panel: pages take the full width, and the navigation opens from the menu button at the left of the page bar. Select Keep sidebar open in that panel to put the sidebar beside the page; select Collapse sidebar in the sidebar to go back to the panel. Magpie remembers the choice in that browser only, so another computer or a private window starts with the panel. In a narrow window the panel is used even if you chose to keep the sidebar open. Full-screen work areas such as Documents, Spreadsheets and Chat always use the panel.

On a desktop, Help is at the bottom of the sidebar and names the article for the page you are on. Opening it shows that article in a panel beside the page rather than navigating away, so anything you have typed stays where it is. Pressing ? opens the same panel, unless you are typing in a field or the page has keyboard shortcuts of its own (see Keyboard shortcuts below). Links inside the panel open in the panel; Open in the help centre leaves it for the full article. The account menu also lists help for the current section.

On a phone, open the navigation menu from the left side of the page bar. Full-screen work areas put the same control in their work toolbar. The menu contains Search, the tools in their folders, the Personal or team selector, help for the current page, account links, and Sign out.

The help centre and the Help drawer search every article by its title, the other names for the thing, and what people type when something is wrong, such as booking page says not found or reminder did not fire. A match in a title or a name ranks above a match in an article's text, and every word you type has to appear somewhere in the article. A word that no article contains because of a typing mistake, such as a letter missing, wrong or swapped with the next, is searched as the closest word that articles do contain, and the results say which word was searched.

On the help centre's pages, the articles that match appear under the search field as you type, each with its summary and its section. Use the arrow keys and Enter, or click, to open one. Enter with none chosen, or Search, opens the full list of results. Esc closes the list and keeps what you typed.

Keyboard shortcuts

⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows) opens Search, ? lists the keys of the page you are on, and in a list of work J and K move through the rows. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Personal and team data

The Personal or team selector in the main navigation controls which set of resources you are viewing. Personal holds your own private resources. A team holds resources shared with its members. The current selection applies when you create team-scoped records such as contacts, notes, invoices, newsletters, and boards.

The selector shows the current selection next to its initial, in the page bar and again in the navigation panel and the phone menu. Opening it lists Personal first and the teams you belong to under Teams.

The selection belongs to the browser tab: it is part of the page's address, so switching in one tab does not change your other tabs. See Personal and team work.

Search, Recent work, To-dos, and Dashboard's Notes, Unread mail and To-dos are the exceptions: they show Personal and every team together, and each result shows the team it belongs to. Everything else, such as a tool's list, shows the current selection only.

If something appears to be missing, search for it before creating it again. Changing the selection does not move or copy existing records.

Account settings are different: your name, handle, time zone, password, and sign-in methods follow your account and do not change with the selected team.

See Personal and team work for ownership and access rules. If the navigation or current selection is not working, Contact support.