One workspace per client: people, mail, files and notes together

When you work for several clients at once, their work rarely stays in one place. The brief is in your email, the files are in a folder, the phone number is in your contacts, the notes are in a notebook and the conversation is split across chat and calls. Every time a client gets in touch, you spend the first few minutes gathering it all up again.

The answer is to give each client a home: one place that holds the people involved, their mail, the documents that matter, a running notes page, a to-do list and the conversation about the work. This post covers what that home needs and three habits that work with any tools, then shows how to set one up in PlexiDesk.

What a client's workspace needs

Whatever tools you use, a good client home holds the same things:

• The people. Who you deal with, their role and how to reach them, including the accountant, the supplier or the assistant who books the meetings.
• Their mail. The messages from this client, without the rest of your inbox around them.
• The emails worth keeping. The signed quote, the brief and the agreed terms, kept for good rather than buried in a thread.
• The files. The current versions, not every draft.
• A running notes page. Decisions, dates, preferences and anything you would otherwise have to remember.
• A to-do list. What you owe them, and what they owe you.
• The conversation. Somewhere to talk about the work that stays with the work.

Three habits make any version of this work, even if all you have is folders and an email app:

1. Name everything after the client, the same way every time. Use one spelling of the client's name for the folder, the mail label, the documents and the calendar entries, so a single search finds the lot.
2. Give each client a mail rule. If your email app can file messages by the sender's domain, set up one rule per client, filing into one folder or label. Their mail then collects in one place without any effort from you.
3. Keep one source-of-truth document. A single running page per client, with contacts at the top, then key dates, decisions and links to the files. When something changes, change it there.

Sharing the work with the client is part of the picture too, and our guides to people and sharing in PlexiDesk cover every way to do it. The rest of this post follows the published guide keep a client's people, mail and chat on their desk, which turns these habits into one desk per client.

Keep the people in view

The people involved in a client's work change more than you might think. A new project manager starts, the finance contact moves on, a supplier joins. Keep a short list with each person's role, not just their name, so you know who to ask about what.

In PlexiDesk, the Contacts widget holds the people a desk is about, colleagues and outsiders alike. Click Add someone and it suggests People already on this work, drawn from your own work, each with a reason: they emailed you recently, they are assigned tasks on the desk, they organised a meeting on a calendar you have connected, or they are in your organisation. Click a suggestion to add them, or type in a name, email, role and company yourself. People you type in carry a Guest tag, and the All, Team and Guests buttons filter the list.

The people you add are kept on the computer where you added them, so set up a client's contacts on the machine you use for that work.

Just their mail, on their desk

A busy inbox mixes every client together. Even with good mail rules, you still have to go to the right folder to see what a client has sent. It is easier when their mail sits beside their work.

In PlexiDesk, the Inbox widget shows your mailbox narrowed to one desk by a rule you can see and change. The rule is always written under the widget's header, so you know why each message is there.

• It starts from the desk's name. The first time, the widget makes a rule from up to two words in the desk's name: it shows mail from the last 30 days whose subject contains one of them. Naming the desk after the client gives it a useful starting point.
• You can tighten the rule. Click Edit filter and put the client's email domain, such as @example.com, in From. Add words to Subject contains, choose how far back to look under Last, and tick Unread only, Flagged or Has attachment if you want.
• You can read and reply on the desk. Click a message to read it over the desk, then Reply or Reply all without leaving.

Mail works in the PlexiDesk desktop app, and you connect your mailbox in Mail first. The widget looks through your latest 200 messages, so for older mail, use the search in Mail. Drafting a reply with AI is part of the Pro and Team plans and needs AI set up, and every new account gets 14 days of every Team feature. See mail in PlexiDesk for the rest of what Mail does.

Keep the emails that matter for good

Some emails are the record of the work: the signed quote, the brief, the agreed change to the scope. They should not be left in a thread you will have to dig for in three months. Whatever tools you use, save them where the client's work lives, such as a copy in the client folder or a link in the source-of-truth document.

In PlexiDesk, open the email in Mail and click Send to desk. Choose the client's desk, then This email to keep the one message or Whole thread to keep the conversation. It arrives as an Email widget, which you read on the desk like a document.

• It stays put. The email stays on the desk after you archive it in Mail, and whether or not it still matches the Inbox rule.
• Threads can grow. For a whole thread, click Check for new replies to add replies that have reached your inbox since.
• Quoted history is folded away, so you read the message without every earlier reply repeated underneath it.

The widget reads PlexiDesk's copy of your mail on the computer where you sent it to the desk. On a different computer, it shows the subject and sender it was saved with.

A conversation that lives with the work

When the conversation about a client happens in a general chat channel, it scrolls away under everything else. Give the work its own thread, and keep it where the work is.

In PlexiDesk, every desk can have a conversation of its own. With the client's desk open, click Chat in the desk's quick actions in the header. PlexiDesk opens the desk's own conversation, named after the desk, and adds it to the desk as a Chat widget, so you can read and reply about that work without leaving the desk. Chat needs you to be signed in.

The rest of the home is ordinary desk widgets: a note or a page for the running notes, a Tasks widget for the to-do list, and the files and documents for the work itself. As an example, here is how that might look for Leo, a bookkeeper with a small renovation business as a client. His desk for that client holds a Contacts widget with the owner and their accountant, an Inbox filtered to the business's domain, the signed engagement letter kept as an Email widget, a running notes page with the year-end dates, and a Tasks widget with the month's jobs. When the owner rings, everything Leo needs is on one screen.

Let the client see progress

Once the desk is set up, you can let the client watch the work without giving them your working files. A live view is a read-only web page of the desk that follows your changes. The client opens it in a web browser, with no account and nothing to install, and can look but not change anything.

To publish one, click the desk's name in the header, then Share…, choose Anyone with the link and then A live view they can watch, and click Publish this desk to the web. You need to be signed in. Pause publishing holds the page while you are in the middle of changes, and Stop sharing turns the link off.

There is a useful detail for a client desk. In a live view, the Contacts, Inbox, Chat and Email widgets each appear as a placeholder with their title, so the people, mail and messages in them are not published. A kept email's title is its subject line, so that does show. Most of the rest of the desk, such as notes, documents, tables and images, goes into the page, so look it over before you send the link. For what to put on a page a client will see, and when a snapshot suits better, see keep clients updated without writing another status email.

Start with your busiest client. Name the desk after them, add the people, filter their mail and keep the one email that matters most. If you work in a creative field, our page for graphic designers shows how a desk per client works, and the interactive demo builds a desk for your own kind of work. For every way to share a desk with clients and colleagues, browse our guides to people and sharing in PlexiDesk.