The Home dashboard

Home is your starting point in the Desk area. It greets you, gives you one bar to ask Plexii, search the web or jump straight to anything, and shows a board of widgets with what is happening across your workspace. You decide which widgets are on the board, how big they are and where they sit.

Before you start

• Plans. Home is on every plan.
• Some widgets need more. A few widgets need you to be signed in, or need Plexii's AI. Each widget's own article says what it needs.

Open your Home dashboard

Any of these takes you there:

• Click Home in the side menu. If the menu is minimised, click the Home icon.
• Switch to the Desk area at the top of any area's menu. It always opens Home. See Desk, Office, People and Brain.
• Press ⌘ K on a Mac (Ctrl K on Windows), type home and choose Go to Home.
• On the PlexiDesk start page, click Open my desk.

What is on Home

From top to bottom:

• The greeting. Good morning, Good afternoon or Good evening, with your name when PlexiDesk knows it, and a line underneath: "Here is your workspace and what is happening across it."
• Three buttons at the top right: Set up with Plexii, Customize and Focus mode. Each is explained below.
• The Home bar. One box to ask Plexii, search the web, open a web address or type @ to jump to a desk, room, widget or document. See The Home bar: ask, search and jump.
• The widget board. Your widgets, packed into a grid.

Set up with Plexii

Answer five short questions about how you work, and Plexii arranges the board for you. You see a preview first, and nothing changes until you choose Use this dashboard. See Set up a dashboard with Plexii.

Customize

Click Customize to move, resize, add, replace and remove widgets. While you are customizing, the button reads Done. See Customize your Home dashboard.

Focus mode

Focus mode starts a five-minute focus session that is not tied to any desk. Use it when you want a short, protected run at something without opening a desk first.

1. Click Focus mode.
2. A timer appears at the top of the window and counts down.
3. Work. The timer counts only while PlexiDesk is the app in front. If you switch to another app, it pauses and says paused, then carries on when you come back.
4. When the time is up, choose Done for now, or keep going for a few more minutes.

While a session is running, the button reads End focus mode. Click it to finish the session, or click the × on the timer to end it early.

To start a session on a particular desk, or for longer, see Start a focus session Coming soon. You can also put a Focus timer widget on the board.

The widget board

Home starts with seven widgets: Standup, Rooms and desks and Continue where you left off across the top, then four smaller ones: Today's agenda, Pulse, Quick actions and Recent activity.

• Widgets show your real work. Click a desk, a document or an item in a widget to open it.
• An empty widget says so. For example, with no documents yet, Continue where you left off says "Nothing to pick up yet. Create a document and it will wait for you here."
• The board fits your window. On a wide window it is four columns across. As the window narrows it drops to two columns and then one, and the wider widgets fill the width.
• Your layout is saved on this computer. Each computer you use keeps its own arrangement.

Every screen, including your desks, stands on the same floor colour as the Home dashboard, in every theme, light or dark, so moving between Home and a desk feels like one place. See Light, dark and colour themes Coming soon.

Office Home, People Home and Brain Home

Office, People and Brain each have a dashboard of their own. They work exactly like Home: the same greeting, the same three buttons, the same Home bar and the same kind of widget board. Each one starts with widgets that suit its area and keeps its own saved layout, so changing one never changes the others.

To arrange any of them, use Customize on that dashboard. The steps are the same as on Home. See Customize your Home dashboard.

Keep a document open on Office Home

Office Home starts with an Office document widget, which keeps one document, spreadsheet or presentation open and editable right on the dashboard.

1. Open Office Home.
2. On the Office document widget, click Choose a document.
3. In the Which document? list, click the one you want. Type in Search documents… to find it faster.
4. The document opens in its own editor inside the widget. What you type there is saved to the document itself, the same as opening it in Office.

To show a different document, click Customize, then the pencil on the widget. To keep several documents on the board, add more Office document widgets. See Office document widget.

On the Continue where you left off widget, All documents opens your Documents page.

Every Home widget

These are all the widgets you can put on a dashboard, in the groups the widget gallery uses. Click a name for the full guide.

Navigation

• Rooms and desks: your rooms on the left; click one to see its desks on the right.
• Pinned desk: one desk you care about, one click away.
• Desk object: one object from a desk, live and editable on the dashboard.
• Office document: a document, spreadsheet or presentation in its own editor, live and editable.
• Room portal: one room and the desks inside it.
• Shortcuts: your own tiles to desks, documents, websites and apps.
• App launcher: your favourite connected apps, shown by their logos.

Live

• Standup: a look back at what you finished and a look ahead at today, told as one short story.
• Today's agenda: the time blocks on your calendar today.
• Pulse: open, due and overdue counts at a glance.
• Continue: the documents you worked on most recently.
• Recent activity: what happened across your workspace in the last week.
• Overdue radar: only the tasks that are past their due date.
• Team status: who is around, standups and team activity. Offered on People Home only.

Smart

• One thing now: the single most pressing task, on its own.
• Where was I: your last working context, with a Resume button.
• Stalled desk: the in-progress desk that has waited longest for you.
• Attention: everything that needs you in one widget, with sections you slide between.

Actions

• Quick actions: buttons to Create a document, Plan, Collaborate and Automate.
• Create new: start a document, spreadsheet, deck or desk in one click.
• Focus timer: start and stop a five-minute focus session from the dashboard.
• New desk: a fresh desk in one click, opened straight away.
• Discover: start from an idea and let Plexii shape it into a desk.

Communication

• New meeting: start or schedule a PlexiiMeet meeting and invite people.
• Pinned conversation: one person or chat, with its unread count, one click away.
• Transcribe: record and transcribe, then keep the result where it belongs.

Common questions

My Home looks different on my other computer. Each computer keeps its own arrangement, so set up the board on each one the way you like it.

I removed a widget by mistake. Click Customize, then Add widget, and add it again. Or click Reset layout to go back to the starting widgets. See Customize your Home dashboard.

Can I have the same widget twice? Yes for Pinned desk, Desk object, Office document, Room portal, Shortcuts and Pinned conversation, so you can pin several desks, rooms or chats. Every other widget appears once per dashboard.

Why can I not find Team status on Home? Team status is offered on People Home only.

What is the difference between Focus mode and the Focus timer widget? Both start the same five-minute session. Focus mode is always at the top of the dashboard; the Focus timer is a widget you can place and size on the board.

Related tasks

• Customize your Home dashboard
• Set up a dashboard with Plexii
• The Home bar: ask, search and jump
• The side menu
• Start a focus session Coming soon