NearSync is large. The navigation is the thing that makes it feel like it is not, and it is worth ten minutes to learn properly because everything else gets faster afterwards.
Three ways to get anywhere
The sidebar is for browsing, when you want a place.
The search box is for finding, when you know the name of the thing. Two keys and four characters beats any menu, and it is covered in its own section.
Your recent screens are for going back, which is most of what people actually do.
Almost nobody needs the sidebar as often as they use it. The single biggest speed change available in this product is learning to reach for the search box instead.
Home and Workspace are not hubs
The first two buttons sit above everything else and behave differently from the rest.
Home is your landing screen: the brief, the feed, your numbers.
Workspace is your own working surface: the Cockpit, your calendar, your tasks, your pins.
They are separated from the hubs because they are about you rather than about a subject. Everything below them is organised around a part of the business.
The fifteen hubs, in six bands
Below the two buttons, hubs are grouped, with a divider between bands.
| Band | Hubs |
|---|---|
| Daily | Communications |
| Customer | Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce |
| Internal | Finance, Human Resources |
| Delivery | Projects, Operations |
| Knowledge | Documents, Web, Analytics, NearSync AI |
| Settings | System & Admin, NearSync |
The bands are not labelled on screen. They are spacing and dividers, which is enough to read as grouping without spending a line of vertical space on a heading nobody needs after week one.
The order is deliberate: the thing you touch every day is at the top, outward-facing work next, then internal, then delivery, then reference, then configuration at the bottom where it belongs.
Hubs contain modules
Clicking a hub reveals its modules. Sales has deals, contacts and organisations. Communications has the department inbox, Sync Chat, WhatsApp, calls and the calendar.
In larger hubs, modules are grouped into sections. Smaller ones render flat, because grouping four items into two sections is ceremony rather than help.
Some modules have children of their own, and a few build those children from your live data. A pipeline list, for instance, shows the pipelines you actually have access to rather than a fixed set.
Why your sidebar is shorter than a colleague's
This is the most common source of confusion in the first week, and it is not a fault.
Permissions. You see what your role allows.
Modules your organisation bought. NearSync is sold by module. A hub nobody licensed is not hidden from you specifically; it is not part of your platform.
Seniority. A few surfaces need a minimum role level.
Billing access. Financial screens are limited to the people who should see them.
Deployment. A handful of surfaces only apply to one hosting arrangement.
So two colleagues in the same company genuinely see different sidebars, and neither is broken. If you expect something and cannot find it, ask an administrator whether it is a permission or a module, because the answers are different.
Soon
Some entries carry a Soon pill.
That is scaffolding for something being built. It is shown rather than hidden on purpose: a person who can see what is coming asks when, while a person who sees nothing assumes the product cannot do it. The screen behind it will say the same thing rather than looking half-finished.
The bar across the top
Independent of the sidebar, and it carries five things.
The search box, with its shortcut hint. The fastest route to most things.
Voice, where your organisation has enabled it, opening a spoken conversation with the assistant.
A create button, for the things people make most.
Notifications.
Your avatar, with a presence dot, opening your menu: your profile, your status, and what is new in the product.
Getting back
Two mechanisms, and they cover different cases.
Recent screens are on the opening deck of the search box. Two keys, one click, and you are back where you were before you went to check that number.
Pins hold the screens you visit constantly. Pinning a workspace page means it opens in place from your Pins surface instead of being navigated to.
Moving between hubs
Three things make hopping around cheap once you know them.
Every hub has a keyboard shortcut, a chord that jumps straight to it. They are listed in the Shortcuts section and in the Shortcuts tab of your profile. Learning the two you use most is worth more than learning all eleven.
There is a back-and-forth chord that flips between the last two places you were, which is the movement people actually make most: check a number, come back.
The bands are stable. Sales is always in the same place in the rail whatever mode you are in, so the position becomes muscle memory faster than the icon becomes recognisable.
The Atlas
At the bottom of Home sits a link to the capability map: a browsable index of everything the platform can do, across every hub, whether or not you have it.
It answers a different question from the sidebar. The sidebar shows what you can reach; the Atlas shows what exists. That makes it the right place to go when you suspect the product does something and cannot find where.
It is also the honest answer to "what am I not using", which after a month is usually a longer list than people expect.
Two habits worth forming in week one
Learn one hub properly rather than all fifteen shallowly. The one you live in. Everything else can be reached by search when you need it, and most people genuinely use two or three.
Stop using the sidebar for records. Deals, people, invoices and documents are all faster from the search box. The sidebar is for places; the search box is for things. Once that split is habit, the product feels considerably smaller than it is.
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