Open the box and type nothing. What you get is a short deck, and every line on it is a live door rather than a description.
Go
A row of pills, one per hub, jumping straight into that part of the platform.
Above them sits the reminder that matters: just type to find any deal, person, invoice or document. The pills are for the times you want a place rather than a thing.
Ask
Four starting points for the assistant.
Answer anything opens the ask lane empty, ready for whatever you want to put to it.
Search the knowledge base and Ask about the system both seed a half-written sentence into the box for you to finish. That is a deliberately unusual pattern: the fastest way to teach somebody what a tool can be asked is to start the sentence for them.
What can I do here goes to the capabilities map rather than answering, because "what is possible" is a browsing question rather than a question with an answer.
The line above these notes something worth knowing: the assistant shifts context with the HQ you are in. The same question asked from Sales and from Finance is read against different surroundings.
Do
Four things plain words can become: a task, a meeting, an escalation, a reminder. Any of them opens the capture lane.
Underneath sit two example sentences, and they are the most useful thing on the deck because they show the shape rather than describing it. One is a task with a time and a colleague in it. One is a question about a stalled deal. Between them they demonstrate that the same box takes both.
Happening now
This section appears only when something is actually happening.
A due reminder, which is always shown when there is one.
Your next meeting, with a live countdown, and clicking it opens the meeting link if there is one.
Your next task, with the time it is due.
The rule behind this is the one worth understanding: the box is silent by default. A meeting three hours away does not appear. It earns a line only once it is inside the lead window, which is fifteen minutes by default and can be set to off, fifteen, thirty or sixty minutes in Preferences under Appearance.
The same activity also drives the quiet ticker inside the search bar in the top of the screen, under the same rules. Nothing qualifying means no ticker at all, rather than a bar showing you that nothing is happening.
Jump back
The last couple of places you were, by module and hub.
More useful than it sounds in a platform with this many screens, particularly for the pattern of going somewhere to check one number and wanting to get back.
Continue
Your two most recent conversations with the assistant, with their message counts. Clicking one resumes it inside the panel, with its history, exactly where you left it.
There is a link through to all of them in Conversations.
This is the bridge between the quick question and the working session. A question you asked from the box and then realised was the start of something real is one click from being picked up properly.
Quick actions
A small grid of the things people create most: a deal, a contact, a task, a ticket. Plus two doors that are easy to miss otherwise: the Atlas, which is the map of what the platform can do, and the setup guide, for an organisation still being configured.
The ticker in the top bar
The same live activity drives a quiet line inside the search bar at the top of the screen, and it follows the same rule: it is silent unless something qualifies.
There is no chrome around it and no pill. An accent dot marks something happening now, a muted dot marks something approaching, and when nothing is inside the window the line simply does not exist.
That last part is the design decision worth understanding. A status bar that always shows something trains you to stop reading it, because most of the time it has nothing to say. One that appears only when it matters keeps its meaning.
Changing the window
The lead time is set in Preferences, under Appearance, and there are four choices: off, fifteen minutes, thirty, or sixty.
Fifteen is the default and suits most people. Thirty is better if your meetings need preparation or you move between buildings. Sixty turns it into a general awareness of the next hour, which some people like and most find noisy. Off removes the ticker without removing the Happening now section inside the box.
Why the deck is shaped this way
Most command palettes open empty, on the theory that the user knows what they want.
That is true for the second week and false for the first. An empty box teaches nothing, and a tool that can do three quite different jobs needs to say so somewhere. The deck is that somewhere, and it disappears the moment you type a character, so it costs experienced users nothing.
The parts that are live rather than instructional (Happening now, Jump back, Continue) are what keep it worth opening deliberately rather than only as a search box.
What is not on the deck
No settings. Configuration is reached by navigating or by asking where something lives.
No notifications. The deck shows what is imminent, not what has happened. Things that happened are the Cockpit's job, and duplicating them here would make two lists that disagree.
No search history. Jump back records places, not queries, because a repeated query is faster to retype than to find.
Nothing that is always there. Every live section can be absent, and frequently is. A deck that shows five sections on a quiet Tuesday would be padding.
One habit
Open it between tasks. Two keys, and it answers what is next, where you were, and what you were asking about, in one glance. That is a genuinely different use from searching, and it is the one people discover last.
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