A tour of Dopia

Dopia opens on Home, and Home is one screen with three zones. Learn to name them once and the rest of the handbook can say "the right-hand rail" or "the message box" and you will know where to look.

The middle is where you ask for things. The right is where things arrive without being asked for. The left is where everything is kept. We will take them in that order, because the first two are what you touch every day.

The middle: where you ask

Most tools put a dashboard here. Dopia puts a message box, because the way you get work out of it is to ask — in your own words, the way you would ask a colleague.

Above the box, one line tells you how much is waiting: 3 things need you today, or You're all caught up. It counts the same rows you will find in the right-hand rail, so the number and the work behind it never disagree.

Into the box goes anything you would hand to someone: what happened with Acme since June, draft the follow-up from yesterday's call, find ten companies that look like our last three customers. The chips underneath are prewritten starts — clicking one fills the box rather than sending it, so you can edit before you commit.

Press send and Dopia opens a new conversation for that request. It stays under Recents in the sidebar and you can return to it whenever you like: the work done inside it, including anything still waiting for your approval, waits there with it.

The right: where the day arrives

Two panels, stacked, and you do not have to go and get either of them.

Coming up is the next few days of your calendar. Click any day to open it in place and see the hours laid out; click Show all for the same view on today. The row pinned along the bottom, Manage booking links, is the way to the page other people use to book time with you.

Where you stand answers two questions in one card. The band across the top is the number: what has closed against what you are carrying this period, with a marker showing how much of the period has gone, so you can see pace and not just total. Under it is the queue — a move an agent is proposing, something it noticed in a thread, a report after a sync finishes — newest at the top, with a red dot on anything you have not read. Past activity at the bottom opens everything the queue has already shown you.

The queue fills because something happened, not because you went looking. That is the habit this screen is asking for: read it, act on what is there, and stop checking.

Above both panels, Customize lets you reorder them or hide one, and the button beside it collapses the whole rail when you want the width.

The left: where everything is kept

The sidebar holds every place that is not today.

• Home — this screen. The red count beside it is the same one you saw in the middle.
• Routines — the jobs your assistant runs on a schedule or a trigger, without being asked each time.
• Library — your recordings, transcripts and meeting notes.
• Records — Companies, Contacts and Deals, the three tables your CRM is made of. Open any row for that record's own page: its fields on one side, everything ever said to that customer on the other.
• Recents — the conversations you have already had, most recent first. The button beside the heading starts a new one; View all opens the full history.

At the very top is your workspace name. Click it for Settings — where you connect your mailbox, calendar and Stripe — along with your members, your plan and your credits. At the very bottom, Getting started tracks the handful of setup steps that make everything above work.

Where to go next

You now have names for every part of the screen. The rest of this chapter goes one level down into each of them, in the order you met them:

• Introduction to your assistant — the AI behind the message box, and the line it never crosses without you.
• Routines: the work you never ask for — how work gets done before you ask for it.
• Where you stand, and what needs you — the number and the queue on the right, in full.
• Companies, contacts and deals — the three tables, the fields on them, and how to add one.

Then two connections turn the empty screen into a working one: your email and calendar, and Stripe.