The org: roles that look after your work
Give lasting work to a role with an area, a charter and a standing session, and approve the changes your agents propose to the org.
A session is one conversation: it does a piece of work and ends. Work that lasts, like keeping growth moving or looking after the billing code, needs someone who is still there next week. In codecast that is a role: a named seat with an area it looks after, someone it reports to, and a charter you write that says what it is for. Each role has one standing session that speaks for it, checks its area on a schedule and answers what you send it.
Because work goes to the role, not to whichever session happens to be running, you can assign a task to @growth, mention @growth in chat, or write on its page, and it reaches whoever holds the seat today. Restart the session or replace it, and the role keeps its area, its notes, its tasks and its place on the chart.
Turn it on
The org is a team feature. A team admin opens Settings, then Team, and switches on Organization under Features. It is marked In development. Your personal workspace can have an org of its own once any of your teams has it on.
Then open the Org page. It shows your team's goals, projects and people as one chart, with Everything, Goals and People views, a Health button, and Add a role.
Start with the Head of People
A new org offers one hire first: the Head of People, the team's standing agent at the top of the chart. Pick the project folder it lives in (or leave it blank) and click Hire Head of People. It reads how work actually flows in your team, proposes who should own what in a weekly review, looks after what no other role owns, and answers in chat and Slack until the team hires an Executive Assistant. You can rename it and give it a face on its page.
To get a first proposal right away, click Propose an org now: a fresh session reads your projects, sessions and commits and suggests the roles that would carry the work.
Add a role
Click Add a role on the Org page, or Add a lead on a project that has none.
- Name and Handle: what people see, and the
@handleto mention it by. - Area: the projects and plans it looks after. With none picked it has no area of its own; it runs its check and answers what it is asked.
- Reports to: a person or another role. What it can't settle itself goes there, with its recommendation.
- Runs on: whose computer and account run its session.
- Charter: what the role is for. You write it; the role itself can't change it.
- How long: Ongoing, or Until something ends.
Click Create and start. The role starts as soon as you create it. From a template sets up a role someone has already packaged, with its charter and routines.
Give it work
| You | The role |
|---|---|
| Assign a task to it (the Assignee picker lists roles next to people) | Is told about the task, and answers for it |
Mention @handle in team chat | Wakes and reads your line (Team chat) |
| Write to it on its page | Gets your message in its standing conversation |
| Wait | Runs its regular check, reads what changed in its area since last time, and acts on it |
Things you might write to a role:
- "The pricing page is live. Watch the signup funnel this week and tell me if it drops."
- "Take over the open billing bugs and keep me posted on the ones that need a decision."
- "What is stuck in your area right now?"
A role's page
Click a role on the chart to open its page. Its standing conversation fills the left side, so there is one place to talk to it. The tabs beside it:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | What it is for, where things stand, what it is doing, its notes, and what happened lately |
| Work | Its tasks, by status, its plans and pages |
| Sessions | The sessions working for it, grouped by who acts next |
| Decisions | Questions it raised and how they were answered |
| Triggers | Its regular check and any other schedules, with the next run. Change or pause them here |
| Settings | Name, area, who it reports to, whether it starts work on its own, its limits, where it runs, which chat channels it reads, and its history |
Two settings decide how much it does without you:
- Starts work on its own. On, it starts work in its area and answers decisions there without asking. Off, it reads, answers questions and recommends, and you start the work. The Head of People always proposes and leaves the deciding to you.
- Limits. The most it may do in one day: sessions started, turns, and tokens, with sensible defaults filled in. When it reaches one, it waits for tomorrow and says so in its notes.
Pause role in the page's menu stops its schedules and lets its sessions finish at a safe point; Resume role brings it back. Retire role ends it for good.
What you see in the inbox
A role gets one card in your inbox, with a sessions pill for the sessions working under it. Those sessions sit under the role (hover one: Reports to @handle, which decides what reaches you), not in your inbox one by one, so twenty sessions on growth don't become twenty cards.
A question travels up the line. A session asks its role; a role that can't answer asks whoever it reports to. When it reaches you, it arrives as one card from the lead that needs you, with the question pinned at the top of its conversation.
Proposals: agents suggest, people decide
Changes to the org itself (a new role, a move, a retirement, a wider area, a new routine) are always a person's call. The Head of People, or a session you asked to review the org, writes them as a proposal on the Org page. Each change shows its reason and evidence, with Approve, Reject and Reply. Approve all takes the rest in one go, and approved changes apply when you send your answers.
When something is off
| What you notice | What to do |
|---|---|
| There is no Org page | Ask a team admin to switch on Organization in Team settings |
| A role isn't starting anything | Check Starts work on its own in its Settings, and whether it is paused |
| A role went quiet partway through the day | It reached one of its Limits. Raise it, or let it pick up tomorrow |
| Work in a project isn't reaching its role | Check the role's Area includes that project. Health on the Org page flags roles that are overloaded, idle or bypassed |
| Too many sessions in your inbox | Give the work a role: sessions in a role's area sit under its card |