Set up your workspace from scratch

When Bayou & Co. onboarded to SPLX OS, their owner Diego had read the module guides but had no single map that showed him the order things needed to happen. He spent more time than necessary bouncing between settings pages because he skipped CRM mode selection and had to re-explain the interface to his team twice. This guide is the map he wished he had.

A new owner with a prepared team list and a rough idea of their Q1 priorities can complete this playbook in under 2 hours. Each section notes a time estimate; the total assumes a business with 5–15 people and 2–4 modules active.

0. Before you sign up

You create the workspace yourself: sign up, then enter your organisation name and workspace URL, choose your industry, choose what you want running first, and confirm who you sell to and the terms. Next you can describe your company for AI setup suggestions, or continue with the standard starter-template flow. Section 1 walks through each step. (If you join a workspace through an owner invitation instead, you skip workspace creation.) Gather the following so you can move through setup without stopping:

Team roster

• Full name and email for every person who will use the platform on day one
• Their intended roles: owner, admin, contributor, viewer, or advisor (see the Owner: your first day guide for the role breakdown)
• Whether any team members are external consultants who need the advisor role

Business model

• Is your primary customer relationship B2B (companies and deals), B2C (individual clients), or both?
  • Med spa like Bayou & Co.: B2C — individual guests, visit history, no deals board
  • Equipment dealer like Northwoods Outfitters: B2C or Both — service clients plus occasional B2B partner accounts
  • Consulting practice like Priya's practice: typically B2B — client companies, proposals as deals

Q1 priorities (rough list)

• 3–5 initiatives the business is committing to this quarter — title and owner are enough for now
• Any existing projects that need to be tracked from day one

CRM setup (if applicable)

• Contact sources you want available (e.g., "Referral", "Website", "Walk-in", "Partner")
• Tags for organizing contacts (e.g., "VIP", "Prospect", "New client", "Inactive")

If you use a scheduling tool (Zenoti, etc.)

• Integrations are configured under Settings → Integrations, and some (such as Zenoti) are paid add-ons — check with your SPLX contact whether yours is provisioned. If so, your contacts will populate automatically and manual import is not needed

Estimated prep time: 15–30 minutes

1. Create your workspace and confirm its settings

Sign up, verify your email, and follow these steps in order:

1. Set up your workspace — enter Organisation name and Workspace URL.
2. What is your industry? — choose your industry to pre-configure the workspace.
3. What do you want running first? — choose Our team & roles, Goals & quarterly priorities, or Weekly meeting & scorecard. This puts the matching starter templates and Getting started checklist steps first. Skip for now uses the weekly-meeting focus.
4. Who do you sell to? — confirm Businesses, Individual customers, or Both. Tick the checkbox accepting the Terms of Service, acknowledging the Privacy Policy, and agreeing that this is a standard workspace where you will not enter protected health information (PHI). Confirm and continue creates the workspace.
5. Describe your company — describe the business and click Suggest a setup. AI can suggest modules, a focus, starter templates, quarterly priorities, scorecard metrics, and meetings. Review and edit the selections; enter a weekly target for each selected metric and check the meeting times. None of these suggestions is saved until Apply selected. Skip, I'll set it up myself continues with the standard flow; unavailable suggestions also offer a way to continue.
6. Want a head start? — if you skipped AI setup and your industry has an available bundle, choose starter templates for meetings, SOPs, a plan, team structure, or a budget, depending on what's offered. The button currently reads Add sample data, but it applies those starter templates. You can choose Skip for now. Applying AI suggestions skips this step. Templates remain available under Settings → Modules → Starter templates.

When setup finishes you land on the dashboard, where a Welcome window offers a 60-second tour and a Getting started card lists your first steps in focus order. Your workspace begins on a 30-day trial — see Owner: your first day for billing.

Then:

1. Navigate to Settings in the left sidebar; General is the first page.
2. Confirm your workspace display name — this is what your team sees. It can be changed at any time.
3. Note your workspace slug — the short identifier used in URLs. This cannot be changed after creation, so confirm it now. If it needs to change, contact your SPLX contact before you invite anyone.
4. Check the Industry picker. It drives which modules start enabled and which starter templates are offered; changing it asks for confirmation and keeps your data.

Estimated time: 2 minutes

2. Enable the modules your team needs

Navigate to Settings → Modules. Three modules are always on: Execution, People, and Strategy — these are required and cannot be disabled. Your industry choice also pre-enabled a starting set (usually CRM, Rhythm, and Process), so this step is about confirming it.

For the remaining modules, use the decision tree below to decide what to turn on now versus later. Use the Enabled / Disabled switch on each module's row. Turning a module off asks for confirmation and hides it from the sidebar for all members; data is kept, and you can turn it back on at any time. If your industry has starter content, the Starter templates card at the top of the page applies it across the modules you tick — see How to apply a template to your workspace.

Decision tree by business type

Med spa (e.g., Bayou & Co.)

• CRM — yes, always; use B2C mode (individual guests, visit history)
• Rhythm — yes if you run daily huddles or weekly leadership reviews
• Process — yes if you have written service protocols, intake procedures, or safety checklists
• Finance — yes if you track monthly revenue goals against actuals

Equipment dealer / service business (e.g., Northwoods Outfitters)

• CRM — yes; start with B2C if clients are individuals, or Both if you also manage vendor/partner companies
• Rhythm — yes if you run stand-up boards for field teams or a weekly ops review
• Process — yes for safety, quality, and delivery SOPs
• Finance — yes for monthly revenue tracking

Consulting practice (e.g., Priya's practice)

• CRM — yes; B2B mode for client companies and proposal pipelines
• Rhythm — yes for client meeting cadences (recurring team syncs per engagement)
• Process — yes for onboarding checklists and service delivery procedures
• Finance — optional at first; add when you're tracking revenue goals actively

A note on starting lean: It is better to run 3–4 modules and actually use them than to switch on every module and overwhelm the team. You can always add modules after the team is settled. The one exception: enable CRM on day one if your team will start logging contacts — retroactively adding contact history is painful.

Estimated time: 5 minutes

3. Invite your team and assign roles

Navigate to Settings → Team (open Settings, then Team in the Settings menu). Use Invite person to send email invitations — enter the email, pick a role, and click Send invitation.

Assign roles carefully at this step — they affect what team members can see and do across every module.

At Bayou & Co., Diego sent admin invitations to his two managers and contributor invitations to 11 staff, then invited his SPLX consultant as advisor.

Practical notes:

• Invitations expire after 48 hours. If someone reports not receiving theirs, use Resend on the Pending invitations list on the Team page; if it has already expired, send a new invitation.
• Roles can be changed after the fact from the same page — click a member's role to open the role picker. If you're unsure, start someone as contributor and promote to admin after their first week.
• Review the built-in roles at Settings → Roles. The defaults are sensible for most teams, and the built-in roles are read-only. The one adjustment worth considering early: if you want only admins to create projects (rather than any contributor), Duplicate the Contributor role into a custom role without the execution.projects.create permission, and assign it to your contributors before the team starts working.

Estimated time: 10–15 minutes (longer if you have more than 15 people)

4. Confirm CRM mode

The setup flow already asked who you sell to and saved an answer pre-filled from your industry. Confirm it before any team member starts adding contacts: the mode affects what tabs are visible and whether pipelines track deals or contacts. It takes 30 seconds to change, but mid-stream changes create confusion.

Navigate to Settings → Modules → CRM → Settings (or /settings/modules/crm) and check the Mode card. (The setup flow's "Businesses" is B2B and "Individual customers" is B2C.)

Mode decision tree

• B2B: Your primary unit of relationship is a company account. You track deals through a pipeline. Use this if you run a sales motion with qualified leads and a close process.
• B2C: Your primary unit of relationship is an individual person. You track contacts through service stages. Use this if you run a service business with repeat individual clients — med spas, personal trainers, coaches.
• Both: You manage both. Each pipeline has a kind (deals or contacts). Use this if you have a B2B sales track and a B2C service track under the same roof.

See How to switch between B2B and B2C modes for the full reference — switching later is safe and non-destructive, but getting it right now avoids the mid-stream confusion.

Also on the CRM settings page:

• Add contact sources from your prep list (e.g., "Referral", "Walk-in", "Website")
• Add tags from your prep list (e.g., "VIP", "New client", "Inactive")

These are available immediately when team members start adding contacts.

Estimated time: 5–10 minutes

5. Set your first quarterly priority

This is the moment that makes the workspace real for your team — there's something in it with their name on it before they sign in for the first time.

Navigate to Strategy → Quarterly Priorities. The page defaults to the current quarter.

Click Add Priority and fill in:

• Title: a verb phrase that describes the initiative — "Launch guide certification program" not just "Certification"
• Owner: the team member accountable for driving this
• Status: On track (default)
• Parent goal and Linked metric (optional; they appear once annual goals and scorecard metrics exist)

Repeat for each priority on your prep list. Aim for 3–5 total. More than 5 priorities for a single quarter usually means the list hasn't been filtered yet.

Once the priorities are in, anyone who can manage priorities (owners, admins, and advisors) can click Promote on any card and choose Project to create a linked Execution project. This connects the strategy layer to the day-to-day work layer — team members can see their tasks inside a project that traces back to a quarterly commitment.

For the full walkthrough: How to set a quarterly priority

Estimated time: 15–20 minutes

6. Schedule your first Stand Up

If your team runs any kind of daily or weekly operational review, set up the board before the team arrives. It takes 5 minutes and shows the team there's a structured cadence waiting for them.

Navigate to Rhythm → Stand Up. Click New board:

• Board name: be specific — "Client Services", "Operations — Floor 1", or "Leadership" rather than just "Team"
• Tier: Tier 1 — Frontline for the closest-to-work board; Tier 4 — Executive for a leadership board that escalation flows up to
• Escalates to: leave blank for now if you only have one board; link later when you add a second tier

Each board starts with four columns: Safety, Quality, Delivery, and Cost. You can add custom columns from the board detail page after creation.

If you run recurring weekly meetings (Team Sync):

Navigate to Rhythm → Team Sync → Recurring Series tab. Click New series and configure:

• Title and duration
• Schedule: Frequency, Repeat every, days of the week, time, and timezone (it defaults to your browser's timezone; for a bi-weekly meeting choose Weekly and repeat every 2)
• Facilitator (optional, the default person who runs the meeting)
• Department (optional, but enables the Scorecard and Priorities segments and carry-forward from prior sessions)

For the full setup walkthrough: How to schedule a recurring Team Sync

Estimated time: 10–15 minutes

7. Write your first SOP

This step is only relevant if you enabled the Process module. If you didn't, skip to section 8.

Writing one SOP before the team arrives accomplishes two things: it proves the module is set up correctly, and it gives the team something concrete to run during training.

Navigate to Process → Library. If this is your first process:

1. Click New category and create at least one group (e.g., "Onboarding", "Safety", "Quality")
2. Click New process and fill in the title and description. Set the category and an optional review date.
3. On the process detail page, click Edit steps and add each step. Include a step title, optional description, estimated minutes, and any required fields (e.g., a signature field for safety sign-offs).
4. Click Done to save the steps, then Publish to make the process runnable.

Good first SOPs to write at Bayou & Co.: "New client intake", "Equipment disinfection check", "Opening shift procedure."

For the full walkthrough: How to write your first SOP

Estimated time: 20–30 minutes for one well-structured SOP

8. Tour the dashboard, audit log, and settings

Before your team logs in, take 10 minutes to orient yourself to the surfaces they'll use for oversight.

Dashboard

The dashboard is at /dashboard. It shows module widgets — summary tiles for stand-up boards, upcoming team syncs, in-progress runs, and more. Each widget corresponds to an enabled module. Use the Edit layout button to drag and reorder widgets, and Add widgets to add or remove tiles from the board. Admins can set the default layout new members see under Settings → Dashboard.

Bayou & Co.'s dashboard on day one showed: Stand Up summary (active issues by board), Next team sync (the upcoming leadership meeting), and Process runs in progress (any active SOPs).

Audit log

Navigate to Settings → Audit log. Every create, update, and delete action across all modules is recorded here with the timestamp, the actor, and the full change payload. As an owner or admin, this is your transparency layer — you can see exactly who changed a contact record, who updated a quarterly priority, or who ran (and completed or abandoned) an SOP.

During onboarding, use the audit log to confirm that setup steps landed correctly. After onboarding, review it monthly as part of your governance rhythm.

Settings overview

The key settings pages worth bookmarking:

Estimated time: 10 minutes

9. What comes next

Your workspace is set up. Hand these guides to the relevant people before your first team session:

• For admins: Admin: your first week — building the org chart, configuring Stand Up boards in depth, running the first team training session
• For contributors joining day one: Contributor: your day one — finding tasks, submitting ideas, participating in stand-ups, filling out check-ins
• For external advisors: Advisor: engagement checklist — navigating between client workspaces, what the advisor role can and cannot do

Module-specific deep dives:

• CRM: How to create your first contact, How to build and manage deal pipelines
• Strategy: How to build a scorecard metric, How to define your company's core values
• Rhythm: How to run your first Stand Up session, How to subscribe to the iCal calendar feed
• Process: How to run an SOP as a checklist, How to schedule recurring runs
• Execution: How to create your first project, How to use the Kanban board
• People: How to invite and onboard a new employee, How to build your org chart via departments

If a specialist is guiding your onboarding, read What to expect from guided onboarding to see who does what and what the 30, 60, and 90-day milestones are.