Priya joined Northwoods Outfitters as their operations lead. In her first week as a workspace admin, she built the org chart, configured the stand-up boards for their three field teams, set up weekly leadership syncs, added the first scorecard metrics, and ran a 30-minute "how to use SPLX OS" session with the team. This guide follows the same arc.
What admins can do
Admins share almost all capabilities with workspace owners:
- Enable and configure modules
- Manage members (invite, edit roles, remove)
- Access the full audit log
- Create and edit every resource type in every module — ideas, projects, tasks, contacts, deals, processes, scorecard metrics, goals, stand-up boards, team syncs, org chart seats
- Create custom roles with their own permission sets (Settings → Roles; the five built-in roles are read-only)
- Manage department structure, review performance check-ins for all team members
The one thing admins cannot do that owners can: change another owner's role, or remove the last owner from the workspace.
Day 1 — People and org structure (~45 minutes)
Check your modules
People, Execution, and Strategy are required modules and are always on. Go to Settings → Modules to confirm the others your industry pre-enabled (usually CRM, Rhythm, and Process) match what the team will use, and toggle any that don't. If your owner skipped the sample-data step during setup, the Starter templates card at the top of that page can still add starter departments, boards, and processes — see How to apply a template to your workspace.
Create departments
Navigate to People → Departments. Create departments before touching profiles, because the department field on every profile pulls from this list.
Click Add department for each team group. Northwoods Outfitters created: Guide Operations, Office & Admin, and Field Logistics. Bayou & Co. used: Client Services, Sales, and Finance. Assign a manager to each department if you know the person.
Build the org chart
Go to People → Org Chart. Click Add seat to create root seats (senior leadership, department heads), then click Edit to enter edit mode, drag seats into a parent-child hierarchy, and click Done to save. Each seat has a title, optional description, and an order hint.
Once seats exist, click any seat card to open its side panel, choose a person under Assignments (Select person…), and click Add; tick Mark as primary seat if it is their main one. A seat can hold multiple people. A person can hold multiple seats.
Fill in team profiles
Navigate to People → Directory. Everyone who has accepted their invitation already appears there. Click any profile card and use Edit profile to add their title, bio, phone, skills, birthday, department, and start date.
For people who are not yet OS users (a contractor, an external advisor not on the platform), use Add person in the directory toolbar (name and title are required) to create a stub profile. You can assign stubs to org chart seats and write role-fit reviews for them.
Day 1 total: ~45 minutes.
Day 2 — Strategy foundation (~30 minutes)
If Strategy is enabled, build the foundation before the team dives into day-to-day work.
Vision and mission
Go to Strategy → Vision, Mission, Values. Click Edit next to Vision and type your organization's vision statement using the rich text editor. Repeat for Mission. Save each one.
Values
On the same page, scroll to the Values section and click Edit. Add each value with a name and optional definition. The best values also have positive and negative examples — use the example fields to describe what each value looks like in practice.
Scorecard metrics
Go to Strategy → Scorecard. Click Add Metric for each KPI your team tracks. Required: name, target, direction (higher is better vs. lower is better), and cadence (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual).
Key fields to fill in:
- Operational definition — explains exactly how the metric is counted, so check-ins are consistent
- Owner — the person accountable for this number
- Scope — Company for org-wide metrics, Department if this belongs to one team, Individual for personal KPIs
Day 2 total: ~30 minutes.
Day 3 — Execution structure (~20 minutes)
Review default permissions
Execution is a required module, so it is already on. By default contributors can submit ideas and create projects, and can add and edit tasks inside projects where they are members; creating standalone tasks and editing any project or task regardless of membership needs execution.tasks.manage / execution.projects.manage (owner, admin, and advisor). If your team needs tighter controls — for example, only admins can create projects — the built-in roles can't be edited, so go to Settings → Roles, Duplicate Contributor into a custom role without execution.projects.create, and assign it from Settings → Team. Review the execution permissions row by row.
Create your first project
Walk the team through the standard project flow: Execution → Projects → + New project. Assign an owner, add milestones for phases, and add the first few tasks. This gives the team a live example to reference.
See How to create your first project for the full walkthrough.
Day 3 total: ~20 minutes.
Day 4 — Rhythm setup (~45 minutes)
Rhythm has two surfaces: Stand Up boards for daily operational reviews, and Team Sync for weekly structured meetings.
Create stand-up boards
Go to Rhythm → Stand Up. Click New board:
- Board name — make it specific to a team or location: "Operations — Line 3" or "Client Services" or "Northwoods Field Team A".
- Tier — Tier 1 — Frontline is for the closest-to-work boards; Tier 4 — Executive is the top of the escalation chain (Tier 2 is Department and Tier 3 is Site).
- Escalates to — if you have multiple tiers, link a lower-tier board to its parent so issues can bubble up.
Each new board starts with four columns: Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost. You can add custom columns if your team tracks other categories.
Configure KPI cells on stand-up boards
KPI cells give each column a live metric from the Strategy scorecard. On a board's detail page, admin users see configuration controls on each column header. Link a scorecard metric to track it at the board level.
See How to configure KPI cells on a stand-up board for the step-by-step.
Schedule team syncs
Go to Rhythm → Team Sync. Click New Team Sync and fill in the title and, optionally, the scheduled date and time. Set the facilitator — this is the person who will drive the meeting. Add attendees from the session page with Add participants.
For recurring meetings, create a Team Sync series: open the Recurring Series tab, click New series, and configure the schedule (Frequency, Repeat every, day, time, and timezone — for a bi-weekly meeting choose Weekly and repeat every 2), the duration, and the default facilitator.
See How to schedule a recurring team sync for series setup.
Day 4 total: ~45 minutes.
Day 5 — Training session (~60 minutes)
Run a 30–60 minute orientation with the whole team. Cover four things:
- Sidebar orientation — walk each module section, explain what it is for, and show how to navigate.
- Live demo of tasks — create a task, assign it, and mark it done together.
- Stand-up walk-through — open a board, add an issue, resolve it, escalate one to show the flow.
- Questions as features — show the Help button (the question-mark icon in the top bar) and Help & Guides in the sidebar. The Help menu can replay the product tour (Re-run product tour) and has Send feedback; questions submitted there are routed to your workspace's assigned advisors, or to the SPLX team if none is assigned.
If you want everyone to see the welcome screen and tour again before the session, go to Settings → General and use Reset for all members under Onboarding.
Process module (if enabled)
If your team runs standard operating procedures, go to Process → Library and write your first procedure before the training session so there is something to demonstrate.
See How to write your first SOP for setup.
Day 5 total: ~60 minutes.
What to do next
- Run your first stand-up with the team: How to run your first stand-up
- Build out the CRM if you manage contacts and deals: How to build and manage deal pipelines
- Set quarterly priorities and link them to projects: How to set a quarterly priority
- Prepare for your first team sync: How to submit pre-meeting agenda entries