Sidecar documentation

Daily Workflow

Use Today, Customer Detail, Waiting On, Email Intake, Tasks, and All Work to move contractor administration work forward without rebuilding the morning spreadsheet-and-inbox search.

Sidecar’s daily workflow is designed around a simple sequence:

Find the customers most likely to need attention.
Understand why each customer is being surfaced.
Take or assign the next real action.
Record who has the next step and when to follow up.
Keep the current workflow state accurate as replies and documents arrive.

You do not need to visit every page every morning. Today is the starting point, Customer Detail provides the context, and the source records hold the current state.

Start on Today

Open Today at the beginning of the working session.

Today ranks customers using operational signals recorded in the workspace, including:

missing requested items
expired or soon-to-expire documents
waiting work and follow-up timing
overdue or open internal tasks
unresolved inbound replies
email delivery problems

Today answers What should I do first? It is intentionally selective. It does not attempt to show every open record in the workspace.

The ranking is based on Sidecar’s internal Workflow Risk score. Workflow Risk is a prioritization aid, not a compliance score, approval decision, or prediction of what a customer portal will accept.

Review delivery problems and inbound replies

When present, two review panels appear before the main focus list:

Email delivery needs attention shows requests that were delayed, bounced, blocked, or otherwise not delivered successfully.
Inbound replies needing review shows replies that have entered Email Intake and still need a person to confirm their relationship and next action.

Handle these panels before assuming that an earlier request is still moving normally. A request that bounced may still appear in history, and a reply with an attachment does not automatically mean the underlying requested item is complete.

Sidecar preserves the event and asks for review instead of silently rewriting the workflow.

Use My Focus when ownership is assigned

Select My Focus when you need to narrow Today to work assigned to you.

This is useful for an individual work session, but it should not replace occasional review of the full Today list. Unassigned work, customer-level problems, and shared obligations may still need attention even when they do not belong to one named owner.

Read Today’s Focus as a priority explanation

The Today’s Focus list ranks customers rather than presenting a flat list of unrelated rows.

Each customer card can show:

attention level and Workflow Risk score
package progress
counts for expired, expiring, waiting, stale, missing, or open work
the strongest current signal
Operational Focus
additional factors contributing to the ranking

Read the explanation before reacting to the score. Two customers can have similar scores for very different reasons.

A customer may be high on the list because a document expired yesterday. Another may be high because several smaller issues have accumulated: a missing requested item, a stale waiting state, and an overdue task.

Operational Focus identifies the next review point

Operational Focus describes the most important current action or watch state for that customer.

It may suggest that you:

send a request
follow up with a customer, broker, employee, or platform
review an inbound reply
resolve an email delivery problem
complete or reassign an overdue task
update an expired document
leave the work waiting because the follow-up date is still in the future

Operational Focus is a recommendation based on the records in Sidecar. Open the customer before changing anything when the surrounding context matters.

Do not turn every signal into separate work

The signals explain why a customer is visible. They are not always separate obligations.

One expired certificate may also be linked to a requested item, a waiting state, a follow-up date, and a task. That is one real-world situation represented by several connected records, not five independent emergencies.

Use Customer Detail to see how those records relate.

Open Customer Detail before changing the workflow

Today tells you where to look. Customer Detail explains the customer’s current operational story.

Start near the top of the page:

Operational Focus identifies the strongest current action or watch state.
Customer summary explains the account in plain language.
Customer package status summarizes the tracked required items.
Attention priority shows current workflow pressure.
Risk factors identify the records contributing to that pressure.

Then review the relevant requested item, document, task, waiting state, contact, platform, request history, or Activity History entry.

Package progress and attention measure different things

Package progress describes how far tracked required items have moved through their recorded workflow. Attention priority describes how urgently the customer appears to need review.

A customer can have high package progress and still need immediate attention because one important document expired. Another customer can have low progress without being urgent because the remaining work was just created or is waiting until a future follow-up date.

Neither measure determines compliance or customer approval.

Work from the source record

After understanding the customer context, update the record that represents what is true now.

Use:

a requested item for work the customer expects
a document for the tracked file, status, dates, and subject
a task for an internal action owned by your team
a waiting state when another party has the next move

Do not use Activity History as a substitute for the current record. History explains what happened. The current status, waiting state, dates, assignment, and notes describe what is true now.

Make one clear next-step update

A good daily update usually does one or more of the following:

changes the current status
records or clears the waiting party
adds a useful waiting note
sets the next follow-up date
assigns an internal task
updates a due date or priority
records a replacement document and expiration date
resolves a delivery problem with a supported reason

Avoid changing unrelated fields merely because the record is open. The goal is to leave the next person with a clearer current state than the one you found.

When the next action is an external request, use the request action attached to the relevant document or requested item.

Before sending, review the recipient, subject, message, reply address, waiting party, and follow-up date. After a successful send, Sidecar records the request and applies the approved workflow changes.

A send attempt is not the same as successful delivery. When the provider reports a delivery problem, Today can surface it for review without automatically clearing or rewriting the waiting state.

The complete request and reply process is covered in Requests and Replies.

Record waiting work honestly

Use Waiting On when the next move belongs to someone else.

A useful waiting record answers:

Who has the ball?
Why is the work paused?
Since when?
When should someone check again?

Waiting does not mean complete. Keep the underlying document, requested item, or task active until the obligation is actually resolved.

A follow-up date should reflect when your team should return to the item. It is not necessarily the customer’s contractual deadline, the document expiration date, or the date the request was first sent.

When the other party responds or your team resumes control, clear or update the waiting state so stale ownership does not continue influencing Today.

Review Email Intake without letting it drive the database by itself

Replies sent to a Sidecar reply address enter Email Intake for review.

Review the sender, message, attachments, proposed customer relationship, and suggested category. Confirm or correct the relationship before connecting the reply to workflow records.

An attachment may support a document update, but arrival alone does not prove that the file is correct, accepted, current, or sufficient. Sidecar keeps a person in the decision path.

After review, update the source records that changed and leave unrelated records alone.

Use Tasks for internal ownership

Create or update a task when your own team must perform an action.

A useful task has:

an action-oriented title
a customer relationship when applicable
a clear owner
a realistic due date
enough notes for another user to continue the work
a priority that distinguishes genuinely urgent work from the normal backlog

Examples include:

Confirm revised insurance limits with broker
Upload training roster to ISNetworld
Review customer portal rejection
Call field supervisor about missing dates

Complete the task when the internal action is done. Do not leave completed tasks open merely as reminders of history; Activity History already exists for that job.

Use All Work for the broader backlog

Open All Work when you need the full unresolved workload rather than Today’s prioritized customer list.

All Work can bring together:

missing requested items
work due soon
documents needing attention
open tasks
waiting obligations

Use it for backlog review, reconciliation, team meetings, or a filtered pass by customer, platform, category, attention level, owner, or date condition.

An item appearing in All Work does not necessarily require action today. Some records are open because they are waiting, approaching a date, or intentionally scheduled for later. Today and Operational Focus help distinguish immediate work from the wider backlog.

A practical daily routine

A normal work session can follow this sequence:

Open Today.
Review delivery problems and inbound replies, when present.
Open the highest-priority customer.
Read Operational Focus and the contributing signals.
Review the connected source records on Customer Detail.
Take, send, assign, or schedule the next real action.
Update the current status, waiting state, owner, notes, and follow-up date as needed.
Continue through Today until urgent work is handled or intentionally waiting.
Check Waiting On for follow-ups due now.
Use All Work only when you need the complete backlog or a filtered review.

Before finishing, make sure:

completed internal work is marked complete
replies needing review are not left stranded
delivery failures have been addressed or intentionally left open
waiting notes identify the real blocker
follow-up dates reflect the next review point
the visible status on each changed record describes the current state

Sidecar should reduce the morning treasure hunt, not replace it with a nine-tab software ritual.

Team handoff at the end of a work session

A clean handoff does not require a separate narrative report when the records are maintained well.

Before handing work to another user, confirm that:

the owner is recorded where internal ownership matters
the waiting party is correct
the latest note explains the blocker or next step
the next follow-up date is visible
the source record reflects the current status
important actions appear in Activity History

Another user should be able to open Today or Customer Detail and continue the work without reconstructing the situation from email archaeology.

Common daily-workflow mistakes

Treating Today as the entire database

Today is a prioritized view. Use All Work, Documents, Tasks, Waiting On, or filtered lists when you need complete coverage.

Treating every visible signal as urgent

Use realistic statuses, priorities, due dates, and follow-up dates. When everything is urgent, the ranking becomes an anxiety generator rather than a useful queue.

Marking waiting work complete

Waiting means the obligation remains open while another party has the next move. Completion should reflect resolution, not temporary lack of control.

Leaving a waiting state after control returns

When a reply arrives or internal work resumes, clear or update the waiting state. Otherwise Sidecar continues to believe the other party has the ball.

Treating submission as acceptance

Submitted records that something was sent. Accepted records that acceptance was actually captured. Use the state your team can support.

Creating a task for every requested item

Requested items describe customer obligations. Tasks describe internal actions. Create a task only when separate internal ownership or follow-through is useful.

Updating history instead of the source record

Activity History is evidence of prior events. It does not replace the current status, dates, assignment, waiting state, or notes on the source record.

What the daily workflow does not decide

Sidecar helps prioritize and coordinate administrative work. It does not determine whether a company, contractor, vendor, employee, document, insurance policy, or customer package is compliant, approved, qualified, or legally sufficient.

Your team remains responsible for reviewing source documents, customer instructions, portal results, insurance requirements, and any legal or regulatory obligations that apply.

Sidecar’s job is operational: show what needs attention, who has the next step, what should be reviewed now, and what happened along the way.