Getting Started
This chapter is for the person setting up Screen Journal for their organisation — usually the owner or first admin.
1.1 Create your account and organisation
Go to the Screen Journal web app and enter your work email. There are no passwords: Screen Journal emails you a sign-in link (with a code you can type manually as a fallback).
What you see: the welcome screen with a single email field. New emails create an account; existing emails sign straight in.
What to do:
- Enter your email and select Continue with email.
- Open the email we send you and follow the sign-in link (it expires after a few minutes; you can also type the code manually).
- As a brand-new user you'll be walked through a short setup wizard:
- Create an organisation — name your company.
- Set your organisation's timezone — this decides where "a day" starts and ends for rankings, timesheets, and reports. Pick the zone your team mostly works in; individuals can still choose their own display timezone later.
- Set up your profile — your name and optional photo.
- Invite teammates — add emails now, or copy an invite link to share. You can skip this and invite people later from the People page.
Signing in later looks the same — email, link, done:
1.2 Understand the roles
Everyone in your organisation has exactly one role:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Owner | Full control, including cancelling the subscription. The person who created the organisation; can only be revoked by another owner. |
| Admin | Manage members, teams, and billing. Cannot cancel the subscription. |
| Manager | Manage members and teams organisation-wide and view everyone's data. No billing, desktop policy, or alert configuration. |
| Team Manager | Sees and manages only their own team's members and data. Requires a team. |
| Viewer | Read-only access across the organisation. Cannot export. |
| Billing | Manages the subscription and seats only — no access to members or activity data. |
| Employee | The default for team members. Runs the desktop app; sees only their own data in the dashboard. |
You assign and change roles on the People page (see chapter 4).
1.3 Get your team installed
Each team member needs the desktop app running on their work machine — without it, no activity is recorded for them.
- Invite them (People → Invite members, or the invite link from the setup wizard). They accept by opening the email invitation.
- They download and install the desktop app on their Mac or Windows machine.
- They sign in inside the desktop app and approve the consent notice; the dashboard shows them as active once the app checks in.
The member-side experience is covered step-by-step in chapter 2 — The Desktop App.
1.4 Your trial and billing
New organisations start on a free trial with a limited number of seats. When you're ready (or when the trial ends), the Billing page is where you subscribe and manage seats.
What you see: your subscription status, plan and per-seat price, the next billing date, and how many of your purchased seats are in use.
What you can do: subscribe, change the number of seats as your team grows or shrinks, and see who owns the organisation. Only the owner and admins can see this page.
1.5 Recommended first-week checklist
- Create the organisation and set its timezone.
- Review Organisation settings → Desktop policy — decide what members' desktop apps are allowed to do (pausing, audio, forced tracking) before rolling the app out.
- Invite the team and confirm everyone appears as Active on People.
- Skim Activity and Ranking after a couple of days of data.
- Set pay rates on Timesheet if you plan to use it for pay.