Guide
Intro to clients and companies
What you need to know about clients
Overview
Clients represent the individuals that your business serves. For example, if you’re a marketing agency, a client is someone that pays you for marketing services. In the Copilot Dashboard, you need to have clients for most workflows. For example, to send a message or assign an invoice, you need a client to send a message to or assign an invoice to.
Example clients John and Jane
If you create a new workspace, you’ll initially see 2 example clients, John Doe and Jane Doe. If you have companies enabled, they will both be assigned to the company Rocket Rides. We only created these example clients so that you can explore workflows right away. For example, you can click on John Doe to see the Client details page. You can delete the example clients at any time.
Clients and companies
If you’ve enabled companies, you can use them to group multiple clients together. For example, if John and Jane both work at Rocket Rides, you can assign them both to the Rocket Rides company.
In the Copilot Dashboard you can use companies to:
Organize clients by associating them with companies that they are part of.
Take actions at the company level. For example, you can send a message or send an invoice to a company, letting all clients associated with the company see the relevant information.
In your portal, clients with associated companies can:
See other clients associated with their company on the Settings > Team page.
Invite other clients to their company (internal users can enable or disable this feature in Settings > General).
Client and company configuration
If you serve individuals (clients), disable companies in Settings > General. Company fields and company-level messaging and file channels will not be enabled.
If you serve companies each with many associated clients, enable companies in Settings > General.
Company fields and company-level message and file channels will be enabled. Billing will also be associated with companies instead of individual clients, unless a client is not assigned to a company.
You can specify if the default is a company channel or individual client channel. This default affects the type of channel that will be automatically created in Messaging and Files. Also, you can allow client users to invite team members.
Client statuses
Clients can have different statuses. They work as follows:
Status | Definition |
|---|---|
Not invited | The client was created but not yet invited via email. Note that you can also invite a client by manually sharing an invite link, but in this case their status will remain Not invited. |
Invited | The client received an email invite that prompted them to finish creating their account. Creating an account involves either setting a password or signing up with Google. |
Active | The client successfully activated their account. |
Client statuses and email notifications
Many actions you take, like sending a message or assigning an invoice to a client, trigger email notifications. However, when a client is in Not invited status, email notifications are suppressed. This can be helpful if you want to first set up a client account (upload files, assign forms, etc.) and then send out a single invite email notification.
Ways to create clients
You can create clients by creating them one at a time, by importing them, or by allowing self-serve sign up. These three methods are explained in the next sections.
Client and Company channels
Channels are a concept we use for the Messages and Files Apps. They let you send messages or share files with an individual client, a group of clients, or a company (i.e. all clients associated with the company).
Creating channels
Note that if you have enabled companies then you can set your default channel type to be an individual channel or company channel.
To create a new channel, click on the + on the Messages or Files page. Then select one or more clients or select a company and submit. A new channel will be created. If the channel already exists, you will be redirected to it.
Channel types
Note that if you have disabled companies then you will only be able to to make use of client channels. You will not be able to use group channels or company channels.
A client channel is a channel with just one single client (i.e. one individual with an email). Other clients cannot see it.
A company channel is a channel that includes all clients that are associated with the company. If the clients associated with a company change, the clients that can access a company channel also change.
A group channel is a channel with two or more clients. Note that the clients in a group channel must be assigned to the same company. You cannot create a group channel with clients from multiple companies.
Editing channel members
Client channels cannot be edited or deleted. If you wish to delete the channel for an individual client, the client must be deleted.
Company channels are visible to all members of a company. If you wish to edit the members of a company, you will need to do so from the Clients page. Adding or removing a company from a client will add or remove the client from any company channels.
Group channels can be edited by clicking the 3 dots in the top-right of the channel and selecting Edit members. You can then add or remove members using the checkboxes in the dropdown.