Getting started
Starting a team
Starting a team takes a minute: what you enter, the code that confirms your address, naming your team or joining one that invited you, and the Free plan.
A team is where your projects live. Starting one takes a minute: an account first, then a name for the team once your address is confirmed.
What you enter
On the Start for free page:
- First name and Last name — what your colleagues see next to the things you do.
- Email — how you sign in, and where we send the code that confirms it.
- Password — choose one, type it twice.
- Cell number (optional) — leave it empty if you like. If you enter one, tick the box beside it to agree to texts; it starts unticked. See Text messages.
- I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy — a box you tick yourself; each name opens the document. We keep a record of when you agreed, which version, and the address and browser you agreed from.
There is a quiet check on the page that tells us you are a person and not a script. Almost nobody sees it; if it ever asks you something, answer it and carry on.
The code that confirms your address
Straight after, we email a six-digit code to the address you gave, and the next page has one box for it. Type it in and two things are done at once: your address is confirmed, and that code by email is your second sign-in step from now on (see Two-step sign-in). Until you do, nothing else opens: the address is yours to prove, and it is the one every notice about your work will go to.
If the code has not arrived in a minute or two, look in the junk folder, or press Send a new code. Would rather use an authenticator app or a text message? Choose another way on the same page. With an app, we send a link to confirm the address instead: follow it to carry on.
Name your team, or join one that invited you
With the address confirmed, one page asks where you are going:
- Nobody has invited you: the page is just Name your team. Your company or your team is the usual choice. It sits at the top of every page and you can change it later in the team settings. Press Start your team and you are on your dashboard.
- A team has invited your address: each one is listed — its name, who invited you and what you will be able to do — with Join. Join puts you on that team. Below the list, Start your own team does the same as above, if that is what you came for.
Only invitations sent to the address you just confirmed are shown, and nothing is shown before it is confirmed. If you chose a plan on the pricing page, this page says so again; the team starts on Free either way, and Billing has that plan ready for a card.
Once your team is started you get one more email from us, a welcome: what is set up, the three things people usually do first and how to do each, a link to your team's own getting-started guide, and an invitation to reply, or to use the contact form, if you get stuck. A person reads both. That is the only one; there is no series after it.
The first weeks
For the first three weeks a team exists, its admins see a Getting started card at the top of the dashboard: four things — make a project, put down a task, invite someone (a colleague, or a client as a guest), finish something — each ticked off the moment it has happened, read from the team itself rather than from anything you have to report. Do all four and the card leaves on its own; press Close this and it leaves for you, and stays gone. Nobody but an admin sees it, and nothing waits on it — every part of the product works from the first minute whether or not the card is still there.
A guide written for your team
Every team has its own getting-started guide, from the minute it exists. Signed in, open Docs and it is at the top: Getting started, for your team's name. It is written from your team as it is now — its name, its people and their roles, its first project, the features you have switched on, and your first fifteen minutes — so it never describes something your team has turned off. Add a person or turn on a feature and the guide says so the next time you open it. Download PDF on that page gives you the same guide to print or hand round.
It is for the team's admins and members. Guests and field workers see the projects or the tasks they were given instead.
You start on the Free plan
Every team starts on the Free plan, and it does not run out. Free has every feature — projects, tasks, files, notes, time logging and time reports, field workers, exports, templates and integrations; you pay for room, not for features. Free holds 5 people, 2 active projects and 1 GB of files. A field worker takes one of Free's seats, like any member; guests are free in any number, and we never ask for a card to start.
Moving to a paid plan is choosing one in Team settings → Billing; there is no trial — see Plans and billing.
Nothing counts down at you. When the team outgrows that room — a sixth person, a third active project, a file that will not fit — the message says so plainly and names the plan with more room. An admin moves up from the Billing page — choose the plan, enter a card on the payment processor's own checkout, and the room is there. Plans and billing has the whole ladder.
A Free team nobody uses is not locked, but it is not kept for ever either: after 90 days with no activity the owner is emailed the day its work will be deleted, and any sign-in before that day cancels it. Plans and billing has the whole rule.
When the terms change
When we change the Terms of Service or the Privacy Policy in a way that matters, the next page you open after signing in says so: what changed, a link to each updated document, and one box to tick. The rest of sjTasks opens again the moment you agree, exactly where you were. If you would rather not agree, Sign out is on the same page. A fix to a typo never asks.
A team of your own, when you are a guest of somebody else's
If you have been brought into a client's or a colleague's team as a guest — reading and adding notes, but not running the work — you can start a team of your own at any time. Your dashboard shows a single line offering it, and the Create team page in the top-right menu does the same thing.
Starting one changes nothing about where you are already a guest: same access, same projects, same notes. You simply have two teams, and the switcher in the top bar moves between them.