How to give your coworkers a good starting point every morning

Why the usual fixes stop working

The pinned message in the team channel is right for about a month. Then a second message gets pinned, then a third, and the links in the first one go stale because nobody edits a pin. The shared document called “Team links” works until the person who made it changes roles, after which it is still there, still linked from the pin, and wrong. A bookmarks folder is the most honest of the three: it lives in one browser, so at least nobody expects it to be shared.

All three fail the same way. The links live somewhere people have to go to on purpose, and keeping them current is one person’s job that was never actually assigned. A shared start page fixes both halves. The links sit on the new tab, which everyone opens several dozen times a day, and the people who notice a link is wrong are the people who can fix it.

The setup: one shared board, kept current by the people who know

ReadyTab is a new tab extension for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Brave. One person on the team hosts a board. Everyone else subscribes to it, and the ones you choose can edit it. The host needs the Full plan, CHF 25 a year. The rest of the team uses the free extension, including to edit. Budget an afternoon for the first version and fifteen minutes a week after that.

1. Build the board. Install ReadyTab from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons and create a workspace named after the team. Three groups are enough to start: Everyday tools for the tracker, the chat, the calendar and the drive; This project for the brief, the working files and the client folder; People and rituals for the standup notes, the on-call rota and the holiday calendar. An empty group offers Import from bookmarks, so the folder you already have becomes a group in one step.
2. Add the text people copy every day. Every team has four or five snippets that get typed from memory or dug out of an old message: the meeting room code, the ticket template, the standard reply to a common question, the invoice reference. Add each one as a clipboard item in a group called Copy and paste. One click copies the text.
3. Write down how the morning starts. Add a short step list at the top of the board: check the tracker, read the channel, update your status, join standup at 9:15. Next to it, a routine called Start my day that opens the tracker, the calendar and the channel in one click. New people follow the list; everyone else presses the button.
4. Host it with Full. Open Settings → Account and paste the license key, then go to Settings → Spaces → Sharing → Live boards and choose New live board. Pick the team workspace, give it a name and set a password. ReadyTab encrypts the board in your browser before it is uploaded; the server only holds something it cannot read.
5. Send the team the token. One message: the install link, the read token and the password. Each person installs ReadyTab, opens Settings → Spaces → Sharing → Live boards → Join board, and enters the token and password. The board appears as a tab in their new tab, read-only, next to whatever personal workspaces they already have or will make.
6. Give edit keys to the people who know. In the same Live boards screen, choose Edit keys and add one per person or sub-team that owns a part of the board: “Anna”, “Design”, “Support”. They enter the key once under Boards you joined and can change the board from then on. Edits save on their own, an open board picks up changes every 30 seconds, and if two people save at the same moment the second one is asked to review before anything is replaced. When someone leaves the team you revoke their key; the other keys and everyone’s viewing access keep working. The managed boards guide has the details.
7. Change links on the board, not in chat. When the tracker moves or the brief gets a new version, whoever notices fixes the link on the board instead of posting the new one in the channel. The fix is on every screen within a minute of the next tab opening, and the channel never gets a second pinned message. The setup only holds if the team keeps this habit.

What changes for the team

• The morning starts in the same place for everyone. The new tab has the tracker, the brief and today’s standup notes on it. The question “where is the…” mostly stops, and the person who started on Monday has the same page as the person who has been there four years.
• Links stay current without a named maintainer. Four or five people hold edit keys, so the person who notices a dead link is usually a person who can fix it, and the current copy is on everyone’s screen instead of on your machine.
• Nothing is paid per person. One license hosts the board. When the team grows from eight to twelve, four more people install the free extension and paste the token, and the invoice stays the same.

What this does not do

Nobody is forced to use it. Each person installs the extension once and can remove it, or keep their own new tab and open the board as a normal tab. In practice the board stays because the standup notes are on it. If you need a page that people cannot opt out of, that is an IT conversation about a managed browser, and the IT admins page is honest about where that line falls.

Edit keys are labels, not identities. The board does not record which person made a change, and several people can share one key. For a team of ten that is what makes it quick: there are no accounts to create and no permissions to manage. If you need an audit trail, you need a different kind of tool. Personal notes opened with the Notes button are also not shared; only what is placed on the board is.

Start from a template instead of a blank board

The Studio team board from the showcases is the layout this guide describes: a heading, two link groups, a welcome step list and three callouts. Download the board file, then go to Settings → Data → Import. Importing replaces the workspaces in that browser profile, so do it in a fresh profile or export your own boards first. Rename the groups, swap the links for yours, add the clipboard items from step 2, and you are at step 4 in ten minutes.

Related

• ReadyTab for team leads: the hub this guide belongs to, with the sharing modes, pricing and the questions team leads ask.
• How teams use ReadyTab: collaborative and curated boards side by side, and the practical questions.
• ReadyTab vs start.me for teams: a $25-a-month team subscription for 10 users versus one owner on Full.
• Pricing: what a team of 5, 15 or 50 pays.
• Sharing and publishing in the docs: share codes, public boards and live boards.

Frequently asked questions

Does everyone on the team need to pay?

No. One person hosts the board on the Full plan at CHF 25 a year. Everyone else uses the free extension to follow the board and, with an edit key, to edit it. There are no seats.

Can my teammates change the board?

Only if you give them an edit key. The board is read-only by default. You can add a named key per person or per sub-team, and replace or revoke any one of them later without touching the others.

How quickly do changes show up for everyone?

Edits save automatically. A board that is open on someone’s screen checks for updates every 30 seconds and when they come back to it, so a fixed link is on everyone’s new tab within about a minute.

What about people who will not install an extension?

Publish the same workspace as a public board. It is a read-only web page behind one link that opens in any browser, including on a phone, and you update it in place.