Create your workspace

This page takes you from nothing to a working workspace: an account, an organization, and a first space with rooms in it. It takes about five minutes.

Sign in

Openbook does not have a sign-in of its own. Every Bookbag product shares one account service, the way every Google product shares one Google account.

1. Go to app.openbook.work.
2. You are handed to Bookbag at sso.bookbag.ai to sign in.
3. Sign in, or create an account there if you do not have one, and you land back in Openbook.

Your name, your email, your password, your profile picture and the list of devices you are signed in on all live at the Bookbag account. Openbook reads them; it never keeps a second copy. Change any of them once, at the account, and every Bookbag product sees the change.

Old links still work. /auth/register, /auth/resetpassword and /auth/changepassword are still valid addresses in Openbook — they hand you to the account service, which is where registering and password changes happen.

Signing out signs you out everywhere. Openbook ends its own session and then ends the shared one, because ending only the local session would find the shared session still alive and sign you straight back in. The reverse is true too: sign out of another Bookbag product and Openbook notices within about ten seconds.

Create your first organization

An organization is the container for everything else: members, spaces, and billing. Openbook walks you through creating your first one right after you sign in.

1. Give it a name — usually your company or team name.
2. Add a description so new members know what it's for.
3. Chat-room access defaults to everyone in the organization; you can leave that as is. (Organization chat is open to everyone in the organization regardless.)

Organizations belong to your Bookbag account, not to Openbook. The same organization is the one you have in every Bookbag product, and one account can belong to several organizations. Who is in it, what role each person holds, who owns it and who has an invitation pending are all decided at the account service — see Invite your team.

Billing is Openbook's own, per organization. Every new organization starts a 14-day Pro trial automatically — full Pro features, no card required. See Your Pro trial for what that includes.

Create your first space

A space is a team or project's home. After the organization exists, create one:

1. Click the "+" in the sidebar and choose Create a space.
2. Name the space.
3. Choose visibility: everyone in the organization, or only certain people. Pick "only certain people" for anything sensitive — a leadership space, a client project — and everyone-in-the-org for team homes you want discoverable.

Start from a template (optional)

While creating the space, you can pick one of 12 space templates:

• Software Team
• Product Team
• Marketing Team
• Sales Team
• Design Team
• HR & People
• Operations
• Finance
• Agency / Client Delivery
• Startup HQ
• Single Project
• Customer Support

A template provisions a set of rooms suited to that kind of team, with seeded sample content — boards arrive with example cards and rows — so the space isn't empty on day one. The sample content is there to show you how each room works; edit or delete it as you replace it with real work.

Templates are a starting point, not a commitment. Everything a template creates can be renamed, rearranged, or removed, and you can add more rooms at any time.

If you'd rather build from scratch, skip the template and the space starts empty.

Add rooms

Rooms are the apps inside your space — a kanban board, a docs room, a chat room, and so on (what's a room?). To add one:

1. Open the space.
2. In the space's sidebar, click +.
3. Search or scroll the room types, pick one, name the room, and choose who can see it.

There are 21 types. Creating a room is limited to the space's owner and admins.

Or describe what you want

If you would rather not assemble a space by hand, the concierge on the organization's home page and on each space's home page will build it for you. Describe the team and the work, and it creates spaces, rooms, boards and stories through the same actions you would use yourself. See The concierge.

Check your setup

Before inviting anyone, take a minute to verify:

• The organization name and description read the way you want — new members will see them.
• The space's visibility matches your intent (org-wide vs. restricted).
• If you used a template, you've had a quick look at the sample content so you can tell teammates what's placeholder and what's real.

Next step

Bring people in. A workspace with one person in it is a notebook; the product starts paying off when your team is inside. Head to Invite your team.