Morning with the assistant

The first glance — the Today screen

The Today screen opens first on launch — it’s a showcase with no data of its own: three numbers in the greeting (meetings, tasks, important mail) and up to 14 widgets with today’s mail, calendar and task items.

There’s no briefing among the widgets any more — there used to be, it was removed to keep the screen a clean snapshot rather than a workspace. The text summary and decisions live in the assistant panel.

The working entry point — the assistant panel

Clicking the assistant in the status bar opens what Today doesn’t have: a brief written like a secretary and a feed of situations with actions. Start triaging your day there — not just a list, but a picture grouped by meaning: Needs attention, Suggestions, What’s happening, Done (more in Brief and situations, and where suggestions come from at all in How the assistant decides what to suggest).

Note

The Today screen and the assistant panel sometimes show slightly different mail and calendar numbers — they look at the same data, but not always through the same query. Off by one or two isn’t a bug, just different slices of the same picture. Treat the assistant’s feed as the source of truth for decisions, not the widgets.

Finishing what the brief didn’t close on its own

The assistant can’t always close a situation with one button — sometimes it’s easier to finish in the module itself:

• Mail flagged “needs attention” in the brief is the same list as Smart Hub’s “Needs attention” — it has more actions there (create a task, log an expense, unsubscribe) than the feed does.
• Today’s and overdue tasks — open “My tasks” in CRM rather than just the Today widget: Jira tasks are mixed in there too, if it’s connected; Today’s widget doesn’t include them.
• Meetings with detail (RSVPs, attendees, the meeting room) — the Calendar module itself; the Today widget only shows a count.

An order that doesn’t duplicate the work

1. Today on launch — a quick glance at how much there is to do.
2. The assistant panel — the brief and the feed: what you can hand to the agent with one button.
3. Whatever’s left after the feed — mail’s Smart Hub, “My tasks”, the Calendar module itself — one place per kind of work, without triaging the same thing twice in a different shape.