05 · Team, AI & assistant
This chapter covers the shared-work queues where your team hands work back and forth (tasks, approvals, and team coverage), Vera the AI analyst grounded in your own portfolio and documents, the automations and deliverables built on top of her, and the ways your team talks to each other and to our analysts. Everything here is about getting work assigned, answered, and moving.
Tasks
Shared to-dos for your team as one runway with four views: follow-ups on renewals, negotiation actions, and anything else worth not forgetting.
On the screen
- The runway masthead — states where the work stands: open, due today with the overdue count called out, in progress, and cleared this week. These four move as you work, so the figures are always the board you are looking at. The New task action lives here too.
- Four views, one board — the band under the masthead switches views: Board (the drag and drop lanes), My day (every active task in landing order, grouped past their date, due today, tomorrow, this week, further out, and no date), Ledger (the whole runway as a dense table, with a toggle to include Done), and The bench (who is carrying what, with a load bar per teammate and their next due task). Press 1 to 4 to switch, / to search, N for a new task.
- The task file — click any task in any view to open its file, a right hand panel where the status, due date, owner, and notes all edit in place. The file is in the page address, so a forwarded link opens straight on that task.
- The pick up tray — the bench view leads with tasks that have no owner. Take it assigns one to you with a click; unowned work is how a date gets missed.
- One click complete and defer — in My day, the circle at the left of a row marks it done, and the Today and +1w moves push its date without opening anything.
- The pace instrument — the rail answers when the runway clears: drag the slider to test a weekly clearing pace against the active count.
- Delegate to Vera — every open task carries a sparkle control (on the card, the row, and inside the file). Delegating hands the task to Vera, the AI teammate: she reads the task and its linked record, writes the finished work product into the task notes, moves it to Done, and notifies you. Requires an AI plan.
How to use it
- Create a task with N or the New task button, assign it to the teammate who owns it, link it to the vendor or renewal it belongs to, and set a due date.
- Run the week from My day: work the list top to bottom, complete with the circle, and push dates with the defer moves when the plan changes.
- Once a week, open The bench: empty the pick up tray and balance the load bars before anything slips.
- To see just the items assigned to you rather than the whole team, use the Assigned to me filter or open My work.
Approvals
Sign-offs your team routes through the platform, for example a negotiation mandate waiting for a budget owner. The page is a four tab workspace: the queue leads, the setup sits behind its own tabs.
On the screen
- The gate — the masthead states what waits and what it is worth: requests needing a human decision, the combined annual value on the line, how many have run past their SLA, and the median time from request to decision over the last 90 days.
- Auto-cleared — under the masthead, the share of the last 90 days' decided requests that your policies cleared before anyone read them. The rest reached a person because a rule said they should.
- Queue — every request waiting on a human, oldest wait first. Each row shows the wait or SLA chip, who it is routed to, and the AI risk summary; approvers decide right on the row. The tab count turns red when a request is past its SLA.
- Decided — the decision ledger: cycle time analytics (median days from request to decision, decisions per month), plus a search box and an outcome filter (approved, rejected, auto approved, human decided).
- Automation — your auto approve policies and the rule proposals learned from your own decision record. Every auto approval lists the guards it passed.
- Vera's review — on a deal sign-off request, Vera reviews the snapshot before the chain votes: the latest quote against the mandate target, the concession balance, and the price movement. Her Flagged or Clear verdict, the checks behind it, and a short analyst note render beside the approval panel. She advises the chain and never casts a vote.
- Routing — the authority matrix (which type and amount band routes to whom, with optional second steps and SLAs) beside the approval threshold.
- New request — the button on the masthead opens a side sheet to raise a renewal or spend item for sign off.
How to use it
- Open the Queue tab, review the items waiting on you, and approve or reject each one. A rejection asks for a reason; it becomes the audit trail.
- To raise something for sign off, use New request on the masthead; routing rules pick the decider.
- Track past sign offs and your approval cycle time on the Decided tab.
Related: Deal approvals setup · My work
Team
Who owns what across your organization, and more importantly what nobody owns: renewals without an owner, open tasks, and assigned findings.
On the screen
- The bench — the masthead states the coverage verdict: people in the workspace, owned renewals and open tasks in flight, what sits in the pick up tray with no owner and what that is worth a year, and the renewal cycles closed in the last eight weeks.
- Team pulse — renewal cycles closed per week over the last eight weeks, once anything has closed.
- Member rows — each teammate with the renewals, tasks, and findings on their plate.
- Unowned renewals — agreements with no renewal owner. Assign these before a notice window gets missed.
How to use it
- Scan the unowned renewals first and assign an owner to each one.
- Use the member rows to balance who is carrying what.
Tips
- Owners can invite a teammate from here when there is more work than people to cover it.
Board
The team's durable forum beside the chat stream: decisions, vendor intel, questions, and wins, shelved so they can be found again months later.
On the screen
- Category tabs — Decision, Vendor intel, Question, Win, and General, with pinned posts leading every list.
- Posts — a title, the write-up, and threaded replies. Record links in a post render as grounded cards (the same cards chat shows), and @mentions notify the teammate.
- Link a record — the composer's control for inserting a proposal, renewal, deal, or vendor reference; the record's page lists the post under Discussed in.
- Templates — the composer's Start from pills prefill the three shapes teams shelve most: a Decision memo, a Vendor review, and a Renewal retro.
- Accepted answers — on a question, the author (or an owner) marks the reply that settled it; the list shows a check so nobody re-litigates.
- Pins — owners pin the posts the whole team should keep seeing.
- Open the workroom — on the unfiltered view, once a post exists, a navy band opens the board as a workroom. It carries a cover sheet with live counts, an exhibit per category, the question docket, and a What now sheet. ⚡ What now drafts the board digest for circulation, emails it to your team, copies the digest or the one line summary, proves the wins as savings, opens the estate the records govern, takes the next decision to the Desk, shelves the next record, and opens the newest one. ✦ Ask Vera answers from the records themselves rather than from a summary of them. It reads live from your newest posts; nothing is generated or stored, and nothing sends from a workroom.
How to use it
- When a decision lands (walking away from an uplift, standardizing on a vendor), write it up as a Decision post and link the deal it came from.
- Ask the team with a Question post; accept the reply that answers it.
- File what a rep told you as Vendor intel so the next negotiator starts warmer.
Tips
- Chat is for the conversation; the Board is for what should outlive it. When a thread reaches a conclusion, shelve the conclusion here.
Related: Chat · Tasks · Record pages
Vera AI
Vera is an AI analyst grounded in your actual portfolio and uploaded documents, and her page is a command desk: a fixed application frame rather than a scrolling page. The desks stand in a dark rail on the left, the work happens on one white paper at a time in the middle, and a dock on the right edge holds what to do next and where you stand. Four desks: The conversation, Read a document, Vendor playbook, and Specialist agents. Switching desks never loses work; a report that is generating keeps generating while you talk. The full conversation history with memory and saved threads is Full chat in the command bar, not a second entry point.
On the screen
- The command bar — the desk switcher, the workspace vitals (records on file, how many renew inside 90 days and what they are worth a year, reports written), and Full chat. Every figure is read from your stored records before you type anything.
- The desk rail — the four desks, numbered, with the one you are on as a white pill. Under them: Pick back up, your recent conversations with the last question asked, Reports Vera has written, the newest four with a link to the full library, and the allowance meter showing the agent reports you have left this period.
- The start options — the conversation desk opens with your own choices, not a vendor Vera picked for you. Work a contract on file: pick any agreement and the Read a document desk opens with it already chosen. Drop a contract here: drag a PDF onto the tile (or press it to choose one) and it arrives on the reader already staged. Pick a conversation back up: your recent threads with the last question asked. Each option shows only when your workspace can honour it, so a fresh workspace simply gets the drop tile.
- Where you stand — the standing position lives in the dock, behind the crosshair icon. The headline names the renewal worth working and how many days out it is, with the money at the window and the time to decide under it, and one button into the wall those figures came from. Every figure is read from your stored records. A workspace with nothing on file gets the honest version instead: what Vera can answer today, and what one upload adds.
- The composer — docked at the foot of the conversation paper, caret already in it, so you can type without clicking anything. A scope chip says what the answer will be read from, Attach hands Vera a document to read, and Tools (or typing a forward slash in an empty box) opens the three generator desks. Under it, a suggested question or three built from your own estate: they name your vendors, your contract count, and your nearest renewal rather than offering generic prompts.
- The conversation — your question is set behind a gold rule, Vera's answer behind her mark beside it, with the reasoning trail above and the verification line below. Asking a follow up adds to the thread rather than replacing the answer you are reading, and the thread scrolls under the docked composer. Follow up suggestions appear above the composer, read from the thread you are actually in. Every exchange saves to your Ask history.
- The What now dock — the lightning icon on the right edge, open by default on a wide screen. It reads your workspace and recommends the one move worth making first: with nothing on file it tells you to give Vera something to read, with agreements but no report it tells you to run your first one, and once a renewal comes inside 180 days it names that vendor as the one worth working now. Start here carries the first move with a gold edge; Take it to the vendor opens the vendor room, a negotiation, or the Deal-Room with those numbers; When a report is not enough books the analyst or hands a near renewal to the team. A move that names a desk opens it in place. Escape closes the drawer, and Escape on a generator desk returns to the conversation. Seeded sample agreements never count towards the figures or the advice.
- Read a document — its own desk, reached from the rail, Attach, or the tools menu. Pick where to start from (a contract you already have, a PDF you upload, or no contract at all), say in a line or two what you are trying to achieve, and press Analyze and build the report. You can also drag a PDF anywhere onto the panel. The file is read once for the analysis and then deleted.
- Watching the read, and where it lands — the read takes the whole screen while it runs, the same stage a contract decode plays on: your document sketched at the left with a sweep running down it, the percentage complete, and the passes named as they happen, from the pricing tables and the discount structure through liability and termination rights to scoring leverage on every finding. The percentage is an estimate against how long a read usually takes rather than a countdown, and while your file is still uploading the bar shows the real upload figure instead. When the analysis lands it opens as a room: full screen on the exec brief paper, with the document's own page underneath when you close it. The room is part of the address, so forwarding that link opens a colleague straight into the analysis, and Back closes the room onto the page. Closing the stage while it is still working only stops you watching it; the analysis keeps running and is waiting under Deliverables when it is done.
- Vendor playbook — its own desk: pick a major vendor and Vera writes a ready negotiation playbook with no document needed.
- Specialist agents — its own desk, the named specialists as compact rows, grouped into analysis specialists, negotiation deliverables, and your own team's agents, each showing what it delivers and whether it reads your PDF. The whole set fits in about one screen. Open one, choose the contract, and generate. The run keeps going if you switch back to the conversation.
- Chat — answers cite whether a figure comes from your contracts or from market experience. Your conversation is saved and private to you, and the assistant keeps a long-term memory of durable facts about you (reviewable and deletable under Assistant memory).
- Market questions without your figures — ask which vendors the platform covers and Vera reads the benchmark library itself: the total, the shape by category, and whether a specific vendor is in it. Ask what a good discount is on a vendor and she answers from that vendor's reference set: the typical (median) discount off list and what top-quartile buyers get, or for per-unit vendors the typical and best-quartile net fee. Once your own figures are on file she runs the exact standing on them instead.
- Grounded figures — when an answer states a figure taken from your portfolio or from a live data query, that figure is grounded in your stored data. The prose itself stays clean of source tags; the provenance line under the answer records where the numbers came from, the same way generated reports list their sources below the document.
- Verification line — an answer that states figures is checked after it finishes streaming, by the same groundedness check that guards reports. A line under the answer then says Figures verified against your data, or flags the specific figures to review. No line means the answer had no figures to check.
- Staged changes — when you ask Vera to change something (for example move a renewal stage), she stages it as a card with Confirm and Reject buttons. Nothing runs until you confirm. The same cards appear in the Ctrl/⌘ J dialog, and deciding in either place applies everywhere.
- "Can I help you?": every Vera surface opens with the same question and the same six intents, phrased the way you would say them: I have a renewal coming up, I want to check if a price is fair, I need to review a contract, I want to cut our software spend, I am preparing for a vendor negotiation, show me what this platform can do. Answer in your own words, in a sentence or a paragraph, and Vera names the one tool that does it, links straight to it, and says what it will do and what it needs from you. If what you want could go two ways she asks the one question that decides it, then recommends. She routes from the platform's own registry of every screen, so the link always opens a real page, and if you are already on the right screen she tells you which control to press instead of sending you in a circle.
- Vera on every page: the button at the bottom right of every screen carries her name. Pressing it (or Ctrl/⌘ /) opens her with the same question, and the written guide for that screen sits underneath. Ctrl/⌘ J opens the same conversation as a dialog from anywhere.
- Ask Vera about this: every screen that produces something to read (a deal room, a generated report, a tool result, a benchmark) carries an Ask Vera box beside it. Vera reads the artifact itself, not just the page name: the figures it states, the section it argues, the asks it lists, and, on a deal room, which planned moves are still unticked. That is what makes "What should I do next?" answerable with your next actual move rather than general advice. The same reading reaches Ctrl/⌘ J, the floating panel, and the voice assistant while you stand on that page, so wherever you ask, Vera is looking at the same screen you are.
- A conversation per thing: each artifact keeps its own saved conversation. Ask four questions about your Salesforce deal room, come back next week, open the room, and Vera picks up exactly where you left off, with the room's current numbers in hand. The Ctrl/⌘ J header says which conversation you are in and carries a one click switch back to your main portfolio chat. Everything Vera has learned about you spans all of them; only the transcripts are separate.
- Pick back up: the desk rail lists your most recent conversations, and the chat page lists every one you have open with Vera, newest first, with what you last asked and how many exchanges are saved. Opening one takes you back to the report it belongs to.
- Vera as a teammate — beyond answering questions, Vera holds a named seat on the team. You can delegate a task to her from Tasks and she does the work; she automatically reviews every deal sign-off request before the chain votes (see Approvals); on a negotiation she preps the room before a vendor call with a pre-call brief; and Competitive Quotes lets her negotiate with up to ten vendors at once. Everything she does is grounded in your stored deal data and appears on the record's timeline under her own name.
How to use it
- Start from the options on the desk: pick a contract to work, drop a PDF on the tile, or pick a conversation back up. Or ask about any vendor, price, or clause in plain language, or press one of the suggested questions.
- Not sure where to start? Open Where you stand in the dock (the crosshair icon), then take the first move in the What now dock, the one with the gold edge.
- To commission a document instead of an answer, switch desks: press Attach if you have the contract, or pick Read a document, Vendor playbook, or Specialist agents in the rail, the desk pills, or the tools menu (a forward slash in an empty composer opens it).
- Keep asking. A follow up keeps the answer you are reading, and the suggestions above the composer are read from the thread you are in.
- Finished reports land under Reports Vera has written in the desk rail; press All reports for the full library.
- Open Vera anywhere in the app with Ctrl/⌘ J, so you never have to leave the page you are on. On an ordinary page it is the same conversation as this one; standing on a report or a deal room it opens that artifact's own conversation instead, grounded in what is on screen, with the same verification and confirm cards.
- On any report, use the Ask Vera box under it and start with What should I do next?; the answer names the specific move, ask, or clause from that document.
- Prefer talking? Spoken answers name their sources in words: "your contract shows" for figures read from your documents, "from market data" for market figures.
Tips
- Vera answers only from your organization's own contracts and our market data, and every figure is tagged with its source so you can tell a stored number from a market estimate.
- The floating Ask Vera button (bottom right on every screen, Ctrl/⌘ /) is the same Vera: it opens on her question with the screen's written guide underneath, and a question asked there continues here and in Ctrl/⌘ J, grounded in the screen you were on when you asked. The bottom right corner itself is shared: when the Talk to Vera panel, an upload progress chip, or a walkthrough is active, the widgets stack side by side instead of covering one another, with the help button stepping into its quiet round form.
- Vera's long-term memory is fully reviewable and deletable under Settings › Assistant memory.
Related: Assistant memory · Deliverables · Workflow agents
Workflow agents
An agent is a job you describe once and never do again: an AI analysis chained into an email, a Slack post, or a task, running on a schedule, on every proposal upload, or when a renewal enters its notice window. The page is a workforce desk with four views on the masthead band.
On the screen
- The masthead — how many agents are on staff of the number you have built, runs in the last 30 days, how many runs are paused waiting on someone, and the hours the completed runs have given back. The Hire an agent and Build one from scratch actions live here.
- Four views, one desk — the band switches views: The staff (every agent with its live heartbeat, its step chain drawn as a strip, and its Run now, Pause, edit, and delete controls), Runs (the console, with a badge on the tab the moment a run pauses for a decision), Builder (a standing bench: pick a trigger, then stack steps in order, with
{{vendor}}and{{title}}tokens pulling in details from whatever set the run off), and Wiring (the agent inbox, the ghost writer, and a plain reference of every trigger). Press 1 to 4 to switch, H to hire an agent. - Hire an agent — the primary action, and the way in for almost everyone. It opens the wizard below.
- The rail — beside every view: the runs-per-week pulse over the last eight weeks, any run paused for a sign off with a link straight to it, and the payoff instrument: drag a runs-per-week pace and it states the hours given back a quarter, at 20 minutes of manual work saved a run.
- Editing an agent — the pencil on any staff card opens its draft on the Builder view; saving returns you to the staff.
- Runs — every run keeps a per-step record; open one to read the AI memo it produced.
- The run as a briefing case — an opened run leads with a cover: what it produced, how many steps completed, and a contents list of every document it wrote with read times and unread markers. The documents hang as miniature first pages you can open in place, each with its Word export, and the step by step run log sits one fold below, expanded while the run is live.
Hire an agent, the wizard
Four steps, and every one arrives already answered so you are correcting rather than composing.
- What should happen without you? Thirty one roles, each stating what it watches and what it writes. If you hold a renewal inside its notice window the renewal roles are listed first, and the page says why.
- On which vendor? Pick one of your own vendors and the role fills in around it. The line under the picker rewrites itself with your real numbers as you choose, so you can see what the agent will actually say before anything is saved.
- Here is the chain we built — the trigger, then every step in order with what it will do. Nothing here has to be right the first time; the builder can change all of it later.
- Watch it run — the rehearsal. It runs the whole chain on your own records, and every email goes only to you, no Slack post is made, no task is created, and nobody else is notified. You read the memo it wrote before the agent is ever live.
How to use it
- Press Hire an agent, pick the role that matches the job, pick the vendor, and run the rehearsal.
- Read what came back. If it is right, the agent is already saved and you turn it on; if it is not, open it in the builder and change the step that was wrong.
- Set a workflow to fire on every proposal upload when you want it to run itself.
Related: Vera AI · Proposals & upload
Deliverables
Every delivered benchmark, AI brief, tool run, and draft in one place, laid out as an inbox: folders on the left, the list in the middle, the document on the right. Reading one never leaves the page.
Your position sits in the masthead: reports delivered with the latest date, how many are in production, and how many vendors they cover, on the same band as the Library, Generate, Drafts and Lessons tabs.
On the screen
- Folders — Inbox holds everything that is not archived and carries the unread count. Flagged holds the ones you marked to come back to. Delivered to you is the analyst team's work, Drafts your unfinished ones, and Archive everything you have filed away. In production underneath is not a folder but a count of the benchmarks still being written; they arrive in the inbox when they are published.
- The list — newest first, one row per document: the vendor or counterparty, the document title, and a line saying what kind of document it is. An unread document carries a blue dot and sits in bold; once you open it the row goes quiet. Search this folder filters what you are looking at.
- The reading pane — the document's type, title, vendor, and the day it landed, then Read it to open the full document, Word to download it where the type supports one, and Open the record to go to the contract or deal it belongs to.
- Triage — Flag marks a document to come back to, Unread puts the dot back so it stays on your list, and Archive takes it out of the inbox without deleting anything. Archived documents stay readable in the Archive folder and can be restored.
- Reads across the whole library — under the inbox, the AI narratives that read across every document rather than one: the board report and the weakest metrics card.
- Commission a deliverable — the full catalog of document types, folded away once your library has something in it and open by default when it does not.
How to use it
- Work the bold rows first. Those are the documents nobody on your side has opened.
- Select one to read it in the pane beside the list, then press Read it for the full document.
- Flag what you need to come back to, and archive the rest so the inbox stays the things that still need you.
- Create a new one from Vera AI, or open Commission a deliverable at the foot of the page.
Tips
- Read, flagged, and archived state is held in your own browser, so your unread count is yours and not your colleagues'. Clearing site data resets it, and nothing is ever deleted by archiving.
Related: Vera AI · Deliverable exports, sharing & history
Deliverable exports, sharing & history
Every AI deliverable carries the same three companions wherever it renders: a download that matches the on-screen document, a public share link guarded by a confidentiality scan, and a version history you can diff and revert.
On the screen
- Download — exports the deliverable as Word (and, for the flagship reports, PowerPoint), rendered in the same executive-brief theme as the on-screen document. Most document types support it; the Formats column in Delivered reports › All documents shows which.
- Share — mints a public link and copies it to your clipboard, so a colleague without an account can read the document. Before the link exists, the deliverable is scanned for content your organization would not want external: named employees, walk-away numbers, internal targets, and internal notes.
- Check before you share — when the scan flags something, the findings render with quoted excerpts and no link is minted. Sharing anyway is an explicit, audited choice; overriding a walk-away number or internal target takes a typed confirmation, not one click.
- History — every regeneration is kept as a version. Open the history to see a word-level diff between any version and the current one, and revert to an earlier version when a regeneration went the wrong way.
How to use it
- Download the Word export when the document leaves the platform; it matches the on-screen brief exactly.
- Press Share to send a read-only link instead of an attachment. If the confidentiality check raises findings, read the excerpts before deciding.
- Regenerated a report and prefer the old one? Open History, compare the diff, and revert.
Tips
- A share link shows the document as it stands; revoking and reissuing is the way to cut off an old copy.
Related: Deliverables · Delivered reports
The commission rail
Two to four gold sparkle chips under a page's verdict, each a one-click order for an executive brief about the page you are on. The chips are labeled with the page's own numbers ("Renewal brief: Salesforce, 41 days out"), never generic, and the rail always ends with a blue question chip that opens Vera pre-filled with a question scoped to the page.
On the screen
- Gold chips — each one commissions a specific document: press it and the brief generates in a reading dialog with stage-by-stage narration.
- The finished brief — an executive summary, numbered sections, a bottom line, and a sources list; every figure is grounded in your stored data, traced in the sources list at the foot of the brief.
- The blue question chip — closes the rail: it opens Vera with a page-scoped question already typed, for when you want an answer rather than a document.
How to use it
- Press the chip whose label matches what you need; the document writes itself in the dialog.
- Read it there, or find it again later on the Deliverables shelf, where it lands automatically.
- Want a conversation instead of a brief? Press the blue chip and ask Vera.
Related: Deliverables · Vera AI
Advisory
Book time with a buyer-side analyst: a human expert who has negotiated with your vendor before, for the moments a report is not enough.
The desk is an application frame, the same command-desk grammar as Vera AI: a command bar with the live allowance, a dark rail with the desk facts and your bookings, the work on white papers in the middle, and a dock on the right edge.
On the screen
- The command bar — sessions left (monthly plus purchased), booked this month against your allowance, and bookings awaiting confirmation. Every figure is your stored usage.
- The desk rail — the desk facts (hours, window, the 72 hour minimum, who the analysts are), your bookings as one-line jumps, and the privacy note.
- The booking paper — the headline states how many sessions are still open, then the desk's availability for the next two weeks, the buy-extra buttons for when the month runs short, and the form: your agenda, then either three proposed times or, where instant booking is enabled, a direct calendar slot. The right side of the card explains the three steps of a session.
- Your bookings — every request as a ticket on its own paper: confirmed sessions carry the date stub and an Add to calendar link, pending ones list your proposed times, and each can be cancelled.
- Start from a topic — in the dock, behind the sparkle icon: four common briefs (renewal strategy, pricing benchmark, vendor consolidation, contract terms). One press opens the desk with the agenda pre-filled.
- Present a session — every booking carries a Present button that runs the meeting full screen during the call: the ticket of record, your brief in your own words, the agenda point by point with a covered counter, then agreed actions you capture live. The printed leave-behind carries exactly the screens you walked.
How to use it
- Write your agenda, or open the dock's Start from a topic panel for a pre-filled brief.
- Propose three times that work for you; we confirm one and send a calendar invite. Where instant booking is on, pick a slot directly instead.
- Track the request in Your bookings; add a confirmed session to your calendar from its ticket.
- If it can wait, message the team instead and they will pick it up in Chat.
Related: Chat · Expert Bench · Your engagements
Your engagements
Every advisory engagement we are running for your organization: where it stands, what happens next, and what we need from you. When your organization commissions consulting work (a Microsoft EA renewal run, a Salesforce SELA review, an audit defense), the engagement lives here as a workspace you share with our team.
On the screen
- Engagement cards — one per engagement: its status (Setup, Active, On hold, Closing, or Closed), the phases completed out of the total with a progress bar, and the next milestone by name.
- The engagement workspace — open a card for the full workspace, organized in tabs: Overview (the phase plan and its activities), Timeline, Team (who is on the engagement, both sides), Discussion (a comment thread on the engagement record), Documents, and Deliverables (published work products). EA and SELA renewal engagements open on a dedicated analysis workspace tab.
- Join card — if you have a seat on the engagement team but have not joined yet, a card at the top asks you to confirm your name and role.
- Data requests — activities our team marks as data requests appear in the plan; providing the data checks them off and keeps the phases moving.
How to use it
- Open the engagement and read the progress bar and next milestone; that is the one-line status.
- Answer anything waiting on you: join the team from the join card, provide open data requests, and reply in Discussion.
- Read published deliverables in the Deliverables tab as the team ships them.
- Anything urgent between milestones goes through Chat; the thread and the workspace reach the same team.
Tips
- Internal working activities on our side are not shown to you; the plan you see is the client-facing plan, and every view you take of the record is written to the audit trail like any other document access.
Related: Advisory · Chat · Managed renewals
Partner portal
Your client book. Every client organization linked to your firm on one table: their contract dates, their next renewal with its notice deadline, and how engaged the account is. Visibility is deliberately narrow, dates and activity only; each client's files, prices, benchmark results, and spend stay inside their own workspace.
The portal is an application frame, the same command-desk grammar as Vera AI: three desks as pills on one command bar (Client book, Prospect proposals, Marketing), the book's vitals beside them, a dark rail that jumps to any section of the desk you are on, the work on a white paper in the middle, and a dock on the right edge carrying What now (invite a client, build a proposal, import your list, send a note, the partner guide) and The boundary (the trust rule, one press away on every desk).
A client's page, and the quarterly business review it composes once that client has turned on outcome sharing:
The public directory buyers browse, and the branded landing page an invited client sees:
On the screen
- The command bar — clients, renewals inside 90 days across the whole book, items needing attention today, and invitations accepted out of invitations sent.
- The desk rail — every section of the book one press away (Your desk today, Clients, Managed renewal requests, the horizon, Grow your book, White label, Program, Meetings), your invitation funnel as four figures, and the data-boundary note.
- Your desk today — a ranked attention queue: notice deadlines that passed or land inside 30 days, clients with no activity in 30 days, workspaces that never signed in, meeting proposals a week without an answer, and invitations about to expire. Each row links to the client or invitation it is about. When nothing qualifies, the queue says so.
- Client book — one row per linked client: adoption stage, the account owner inside your firm, contracts, next renewal (vendor and date), renewals inside 90 days, active members this week, and last activity. The adoption stage reads Active, Getting started, Quiet, Dormant, or Never signed in, derived from real sign-in activity. Rows with a renewal inside 90 days are tinted. Assign the account owner from each client's page; the morning digest names them on items about their accounts.
- Outcomes on client pages — when a client's owner turns on outcome sharing (their switch lives on their Your advisory partner page, off by default and revocable), that client's page shows the results of the work: realized savings with their invoice-verified share, delivered benchmark verdict scores, and closed renewal outcomes. Files, prices, and the analyst narrative are never included, and every look you take is audit logged. With sharing on, Build the quarterly business review composes a client-ready executive brief under your brand, savings, verdicts, renewals closed and coming, adoption, and prioritized recommendations, ready to print to PDF.
- Managed renewal requests — when a client presses Get it managed on one of their renewals, the request lands here and at the top of Your desk today: client, vendor, renewal date, and their note, with Mark contacted and Close. The platform only tracks the state; scope, terms, and fees are agreed between your firms directly.
- Renewal horizon — the next twelve months of tracked renewals across your whole book, counted month by month.
- Grow your book — the invitation funnel (sent, awaiting reply, accepted, active now, with your conversion rate), then the invite form: client company, contact, email, and an optional personal note. The email and its landing page go out under your firm's brand. Open invitations show their expiry date with resend and revoke; accepted ones link to the client workspace they became and show how alive it is. Prospect proposals (
/partner/proposals), the second tab (pictured below): enter a prospect's vendor, unit count, spend, and term, and the calibrated market engine builds a one-page savings estimate under your brand, verdict, percentile, cohort range, and gap to median, shareable by an expiring link you can withdraw at any time. Your tier caps proposals per 30 days. - White label — your brand on the client experience: display name, brand color, and tagline, with a live preview. The logo comes from Settings › Branding. Only workspace owners can edit it. On the white-label tier (a Premier benefit, granted by VendorBenchmark), the section adds Your own sending domain: register a domain you control, publish the DNS records shown, press Check verification, and from then on invitations and campaigns send from advisor@your domain under your name alone, and your logo and name take over the rail lockup in the client workspaces you serve.
- Partner guide — the Program section header links to
/partner/guide, which is a document rather than a room and so stays off the tab row: the whole offering in one printable executive brief, from the tier ladder and the agreement to outcome sharing, white label, and the data boundary. Read it once, or hand it to a new hire on their first day. - Program — where the partnership itself lives. The tier card shows your rung (Registered, Select, or Premier), the caps it carries, and what the next rung unlocks. The agreement card carries the rate on record: offers from the VendorBenchmark team appear here with their terms, your workspace owner accepts in product, and the accepted version and rate stay visible from then on. The directory card drafts your public listing (one paragraph, focus areas, regions); firms on Select and above can switch the listing live in the public directory at
/partners, where buyers request introductions that land straight in your contacts. The morning digest switch is here too: weekday mornings, firm owners get the attention queue by email, and a clear desk sends nothing. - Your clients' home screen — curate what client workspaces open on: pick the apps that lead and add a one line headline under your brand, with a live preview of what clients see. The platform standard stays the default until you choose otherwise, the full catalog always stays one press away, and each client's own edits win. Owner only.
- Messages — every client page carries a direct message thread between your firm and that client. The client reads and replies on their Your advisory partner page, their owners get notified, and the thread is private to your two firms; partners cannot message anyone who is not their client. The client's side of that page also carries their outcome sharing switch, so what you can see is always their call.
- The boundary — in the dock, behind the shield icon on every partner desk: what you see (dates, renewal stages, org level activity, meetings) and what always stays the client's (files, prices, benchmark results, member identities). Show it to a hesitant client; it is the same list we show them.
- Meetings — every meeting between your firm and your clients, with its status.
How to use it
- Start with Your desk today; it is the call list, ranked. A passed notice deadline outranks everything else.
- Open a client row for the full picture: renewal dates with notice deadlines and stages, contract term dates, the 30 day activity chart, and your engagement record (linked since, meetings held).
- Watch the Adoption column: a Quiet or Dormant client two months before a renewal is the account to call first, and a Never signed in workspace needs a walkthrough, not a renewal pitch.
- Invite a new client from Grow your book. When they accept, their workspace opens on a free trial, already linked to your book, and it carries a "served by" mark for your firm. Invitations are single use, live 30 days, and can be revoked or re-sent with a fresh link; the funnel shows what each one became.
- Set your brand once under White label; every invitation and every client workspace mark uses it from then on.
- Propose a meeting from the client page: up to three times and an agenda. The client's workspace owners get a notification, confirm one time or decline, and both sides see the answer.
- Need the full record for an engagement? Ask the client to invite you into their workspace as a member; the portal never opens their files.
Clients join your book two ways: your own invitations, or a link made by the VendorBenchmark team after a client agrees in the engagement paperwork. If a client is missing, contact your partner manager.
Related: Partner marketing · Notifications · Members
Partner marketing
Your firm's own marketing desk: a contact list you build yourself, newsletter sends that go out under your white-label brand, and a read log showing who opened what. Nothing here comes from client workspaces; every contact was added by your own team.
On the screen
- The command bar — your audience (subscribed and reachable, with how many have unsubscribed), campaigns sent, emails delivered, and the share read.
- Three steps to your first send — while your list is empty, the page states the whole path: paste your book, write the note and test it, send and read the ledger. It disappears once you have contacts.
- Import your list — one paste, up to two thousand rows. A bare email works, so does the
Name <email>form every mail client copies, and so does a comma or tab separated row straight out of a spreadsheet. Anyone already on file is skipped rather than duplicated, so pasting the same list twice adds only the new names. - Contacts — add one at a time by email, name, company, and role. Unsubscribe or remove any contact; unsubscribed contacts never receive a send.
- Write a note — subject and body (blank lines start new paragraphs), a live preview of the branded email, a test send to your own inbox, and the real send to every subscribed contact. Emails go from our verified address under your brand's name, with your email as the reply-to.
- Sent campaigns — each send with delivered, opened, and clicked counts; expand one for the recipient-by-recipient log: clicked (and how many times), read (and when), delivered but unread, or not delivered.
- The desk rail — jumps to each section of the desk, what your tier allows (contacts against the cap, sending name, reply to), and how reads are counted. The boundary the portal runs on stands in the dock behind the shield: these contacts are yours, nothing is harvested from a client workspace, and no client's prices, documents, or benchmark narrative can be pulled into a marketing email.
How to use it
- Set your brand once on the Partner portal White label card; every send uses it.
- Paste your whole contact list into Import your list, or add people one at a time below it. The list is yours alone; clients' member lists are never visible to you.
- Write the send, or start from one of the three templates (a renewal season note, a quarterly market note, an introduction) and replace the bracketed slots. Press Send me a test, check your inbox, then send for real. The caps rise with your program tier, from 5 campaigns per day and 500 recipients per send on Registered up to 20 and 5,000 on Premier.
- Watch the read log. Opens are measured by an email pixel, so a recipient whose mail client blocks images can read without registering; treat opens as a floor. Links in the body are click tracked per recipient, and a click also counts the open, so the log distinguishes read from acted even when the pixel is blocked.
- Every email carries one-click unsubscribe. We honor it automatically and mark the contact unsubscribed for you.
Related: Partner portal · Notifications
Saved
Reports and research you bookmarked with the bookmark icon, kept in one list so you can find them again.
On the screen
- Saved items — everything you bookmarked, newest first.
How to use it
- Open a saved report or paper straight from the list.
- Add to the list by clicking the bookmark icon on any report or research paper.
Related: Delivered reports · Research
Saved analyses
Negotiation playbooks the AI has written for you, kept in one list. When you ask Vera to analyze a document, the playbook she writes is saved here automatically, so you can revisit it, print it, or share a link with colleagues.
On the screen
- The list — every analysis with its playbook title, vendor, and creation date; search and sort across all of them.
- Sharing column — Link active means a share link exists for that draft (with its expiry date); Private means only your organization can see it.
- The draft page — opens the full playbook with a toolbar: Share link mints a public read-only URL and copies it, New link replaces it (the previously sent URL stops working), Email drafts a message carrying the link, Revoke kills the link, Print produces a clean paper copy, and Delete removes the draft for good.
How to use it
- Create one from Vera AI: choose "Ask Vera to analyze a document for you", and the result lands here.
- Open a draft to reread it before a call, or press Print for the meeting copy.
- Share it by minting a link; revoke the link when the conversation is over. A minted link expires on its own, and New link invalidates whatever you sent before.
Tips
- Your saved analyses also appear in the All documents library on Delivered reports, so there is never a second place to hunt.
Related: Vera AI · Deliverables
Playbook library
Every playbook the AI has written for you, shelved as one library. The move that makes it live: drop a contract onto any volume and the playbook reruns around your actual numbers, every figure and recommendation recomputed from the paper you dropped.
On the screen
- The shelf — one bound volume per playbook: the agent that wrote it, the title, the vendor, and the date. Open reads it; Run your contract picks a PDF or DOCX to rerun it against.
- Drop targets — drag a contract over the page and every volume lights up; drop it on one and a confirm bar stages the run.
- The run room — while the run tailors: the two stages (reading the commercial terms off your contract, then the rewrite), with your extracted numbers appearing as chips the moment they land.
- Your numbers band — the facts read off your contract: annual value, licensed quantity, term, renewal date, and uplift cap. Every figure in the tailored document stands on these.
- The tailored edition — the rewritten playbook, rendered as the same executive document, with Share and Open in the library. It joins the shelf next to its source.
How to use it
- Ask Vera for a playbook (or open one an agent already wrote); it lands on this shelf as a volume.
- Drag your contract over the shelf and drop it on the volume you want rerun, then press Run it.
- Watch your numbers land, then read the tailored edition; it is saved to the shelf and ready to share.
Tips
- The dropped contract is read once for its commercial terms and never stored; only the tailored playbook is saved.
- A run is grounded in what the document states. If the contract does not print a value or a quantity, the rewrite says so instead of inventing one.
Related: Vera AI · Saved analyses · Vera Deal-Room
Referrals
Your personal referral code. When a company you refer becomes a paying customer, you earn ten percent of their spend for their first twelve months. We email you when a referral signs up and again when they subscribe.
On the screen
- Your code and link — share these; signups through them are credited to you automatically.
- How it works — the four steps up front: share, they sign up, they subscribe, you get paid, with the email you receive at each step.
- Referral status — who signed up, who is now paying, and what you have earned.
- Payout terms — payouts clear thirty days after we receive the customer's payment, and we contact you for your payout details once a referral starts earning.
How to use it
- Copy your referral link and share it with a company that would benefit.
- Watch the referral status list to see who signed up and what you have earned.
- Watch your inbox: when you first get your code we email you a short "how it works" explainer, then we email you again the moment a referral signs up and when they become a paying subscriber, with what the referral is worth and how the payout works.
Related: Refer & earn
Refer & earn (the invite dialog)
The fast way to act on your referral code: a dialog that emails up to five colleagues at other companies a personal invitation, each carrying your code so anyone who joins from it is tracked as your referral automatically. This is deliberately not the team invite: no access to your workspace is granted, and your friends land on the public request-access page.
On the screen
- Your referral code — shown on a ticket panel with a Copy invite link button, and the terms in one line: when a company you invited becomes a customer, you earn 10% of what they spend for their first 12 months.
- Friends' emails — up to five addresses per send.
- Personal message — an optional note of up to 1,000 characters carried in the invitation email.
How to use it
- Press the gold Refer & earn pill in the top bar.
- Enter up to five email addresses and, if you like, a personal line about why you use the platform.
- Press Send invites. Track who signs up and what you have earned on Referrals.
Tips
- Inviting a teammate into your own workspace is a different action: that is Members, owner only, and it grants access. This dialog never does.
Chat
Your team's real-time chat: channels for the whole organization, a private support line to our analyst team, and the AI assistant on call in any channel. Chat lives inside the inbox bell: unread messages count into the bell's badge, and the pinned Team chat row at the top of the inbox panel opens this screen.
On the screen
- Channels — team-wide rooms; #general is always there, and anyone can add more.
- Vera AI team — the private support thread; only you and our team see it.
- @assistant — mention the assistant in any channel to get an AI answer grounded in your portfolio, visible to the whole team.
- # links a record — type # in a channel and pick a proposal, renewal, deal, or vendor; the reference renders as a grounded card with the record's live status, the record's timeline notes where it was discussed, and its watchers hear about it. DMs stay out of this; they are private.
- Deal channels — a channel opened from a negotiation's Deal channel button is bound to that record: the header links back to it, and the deal's activity streams in as quiet centered lines between the conversation.
- Escalations — hover any channel message for two carries: File as a task puts it on the Tasks runway deep-linked back to the message, and Promote to a Board decision shelves it on the Board, quoted with its author and a source link.
- Transcript export — owners see a download control in the channel header that exports the full channel as a plain-text transcript for retention or legal review. Every export is recorded in the audit log.
How to use it
- Message your team in a channel, or start a new one for a specific deal.
- Ask the AI with @assistant when you want an answer the whole channel can see.
- Message the Vera AI team thread to reach our analysts directly.
Related: Vera AI · Advisory · Support
Support
Support tickets: one tracked case per issue, with a number, a status, and the full thread kept on the record. Chat stays the fast lane for quick questions; a ticket is for anything you want followed to resolution, and everyone in your organization sees the same list.
On the screen
- Vitals — how many tickets are with our team, how many are waiting on a reply from your side, and your workspace's own median time to a first reply, measured from the tickets we have actually answered rather than promised.
- Open a ticket — the masthead action, opening as a dialog: subject, category, priority, and what happened; one issue per ticket. Picking a priority states the first reply target that comes with it, so the commitment is visible before you send.
- First reply targets — stated in the rail in full: two hours for urgent, four for high, eight for normal, twenty four for low, measured from when you open the ticket, Monday to Friday. Your measured median sits in the masthead beside them so you can check the target against what actually happens.
- Open — every ticket still in flight, most urgent first, each carrying its own clock. A ticket nobody has replied to yet shows how long it has been waiting against its target, and one that has run past that target is marked with a red edge and red text. An answered ticket shows how long the first reply took, against the same target.
- Status — Open is with our team, Waiting on you means we replied and need something from you, Resolved means we believe it is fixed and asks you to confirm, Closed is done.
- Settled — closed tickets stay readable with the thread and the resolution intact.
- Ticket thread — the full conversation on one page; our replies carry a blue edge, and replying always hands the ticket back to our team.
- Faster than a ticket — the rail names the two things that answer sooner: Vera, who answers most platform questions instantly and reads your own documents while she does it, and the support chat, which reaches the same team without opening a ticket.
How to use it
- Press Open a ticket in the masthead, give it a one-line subject, pick a category and priority, and describe what happened. The dialog states the first reply target for the priority you chose.
- Watch for the reply: it lands as a notification (and an email doorbell), and the ticket flips to Waiting on you when we need something from you.
- When the ticket turns Resolved, confirm with Confirm resolved & close, or reply to reopen it if the issue is not gone.
- A closed ticket can always be reopened; the thread continues where it left off.
Related: Chat · Notifications
Notifications
One triage inbox for everything that happened while you were away, folded into a single list: notifications (delivered reports, notice windows opening, replies, and mentions), watchtower changes, and money-critical signals. Money items are flagged calmly, never alarmist.
On the screen
- Team chat row — pinned at the top of the panel, with your unread chat count; it opens Chat. Unread chat counts into the bell's badge alongside notifications.
- Unread markers — new items are highlighted; opening one takes you to the record it is about.
- Needs-decision filter — narrow the list to the items actually waiting on a decision, so signals you only need to be aware of drop away.
- Per-signal mute — mute any single signal you do not want to keep hearing about, without turning off its whole category.
How to use it
- Scan the highlighted unread items, or switch to the needs-decision filter to see only what is waiting on you.
- Click through to the record behind any item to act on it.
- Mute a signal you have handled or do not care about; the rest keep flowing.
Related: My work
Next: Chapter 06 · Settings & account
Was this page helpful?
Thank you. Your note goes straight to the team that writes this manual.
Updated 2026-07-31 · A VendorBenchmark product · Download the manual as PDF · Questions? Message our team in the app.