Getting Started

This page covers what you need on your first day in QBO: signing in, getting around, finding records, and working through your worklist.

Sign in

Sign in with the account your administrator set up for you. Depending on your organization, that’s a QBO user name and password, or single sign-on with an account you already have, such as Microsoft, Google, or your company’s identity provider. Some installations also ask for a one-time code.

What you see after signing in depends on your roles. Two people can open the same record and see different panels and menu options, because each sees only what their roles allow.

Your home page

For most people, Home is the Worklists page: a dashboard of the work waiting for you and your teams. Administrators land on the home page for their area instead (templates, rules, security, or configuration).

The main menu

The menu bar across the top of every page includes:

Item	What it does
Home	Returns to your home page.
Get next item	Opens the most important worklist item waiting for you, already started.
Search	Finds records by what you type. Use the arrow beside the box for advanced search options.
Notifications	Shows notifications for the page you’re on.
Sign out	Ends your session.

Your administrator can add menus for the areas you work in, such as processes, contacts, or reports.

Find a record

Type a name, number, or other identifier in Search. QBO lists matching records, most relevant first. From the results you can:

• Sort by any column.
• Open a record’s summary page by selecting its main link.
• Use the panel’s menus to refine or export the list, where your role allows.

Summary pages

A summary page shows one record, with panels for the records related to it: its parent, and its children such as contacts, documents, tasks, messages, scores, ledgers, and processes. Panels can be hidden or expanded, and most have their own options menu. Everything you add from a panel, such as a document or a message, attaches to that record.

Work your worklist

A worklist is a queue of tasks for a team. The Worklists page summarizes every worklist you can work on:

Column	Counts items that are
Pending	Not yet completed or cancelled (queued, started, and skipped together)
Queued	Waiting for someone to start them
Started	In progress
Skipped	Started, then set aside while you work on something else
Completed	Done
Cancelled	No longer needed

Select a count to list those items below the summary.

Get next item

Rather than picking from a list, choose Get next item. QBO starts the most important item you’re eligible for and opens it. It chooses in this order:

1. Items already assigned to you.
2. Your team’s priority (for example, a specialist team gets its specialty first).
3. The item’s priority.
4. The item’s sequence.
5. The item’s due date, earliest first.
6. The order items were added.

Items assigned to someone else, items skipped until a later time, and items on closed worklists are left out. Each worklist row on the dashboard also has its own next-item icon, to work one list at a time.

When work is assigned to a team rather than a person, the first person to start an item gets it.

Finish, postpone, or escalate a task

Opening an item takes you to its task. Then:

• Complete it: enter the actual completion date and save. The item leaves your worklist, and if the task belongs to a workflow, the workflow moves on.
• Postpone it: enter a projected completion date and save.
• Escalate it: change the task’s status to route it to another team’s worklist (for example, from review to approval). The item closes on your list and opens on theirs.

Tip

Get next item is the fastest way to work. You never have to decide what’s most urgent; QBO does it from rules your managers set.

What managers can do

If you’re a manager, you can also assign items to a team or a person, change an item’s priority, and Restart a worklist, which starts a fresh copy of the list and carries forward everything still pending, leaving completed items behind on the old one. Restarting regularly (weekly is common) keeps lists fast and focused.

Next steps

• Worklists: how work is routed, prioritized, and escalated.
• Cases: working a case from open to close.
• Document Management: adding and finding documents on a record.

Note

Menu labels can vary by installation; your administrator can rename or hide options.