Getting started

Brev is the place where your team's goals, recurring cadences, and the AI agents and integrations that keep everything moving live together. This page is a short, opinionated tour. If you know exactly where you want to go, ⌘K is faster.

The sidebar, demystified #

The top of the sidebar holds your organization's logo, the notifications bell and the button that collapses the sidebar. Under them, a search button opens the command palette. Then come the places you go:

• Operator: chat with Brev. Ask it questions, draft OKRs, or have it act through Slack, Calendar and Sheets.
• Goals (expandable, and named with your organization's word for goals, such as OKRs): Organization, My Goals and Check In, then a Views list with All Goals, At Risk, Behind, any views shared with the whole organization, Shared with me, and My Views. Pin a view to keep it at the top.
• Cadences: your recurring meetings, with the AI meeting agent attached.
• Artifacts: everything Brev has made for you and your teams that you can open.
• Actions: follow-ups assigned to you (often extracted from meetings). The badge counts the ones still open, up to 99+.
• Teams (expandable, once your organization has teams): jump to any team's goals from anywhere.
• Reports and Usage (admins and owners only): org analytics. Each opens a page with tabs across the top: Reports for adoption, check-ins, teams, cascade and attainment, and Usage for check-in activity and integration adoption.
• Settings: your profile, notifications and integrations, plus workspace settings if you're an admin. Settings replaces this sidebar with its own list; see Getting around Settings.
• Invite team: near the bottom. Opens a dialog with room for several email addresses at once, so you can bring teammates in without leaving the page you're on. Everyone invited this way joins as a Member; go to Settings → Members when you need another role or want to pre-assign a team.
• Help & support: at the bottom. Opens a short menu: Chat with support starts a conversation with the Brev team in the app (if chat can't load, you'll see a message offering to email [email protected] instead), and Book time with Brev opens a calendar to schedule a walkthrough. Below them, What's new opens Brev's release notes on its public help site (help.brev.io/whats-new) in a new tab: every release, newest first, with its own page you can share, readable without signing in. Old app.brev.io/releases links take you there too. When a release is out that you haven't opened yet, a dot shows on Help & support and on What's new, and it clears once you open the release notes. Help center and System status also open in a new tab. Settings hides this sidebar, so the same menu sits at the top right of every Settings page.
• Your account card (your picture, name and email) is the very last row. See Your account menu.

What you see depends on your role and on what your organization has turned on, so a row from this list can be missing for you. Who sees what is in Roles & permissions.

Not sure what's behind a row? Hover it. Each one shows a one-line description of where it goes, and the expandable sections (Goals and Teams) name what they hold instead, so you can tell a row that navigates from one that opens in place before you click.

Short on width? Collapse the sidebar with the toggle at the top of it, or ⌘B. It shrinks to a narrow column of icons rather than disappearing, so every destination above stays one click away, and it stays that way when you come back. Hover an icon for its name; Goals and Teams open as a panel to the right instead of dropping down. Collapsed, the bell is hidden: your unread count moves onto your account picture, and the account menu gains a Notifications item. Opening Operator collapses the sidebar for you so the conversation gets the room; expand it again whenever you like.

At narrow widths the goal list switches to its most compact layout, and when it does the sidebar collapses to icons on its own: the expand control disappears and the keyboard shortcut stops toggling. That is deliberate, not a bug. A list asking for every pixel should not also offer a button that gives 14rem of them back. Widen the window and the control comes back.

Your account menu #

Click your account card at the bottom of the sidebar (on a phone, your picture at the right of the top bar). The Account menu opens beside it:

• Notifications: only while the sidebar is collapsed, when the bell is hidden. It shows your unread count and opens Notifications.
• Settings: opens your Profile in Settings.
• Log out: signs you out and returns you to the login page.

The menu also has Dark mode (or Light mode while you're in dark mode), which switches the app straight to the other one. More theme choices are in Appearance.

The notifications bell #

The bell sits beside your organization's logo at the top of the sidebar (on a phone, in the top bar). When you have unread notifications it carries a count, up to 9+. Click it for a quick look without leaving the page:

• Recent notifications, grouped under Today, Yesterday, This Week and Earlier.
• Click one to open what it's about. It's marked read as you go.
• Mark all as read appears at the top while you have anything unread.
• With nothing to show, the list reads All caught up.
• View all notifications at the bottom opens the full Notifications page, with filters for all, unread and read.

While you're on the Notifications page the bell only shows the count, since the full list is already in front of you.

Banners asking you to connect #

Until Brev can see your meetings and your chat tool, a banner at the top of the page suggests connecting them. You only ever see one at a time:

Connect your meetings to your goals

Shows while no Google or Outlook calendar is connected. Join my meetings opens the meeting agent part of Integrations.

Connect Brev to your workspace

Shows while neither Slack nor Microsoft Teams is connected, once the meetings banner is out of the way. Connect workspace opens Integrations at the Slack and Teams cards, so Brev can send check-ins, recaps and goal updates where your team works.

Close a banner with its X and it stays closed in this browser; the next one, if any, takes its place. A banner about your trial, billing or a pending invitation takes the spot first when one applies. Banners never show in Settings, in Operator, or in these docs.

The core concepts #

Goal

A time-bound, measurable outcome. Owned by one person, may have child KRs. Status (At Risk / Behind / On Track / Shipped) is derived from pacing and recent check-ins.

KPI

A metric with no end date. Has its own section above the goal tree on the Organization view, shown once you turn KPIs on under Customize.

Check-in

A short update, usually a number plus a sentence of context. Lives on the goal and shows up in the trajectory chart. Open the Check In page to post a batch.

Cadence

A recurring meeting Brev knows about. The Meeting agent joins, takes notes, and writes the follow-up automatically.

View

A saved configuration of filters/grouping/sort on top of the goal tree. The 'Organization' view at /views/company-goals is the default landing. See Views.

Action

A follow-up, extracted from a meeting, mentioned in a comment, or AI-suggested. Lives in Actions.

Operator

Brev's AI chat assistant. The Operator chat surface is where you talk to it; you can also schedule it to run tasks on a recurring basis.

Your first day in Brev #

1. 1
   Connect a calendar

   From Integrations, connect Google or Outlook. Cadences and the meeting agent depend on this.
2. 2
   Configure the meeting agent

   Open Meeting agent settings and choose where it joins under Auto-join configuration: All my meetings, All internal meetings, or Opt-in Only. If you're just trying it out, go Opt-in Only.
3. 3
   Pick a real goal you care about

   From any view, hit Add new (top-right) and create a goal that matters. Brev's AI lives or dies on having real outcomes to grade.
4. 4
   Register your standing meeting as a cadence

   From Cadences, find the recurring meeting that should have notes and turn on the meeting agent switch on its row.
5. 5
   Triage Actions and Notifications each morning

   After meetings run for a week, you'll have a steady stream of meeting recaps and follow-ups. Five minutes a day in those two surfaces keeps the system honest.

Brev on a phone #

On a phone-sized screen the sidebar gives way to a bar fixed across the top of the page. From left to right:

• Open navigation (the menu button): slides the full sidebar in over the page. It stays open after you pick a destination; tap Close navigation at its top to put it away.
• Your organization's name, shortened if it's long.
• Open command palette: the same search as ⌘K on a computer.
• The notifications bell, which works as described in The notifications bell.
• Your picture, which opens your account menu.

Settings, Operator and these docs bring their own top bar on a phone, so this one isn't shown there.

Keyboard shortcuts #

Using these docs #

You're reading Help & docs: one page per part of Brev, written from the product as it works today. Pages for features behind an access flag appear only when you have that access, so a teammate may see a different list. Pages for admin-only areas, such as Reports and Usage, are listed for everyone. Back to Brev, at the top of the sidebar, returns you to the app.

The docs home #

• The search box under How Brev works opens docs search. Under it, Popular: links a few pages people open most, such as connecting your calendar.
• Ask Brev, under the search box, opens Operator so you can ask about any Brev feature. It shows only when Operator is turned on for your organization.
• Brev Basics has four cards to start with: the tour, setting up the meeting agent, keeping a meeting private, and checking in on your goals.
• Browse by area has a card for three areas (Getting started, Goals & cadences, and Agents & automations) with their first few pages. All N (area) pages on a card opens that area's page, and All areas opens every area.
• What's new lists the three newest releases, the newest marked New, and All release notes opens every release. In the app, a release opens on Brev's public help site in a new tab. While the newest release is under two weeks old, a banner at the top of the home names it until you dismiss it.
• Still have questions? has Get in touch, which opens a chat with Brev support, and Book time with us, which books a call with a Brev expert.

All areas and area pages #

• All areas shows how many pages you can see, when the newest of them was last updated, and a card for each area. Click an area's All N (area) pages to open its page, which lists every page in that area with a one-line summary.
• Below the cards, All pages lists every page you can see, area by area. Under Filter:, click a tag (core, beta, agent, integration and so on) to show only pages with that tag. Click it again, or Clear, to see everything. The tag is part of the address, so you can share a filtered list, and opening that link scrolls straight to it.

The header #

• At the left, the Brev mark returns to the docs home, and the path after it shows where you are: Docs, then the area, then the page. Click Docs or the area to go back up.
• Ask Brev opens Operator, when Operator is on for your organization.
• What's new, System status and Help center open Brev's release notes, status page and public help center in a new tab. On a narrower screen they're under More links.
• The Theme menu switches between System, Light and Dark, the same choice as Appearance in your settings.
• At the bottom of every page, Contact Support opens a chat with Brev support, What's new opens the release notes, and Book time with us books a call.
• On Brev's public help site the header has Contact Support, Ask about this doc (a chat with Brev support that starts with the page you're reading) and Sign up instead. If you're signed in to Brev in the same browser, Sign up becomes Open Brev, which opens the app in a new tab.

Searching #

1. 1
   Open search

   Click the search box on the docs home, or the search button next to Docs at the top of the sidebar, or press ⌘K (Ctrl+K) when you're not typing in a field.
2. 2
   Type a few words

   Search matches page titles, summaries, tags, other names for a feature (for example, OKRs finds Goals), and the headings inside every page. Every word you type has to match.
3. 3
   Pick a result

   A page result opens that page. A result under Sections opens the page scrolled to that heading.

The docs sidebar #

• Every page but the docs home has the sidebar. It lists each area by name, with only the area of the page you're reading open. Click an area's name to open or fold its pages; areas you open stay open as you move between pages.
• Filter pages narrows the list to pages whose title or summary contains what you type, and opens every area that has a match. Areas with no match drop out.
• Under Release notes, What's new opens Brev's release notes, and the newest releases are listed under it by title. Hover a cut-off title to read it in full.
• On Brev's public help site, release notes are part of the docs: What's new lists every release by month, newest first, and each release has its own page with a table of contents.
• On a phone, the sidebar is behind Open docs navigation, the menu button at the left of the header.

Reading a page #

• The header above each page shows where it sits (Docs, then its area). The page opens with when it was last updated, its title and summary, then its tags.
• Copy text copies the page as Markdown, for pasting into a document or an AI tool, or copies a link to it. The Markdown holds only what the page shows you.
• Every code block has a copy button in its top-right corner. A block with tabs above it shows one version per tab; the button copies the tab you're on.
• In a step-by-step guide, numbered headings mark the steps, and the same numbers appear in On this page.
• Open in app takes you to the part of Brev the page describes, when there is one.
• On Brev's public help site, Open in Brev, the icon beside Copy text, opens the same page in the docs inside Brev, which also show the sections your access unlocks.
• On Brev's public help site, Copy text also offers Copy Markdown link: a link to the page as plain Markdown, which you can hand to your own AI tool. The site's /llms.txt lists every public page that way, and /llms-full.txt holds them all in one file.
• Some pages end with an FAQ: click a question to show its answer, and again to hide it.
• On a wide screen, On this page down the right lists the page's headings so you can jump between them.
• At the end of a page, Was this page helpful? takes one answer, Yes or No. After No, pick what went wrong (Hard to follow, Missing information, Out of date or Something's wrong), optionally tell us more, and choose Send. Please don't include personal details. Answers help us find the pages to improve.
• Previous and Next open the pages before and after this one, in the order of the sidebar.
• Related at the bottom links to nearby pages.
• A page that has moved, or covers a feature you don't have, shows Page not found with a Back to docs link.

Where to go next #

• Views (sidebar): the actual landing page when you sign in.
• Cadences: set up your recurring meetings.
• Operator: chat with Brev.
• Product settings: admin levers worth knowing about.