Appearance
The morning briefing
Every weekday morning, VERA sends each team member a personalised summary in Slack. What you see depends on your role.
For team members
Your morning message has two parts.
Recent time — your hours from the last five working days, grouped by project. A quick check that nothing's missing before the day starts.
Your work plan — a table showing every project you're currently allocated to, with columns for how many hours are in your plan, how many you've logged so far, and how many remain. This is what you should be working on today.
If something looks wrong — a project you're not working on, missing hours, or an envelope you don't recognise — message VERA and they'll help you work out what's happened.
For managers and owners
Your morning message covers the whole portfolio.
Recent time — same as team members, across your whole team.
Retainer status — for any retainer projects you manage, a summary of where each period stands: hours used, hours remaining, and whether the current pace is sustainable.
Project pace — a burn-down view of projects with deadlines. Sorted by which are most behind schedule, flagged with 🔴 (critical), ⚠️ (at risk), or ✅ (on track).
Pending time-off requests — any team member requests waiting for your approval, shown as a 📅 block.
Items needing attention — any unresolved issues flagged as 🔴 that need a decision or action.
The evening check-in
At 5pm, if you haven't hit your target hours for the day, VERA sends a brief reminder. For managers and owners, this also includes any critical project alerts that have come up during the day.
If you've already logged enough for the day, no message is sent.
Triggering the briefing manually
You can ask VERA for a summary at any time:
"Give me my morning summary"
"How are my projects looking today?"
"What's pending for approval?"
Further reading
- The Briefing That Replaced the Monday Check-in — how the morning summary was designed and what it's actually trying to answer