Chapter 11 · Every screen, part by part
The dashboard
The dashboard answers one question: what should I do next? Everything on it is either that answer, or the evidence for it.
1 — The next thing worth doing. One card, one action, at the top of the page. It is chosen for you: whatever is both blocking the most downstream work and cheapest to clear. In the picture it is three checked findings waiting to be published, because until they are published no match can cite them. The strip along the bottom of the card is your whole professor list by stage, so you can see the shape of the work behind the recommendation — Not researched, Being researched, Waiting on you, Researched, Matched.
If this card ever says there is nothing to do, that is a real answer and not an empty state.
2 — Needs you. Everything that is stopped and waiting on a human decision, each with a count and a link straight to it. These are the only things on the dashboard you cannot delegate: an assistant is not allowed to clear them.
3 — Recent activity. What has happened lately, newest first, with the professor each entry belongs to. Useful mainly as a sanity check after a research run — if you expected work to have happened and this list is empty, nothing ran.
Contact next#
The strongest matches you have not written to yet, best fit first.
1 — Professor. The name, with their university underneath. Clicking through opens their page.
2 — Overlap. The single field where your work and theirs meet. It is deliberately one short phrase rather than a list: this column is for scanning, and the full case is on the professor's Why tab.
3 — Fit. The match score out of 100, with a bar underneath. Read it as a ranking rather than a grade — 66 is not "two thirds of a good match", it is "the best one on this list". Chapter 4 explains what goes into it and what it deliberately leaves out.
4 — Next step. The action that record is waiting for, as a button. Draft means a match exists and no email has been written yet.
5 — Why this list, not another. Every list on the dashboard names its own rule in the top right, so you never have to guess whether you are looking at "recent", "best" or "oldest". This one is strongest matches you haven't written to.
The rest of the page#
Below Contact next, in order, and all read the same way:
| Section | What it holds | Its rule |
|---|---|---|
| Replied — your move | Threads where they answered and you have not | Positive replies first |
| Waiting on a reply | Threads where you answered and they have not | Oldest first, because those are the ones to follow up |
| Upcoming · 14 days | Anything with a date attached — deadlines, calls, follow-ups | Soonest first |
| Recently researched | Professors whose records changed lately | Newest first |
| Where things stand | Counts across the whole workspace | — |
| Activity and Conversion funnel | The same numbers as Analytics, in miniature | — |
| Research batches | Whether batches are on, and what the next one covers | — |
Clicking a number opens the records behind it rather than a bigger version of the number. That is true across the dashboard and Analytics both, and it is the fastest way to find out why a figure looks wrong.