At Connecteam, we want your setup to be swift and clean. As customer success managers we took our experience from working with hundreds of cleaning companies worldwide and created this step-by-step tutorial to get your company set up to PERFECTION. You can expect this guide to go through all of the steps needed to get your account up and running with real-world examples of how each feature or capability can work for a cleaning company your size. Like Connecteam, this guide works as an all-in-one solution to your Operations Hub Set Up. While there are many other articles found here on our Help Center we have designed this guide, particularly for cleaning companies of your kind and it should walk you through your complete setup step by step.

Don't worry! We’ve got all of the first steps to make your life easy and Connecteam work for you! 🤩

After reading this guide you should be able to start fully operating the platform you will learn how to:

💡Tip: Anytime you see blue text in this article it is a link or menu of links to other areas inside this guide. If you're looking for something specific, or you don't finish the setup in one day, you can always find what you need or pick up where you left off by clicking on the relevant topic.

The first steps when setting up your account are going to be adding your users and creating your smart groups. In this section, we will walk you through the following:

Custom fields are information fields found inside the user's profile, and are filled with information specific to each employee. Custom fields are a smart way to identify and group your workforce, allowing you to customize what information is important to your company in order to organize its users. Examples of custom fields can be Position, Department, Birthday, Uniform Size, and much more.

We recommend planning out the information you want to know about your employees and creating these custom fields prior to adding the employees themselves. This will allow you to update all their information when adding them and save you tons of time later.

To add a custom field head over to the user's tab, enter the employee's detail page then select Add Field and choose the type of field, name it, and press save. In the example below you can see we created a custom field named position. In my company, the positions will be private or commercial cleaners.

*Please note that there are 3 default fields you will never be able to edit or delete; these are First Name, Last Name, and Mobile Phone.

💡A Customer Success Manager’s Tip: We recommend using the drop-down custom field type when creating your custom fields, which allows you to create a list of information to select from when filling out the custom field. This will simplify things later if using smart groups, which are filtered by custom fields. The filter of smart groups is case sensitive, and here at Connecteam we have encountered numerous companies whose users were not added into the proper smart groups because of typos made when filling out a user's custom field. Using a drop-down custom field avoids this possibility right from the start!

Once you have set up your custom fields it's time to move on to adding users. After all, that's what you came here for - managing your workforce.

To add users simply navigate your way to the Users Tab on the left - hand and click on it. Once inside select Add Users and fill in the requested details. You can also use the menu on the right side to add more details than the ones which appear here which are only the required fields. After filling out the details make sure the Send an invite button is selected in order to

💡Tip: If you have many users, you can import them in bulk

Smart groups are groups based on rules. All the users who meet the rule will automatically be added to the group and those who don't will not be added. It's as simple as that. A smart groups filter is based on custom fields - which we previously created.

In cleaning companies' smart groups are hugely beneficial and allow you to create different teams with different qualifications for your staff. For example, you can group your staff by their ability to do specific jobs like- private or commercial jobs. Since Connecteam's features, assets, jobs in the schedule, chats and much more can be assigned to smart groups, grouping them now will help us later on with things like scheduling correctly (and much more).

Step 1: Navigate to the smart group's category on the left sidebar

Step 2: First, add a Segment

Step 3: Use the + Add a group button from inside the Segment to create a group and then name the group.

Step 4: Set the Filter. First, choose the Custom field, and then finally select or enter the criteria that the group will be defined by.

In the example below you can see how I create a group of only my staff who are qualified as full time cleaners.

Now that you know the basics of setting up your account it's time to move on to the features related to the operations hub.

This hub consists of 6 features, but for cleaning companies, we find the Chat, Updates, Directory, and Knowledge base to be most beneficial. Below we will go over how to set up and utilize the capabilities in each feature that we find most small-sized cleaning companies use.

Connecteam’s chat is your way to create an efficient communication center with your employees. Plus it's easy and instant! The chat allows users to effortlessly share media and files and it’s connected to almost every feature making it easy to chat with anyone anywhere! Using the chat feature you can also limit communication, control who can chat with whom, segment the chat into departments, and more!

In this section we will go over:

The chat keep all your employee communication happening in one place. It's simple and easy for employees to use, and they can participate in any team chat they are assigned to or start personal chats with other employees.
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Now that you see how convenient it is for your employees to use the Connecteam's chats, let's get started in setting it up and customizing it to your company's needs.

To activate the chat enter launchpad, go to the left sidebar, to the Company Chat feature, and activate the chat.

Now that you have activated the chat lets go over how to open a new chat.

To open a new chat, simply navigate to the Add New Button and add the relevant chat. There are 3 types of chats you can create depending on your needs. These are New Chat, New Team, and New Channel.

Now that you have learned how to create chats let's talk about how to start a chat from anywhere on the platform. At the top of the screen the chat icon can always be seen from anywhere inside the platform.

Simply click on it and the chat will open on the right.

Additionally, in all other features such as the Job Schedule, Time Clock, Quick Tasks, and more, you can select the relevant users and create either a team chat or individual chat from the Actions Tab. In the example below I create team chats with three selected users from inside the Today Tab in the Time Clock Feature.

The Chat Settings allow you to decide how users can connect on the chat and guarantee that you stay on top of your main communication tool like never before.

Let's navigate to the Chat Settings. Enter the Chat, to the options tab, and select Settings.

Once inside the settings, there are 3 main categories of settings, with different options inside These are Private Chat Settings, Team Chat Settings, and Sharing Settings.

The private chat settings allow admins to choose whether mobile users are able to create chats, or not, or whether they can only start chats with other users who meet specific criteria.

The mobile users' teams options allow admins to decide whether or not users can create team chats, or to specify exceptions to the general rule they choose to set.

The default sharing settings enable you as an admin to set limitations on if users are able to share images and videos from one chat to another inside the company app, or if users can share content to other platforms (for example Facebook or Whatsapp).

Updates are a great way to engage employees and interact with them. Think of the Update Feature as your social wall. The new design will allow you to communicate with and involve your employees in your company's day-to-day.

In this article we will go over:

If you wish to send out a message to the team, in 99% of the cases it's better to do so with an update, here is why:

Connecteam’s pop-up updates capability gives you peace of mind, allowing you to set an update to include a pop-up with a confirmation button. These updates will be the first thing your users see when entering the platform, and the added confirmation button ensures that no information is missed.

To create and send a pop-up update, all you have to do is enter the "Updates" feature on the left sidebar. Click Add New, create the update, choose who to assign it to, and continue until you reach the settings page. On this page, you can enable the pop-up by checking the pop-up upon launching the app and requiring a confirmation option. Take a look at how this looks below.

Pro tip: Don’t want the update to be viewed on your feed after the pop-up is over? Be sure to schedule its removal from the app.

💡Real-life example: A cleaning company based in Arizona, uses the Updates feature to notify all the cleaners working together in the same apartment building of its equipment shortages. They attach an equipment form in the Update asking each cleaner to fill in the relevant equipment missing like sponges, washing detergent, etc.

Use the Directory feature to add people that do not belong to your company's app.

This is the place to add more work contacts that are not app users, like reception, help desk, emergency contacts, customers, vendors, and more! A Work contact doesn’t have access to the app.

In this section we will go over:

To activate the Directory, click Directory on your sidebar and click activate directory.

💡 Pro tip: Keep in mind that all the users regardless of their Smart Groups will be able to access the Directory on their smartphones once it is activated in the dashboard. What users see however can be managed through the Directory Settings.

The work contacts tab can be used to add people that do not belong to your company's app such as vendors, caretakers of the building, and important contacts to your Directory.

The Directory Settings allow you to decide how your users will use the directory and to which information they will have access. To get to the settings tab, enter the directory and navigate to the options tab, and select settings.

Once inside the setting there are three options, to display users in the mobile app, Mobile Users Viewing Permissions, and Information Visibility. Let's go over these below!

Connecteam’s Knowledge Base feature allows you easily connect your employees with information by creating custom libraries for policies, clients, guides, and so much more! In the Knowledge base, you can create separate sections for each apartment house, client, commercial building, operating tutorial, or topic with each containing folders, text, links, or documents. This gives you complete control when organizing all the information inside your Knowledge Base

In this section we will go over:

Now let's take a look at how to use the knowledge base!

Step 1: Navigate to the left sidebar and to the add new feature button

Step 2: Add a Knowledge Base

Step 3: Name the Knowledge Base

Step 4 Save Changes

Take a look at how this looks below for purpose of our example I named the knowledge base “Company Knowledge,” however you can name your Knowledge base anything you would like.

Once you have activated the Knowledge Base you will want to add Section Folders. These will serve as the base to which you will then add SubFolders. We recommend spending some time planning how you envision your knowledge base looking prior to setting it up. This will help to get things organized exactly how you want.

To add a Section folder navigate to the bottom left corner to the + add folder button. Then, add and name the folder. In the example below I added a section called “Company Information”

Once you have added all your section folders you need to add subfolders to these sections. This allows you to keep things extra organized. Later on, you will add all the information or knowledge you want into these subfolders.

To add a folder to a section select the section you would like to add to, and then click on the blue + Add button to the right of the section and select add folder. In our example below I added two folders called Company Policies and Company Documents to the Section folder named Company Information.

Once you have added Sections and Subsection folders, it's time to start adding in your information. This can be done in the form of text, links, files, or even additional folders (to which you can add text links and files)

To add any of these enter the folder you wish to add them to and select the blue + Add Button and select which type of information you want to add.

Now that you have set up your knowledge base it may seem a little daunting and you may wonder how will I or my users remember where to locate the information I have added. Do not worry, here at Connecteam we thought about that and created a powerful search bar within the Knowledge base. Simply search for anything in a library by typing a keyword in its search bar and the options will appear below.

See, with Connecteam's Knowledge base you really can organize and store all your information however you would like all in one place!

💡Real-Life Example: Great example of utilizing the knowledge base does a cleaning company in Montreal. They are a deep cleaning company for office buildings in the downtown area. They have created a user manual for all of their machinery, industrial vacuum cleaner, high-pressure washer, scrubber driers, floor driers, and more! Now whenever they have a new cleaner or someone that is not experienced with the equipment, the user can simply access the Knowledge base and read the instructions on how to operate it!

💡Pro Tip: Not only can you keep all the information in one place, but you can also create as many knowledge bases as you need. If you are part of a larger company with different departments you could even create a knowledge base for each department.

In this article we went over everything you would need as a cleaning company to get connecteam communication hub set up and customized to meet your company's needs. While setting up and adapting to a new system might bring challenges and periods of adjustment for you and your employees here at Connecteam we are always here to help.

You can always reach out to our LIVE support team 🙋 (at the bottom right corner of your screen). They reply in under 5 mins to ANY question!