Getting Started
Your first steps in Duwam
In one line: from a five-field sign-up form to a company with employees, a team, a task and a shift running — and knowing that Duwam is three systems, not one, and that the sidebar changes with them.
Plan: Getting started needs no plan and no permission — every new account opens on a 14-day trial with no card, and the trial opens all three systems. After it, the plan is what decides which systems stay. Start with Plans & billing.
Overview
Your first steps in Duwam are three things, not one:
- An account: five fields and a verification code from your email, and you're inside the product.
- An introduction: four short cards asking your name and picture, then your company's name and line of business — all of them skippable.
- Orientation: knowing you are in one system of three, that each has a different sidebar, and that the door between them is a single button.
And you'll never meet an empty screen: at sign-up your account is seeded with sample data — employees, teams, projects, tasks and a month of attendance records — to explore the product with, and you clear it with one press whenever you like.
Note: what you're reading here is the company administrator's experience. An employee you invite lands on a different, narrower sidebar, and starts their day from the attendance page — see Attendance.
How do I create my account?
The sign-up form has five fields: Company name, Your full name, Email, Password, then Your company's country. Press Start your free trial.
- The password is at least 10 characters — the field says so itself, and the form refuses anything shorter with "Must be at least 10 characters."
- The country is not a cosmetic field. Beneath it a line reads: "We'll set working days, currency and time zone automatically" — and it really does write four settings at once: the weekly working days, the currency, the time zone, and the interface's default language. All are editable later from Settings.
Then you move to the Enter the verification code screen: a six-digit code arrives by email, valid for 10 minutes, with five attempts to enter it. Press Confirm and start and your company is created and you're straight in.
If the code doesn't arrive you have Resend code — limited to three sends every fifteen minutes — or Edit details to correct your email without refilling the form.
Caution: one email carries only one active account across the whole platform, and signing up with an email already in use is refused. If you want a second company, register it with a different email.
What does Duwam ask you the first time?
Two cards about you, then two about your company — all of them directly over the screen after your first sign-in:
About you (for every new user):
- Welcome to Duwam — the display name field; Continue doesn't unlock before two characters, and the maximum is sixty.
- Add your profile picture — an Upload button, with the picture up to 2 MB in PNG or JPG; anything else is refused with "Unsupported format. Use PNG or JPG." You have Back, Skip for now and Done.
About your company (for the company administrator alone, and once for the whole company):
- Let's complete your company profile — the company name field.
- What line of business is your company in? — a grid of industry cards to pick one from, which prepares the right templates for you. Industries that aren't ready are shown with a coming soon badge and can't be picked — you see them to know what's coming, not to think them available.
Every step saves as you go, so closing the browser between two steps loses nothing before it.
Caution: the two company cards are recorded as "complete" the moment they appear, not the moment you finish them — and that is deliberate: anyone who closed the tab halfway through isn't cornered by them on every sign-in. The price is that they don't come back: whatever setup is left you follow from the Get started with Duwam card on the dashboard, or correct from Settings.
Note: the two company cards are for the company administrator alone, and they close for the whole company as soon as any administrator passes through them. A second administrator is never asked the company's name again.
About a second and a half later a six-step guided tour starts over the dashboard: it opens on "Welcome to Duwam" with a Start the tour button, then points at Employees, then Tasks, then Chat, then Attendance & reports, and ends at "You're all set." Skip it with Esc at any moment, and it too is once per company: whoever finished or closed it closed it for the other administrators.
What is the "sample data" that was already there?
At sign-up a complete demonstration set is seeded into your company — 8 employees, 3 teams, 2 projects, 15 tasks, and 30 days of attendance records — as its card on the dashboard says: "We'll add 8 sample employees, teams, projects, 15 tasks, and a full month of attendance records. Explore freely, and clear it with one button whenever you want."
It's tagged as sample at its root, and three things follow from that:
- It consumes no seats. A sample employee doesn't count against your plan's seat limit, so it never blocks you adding a real one.
- It doesn't count towards the five steps. The Get started with Duwam card counts only what you created yourself.
- It clears with one press. From the dashboard, the Sample data is on card carries a Delete sample data button, and asks: "All sample data will be deleted. Are you sure?" If you clear it and then want it back, a Try with sample data button appears in its place.
Tip: clear it before you invite your team, not after. An employee who signs in and finds eight colleagues they don't know and fifteen tasks that aren't theirs assumes the system belongs to another company.
What are the three systems, and how do I move between them?
Duwam today is three systems living in one interface, each with its own sidebar:
| System | What's under it | Opens on |
|---|---|---|
| HR | "Employees, attendance and tasks" | The dashboard |
| Customers | "Conversations, deals and contacts" | Inbox |
| Accounting | "Entries, invoices and reports" | Chart of accounts |
The door between them is a single button at the top of the sidebar — and in the screen header on a phone — carrying the name of the system you're currently in. Press it and a menu opens headed Available systems, with a row per system, a second line on each saying what's in it (the same as the middle column above), and a tick on the one you're in. Its name for a screen reader is Switch system.
Switching reloads the whole interface, because the entire sidebar changes. And it returns you to the last screen you were on inside that system, not to its beginning; if you've never been in it, it opens on its first screen from the table.
Which plan includes which system?
- HR is in every plan without exception — the system that never goes away.
- Customers is in Professional, Advanced, Business and the Custom plan, and in the trial. It is not available on Basic, or once a trial ends unsubscribed.
- Accounting is in Advanced, Business and the Custom plan, and in the trial — Accounting and Point of Sale are available from the Advanced plan and during the trial. See the Accounting guide.
- In your first fourteen days all three are open together. So try them all before you choose your plan, not after.
And for an employee — not for an administrator — there is a second condition on top of the plan:
- They need the CRM access permission to enter Customers.
- They need the View the books permission to enter Accounting.
The company administrator enters all three by role. Both permissions are granted from: Employees → open the employee to edit → Permissions → the Customers or Accounting group.
Caution: the button doesn't appear at all if you have no second system. A menu with one row is a claim, not a choice, so it's removed entirely. If Switch system disappears after your trial ends, that's because your plan doesn't include the other two systems — not because something broke.
Note: even Settings follows the system you're in. The My account and My company groups — including Billing — appear in all three workspaces, while HR, Channels, Customers and Accounting each appear in their own. If you can't find a section you're looking for, switch system first. See Settings & branding.
What's in the HR sidebar?
This is the sidebar you open on, and its rows in order:
Dashboard · Employees · Field Ops · Attendance · Work · Team Chat · Automation · Wiki · then a System section with Operations log, Help and Settings.
Three of those rows are groups, not destinations: the row opens on its first member, and the rest become tabs in a horizontal strip above the page:
| Row | Its tabs |
|---|---|
| Attendance | Records · Devices |
| Work | Tasks · Projects · Work orders |
| Team Chat | Messages · Office |
Note: the horizontal strip isn't drawn for fewer than two tabs. A row whose members your plan partly hides — Work orders on Basic, say — shows with what's left, and if only one remains it appears as an ordinary row with no strip. The Field Ops row itself appears only on Business and the Custom plan, and in the trial.
The Customers sidebar is built on the same logic: Customer Chats (with its Inbox and Reports tabs), then Contacts (People and Companies), then Deals and Activities, then the Growth group. And the Accounting sidebar has seven groups: Sales, Purchases, Banks and cash, Stock, Point of sale, General ledger and Reports.
Tip: above the sidebar are two buttons that shortcut all your navigation: Search (or ⌘K) opens the command palette, and Quick actions opens a menu of four actions for the company administrator — Add employee, Add task, New project and Attendance — each with a shortcut letter that runs it while the menu is open.
How do I add my first employee?
From Employees. The page has five tabs: Employees, Teams, Attendance, Rewards and Reports.
In the Employees tab press Add user at the head of the list, and the Add employee dialog opens:
- Name, Email and Phone number.
- Role — User or Admin.
- Required hours per day (8 by default) and Work type: On-site, Remote, Hybrid or Field.
- Hourly rate — "The amount paid per hour worked. Leave it at 0 if it doesn't apply."
- Start date — "Hours are counted from this date onwards."
- Working days — "Press a day to toggle it between working and off."
- Press Create.
Immediately afterwards an Employee created dialog appears carrying the activation link: "Share the following activation link with the employee so they can set a password." You have Share via WhatsApp, Copy link and Done.
Caution: the link is shown once — the dialog says so outright: "Copy the link now — it won't be shown again." It is valid for 14 days, after which you reissue it from the employee's page with Resend invitation. And if the employee's email is on file and outgoing mail is configured, the link is emailed to them too and the dialog says: "We've also sent the link to the employee's email." — otherwise sharing it is on you.
Note: seats are capped by plan: 5 seats on Basic, 20 on Professional and in the trial, 50 on Advanced, and 100 on Business. Reach the limit and the addition is refused with "Seat limit reached — the limit must be raised from the owner panel before adding employees," along with the used count and the limit. See Plans & billing.
How do I create a team, a project and a first task?
A team: from Employees → the Teams tab → New team. You fill in the name, the leader (optional), and members. At the bottom of the dialog is an option ticked by default: Create a chat group for this team — "Members and the leader will be added to a new group in Chat." Then Save.
A project: from Work → the Projects tab. In the generate a new number card type the project name and an optional description, then Save project.
A task: from Work → the Tasks tab → Add task. Duwam first asks "What kind of task is this?" and offers three:
- Individual task — "one person completes it, and it's archived when done."
- Team task — "several people work together on the same thing."
- Pipeline task — "it moves through several stages, each stage with its own team."
Choosing the type opens the rest of the form. See Tasks and Projects.
Tip: you can skip the team and the project for now. The task is the most important thing to create on day one, because it is one of the five steps the dashboard counts for you.
How does an employee start their shift?
Once the employee activates their account from the invitation link they land on their own sidebar, which has an Attendance row. They open it and press Start shift.
In your own sidebar is a small card reading Off shift or On shift with a counter, which opens onto the attendance page. Full supervision, though, is from Attendance → Records.
Caution: Duwam never starts a shift automatically. Signing into the app is not clocking in, and pressing Start shift is a deliberate act by the employee. See Attendance.
What are the five steps the dashboard counts?
On the dashboard is a card called Get started with Duwam with, beneath it: "Five steps that save you a week of learning." It carries a completion ring, and when it fills it says: "You've completed all five steps. Well done!"
The steps are:
| # | The step | When it counts as complete |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Complete the company profile | When the company has a name and a chosen industry |
| 2 | Add your first employee | The first real employee — not sample, not an administrator |
| 3 | Create your first task | The first real task in a real project |
| 4 | Send your first message | The first real message in the company's chat |
| 5 | View the attendance report | As soon as you open the attendance page for the first time |
All of them are detected from your work itself — no boxes you tick by hand. The card is hidden with a Hide button if it bothers you, and it stays hidden for the whole company.
Note: beside it you may find a Company profile completeness card — and that is a different question: the first measures your use of the product, this one measures how full your settings are. Don't confuse them.
What happens after day fourteen?
The trial is 14 days, and its counter shows in your sidebar: Trial with the number of days and days left, and an Upgrade plan button that becomes Add payment details in the last three days. Both open Settings → My company → Billing.
After it ends there are three states and no fourth:
- Three days of read-only. The screen says: "Trial over — read-only mode" and "You can browse your data, but adding and editing are paused until you subscribe." You have a Browse my data button.
- Then closure. "Your free trial has ended" and "Subscribe to restore full access — you won't lose any data."
- In both cases the screen shows the line "All your data is safely stored" together with your counts of employees, attendance records and tasks — because closure is a block on access, not a deletion of data.
You also get one free extension: an Extend the trial 10 days free button appears on the same screen as long as you haven't used it.
Caution: subscription management belongs to the account owner alone. Another administrator reads: "Subscription management is available to the account owner" and sees the plan's details without changing them — until the owner delegates it from the delegate subscription management section.
What getting started does not do
So you don't go looking for what isn't there:
- No employee import from Excel or CSV. Duwam has no door today that adds employees in bulk; each is added from the Add employee dialog. (Import exists for contacts in Customers and for tasks, not for employees.)
- No bulk invitation. Every employee has their own activation link, copied or shared or emailed — one at a time.
- No ready-made automation rule. A new account starts with no rules at all; the first one is yours to write. See Automation & integrations.
- No automatic weekly report. What exists is the daily digest — an optional morning email you switch on from your own profile settings.
- No import of your data from a previous system — no attendance, no payroll, no historical tasks.
- No single account for two companies. One account means one company.
- The two company introduction cards don't come back after their first appearance, and there is no "redo the introduction" button.
- The guided tour can't be replayed from inside the product once finished or closed.
- The three systems aren't opened by an option inside the account — the plan or the paid add-on opens them, not a switch in Settings.
FAQ
Q: Where did Switch system go? It was there yesterday. A: Most likely your trial ended. The button is only drawn when you actually have a second system, and Basic — like a trial that ended unsubscribed — includes neither Customers nor Accounting. See Plans & billing.
Q: I switched system and the whole sidebar changed — have I lost something? A: No. Each system has its own sidebar, and your screens in the other system are as you left them. Switch back and you return to the last screen you were on there, not to its beginning.
Q: My colleague is an administrator and can't see Accounting. A: A company administrator sees all three systems by role. An employee needs the View the books permission — which isn't among the default permissions and is granted explicitly. See Teams & permissions.
Q: I can't find Projects in the sidebar. A: It is no longer a row of its own. It's a tab inside the Work row, beside Tasks and Work orders. The row opens on Tasks first.
Q: Where is the Teams page? A: A tab inside Employees, along with Attendance, Rewards and Reports.
Q: How do I upload my employee file all at once? A: That door doesn't exist today. Every employee is added from the Add employee dialog.
Q: I closed the activation-link dialog before copying it. A: The link is never shown twice. Open the employee's page and press Resend invitation to generate a new one.
Q: Does the employee get an invitation email automatically? A: They do if their email is on file and outgoing mail is configured — and then the dialog says "We've also sent the link to the employee's email." If it doesn't say that, sharing is on you, by copy or over WhatsApp.
Q: I closed the tab halfway through the company introduction cards and they didn't come back. A: That is the intended behaviour — they're recorded complete the moment they appear so they don't corner you on every sign-in. Finish what's left from the Get started with Duwam card, or correct the name and industry from Settings → My company → Company profile.
Q: Does the sample data eat into my plan's seats? A: No. A sample employee counts neither against the seat limit nor towards the five steps.
Q: I added a real employee and the second step didn't move. A: The step counts real, non-administrator employees. An administrator you added doesn't move it, and neither does a sample employee.
Q: What happens to my data if I don't subscribe? A: Three days of read-only, then access closes. The screen itself says "All your data is safely stored" and "you won't lose any data" — closure is a block on access, not a deletion. And you have one free extension with Extend the trial 10 days free.
Q: Can I manage more than one company on one account? A: No. One account = one company, and one email carries only one active account. Register the second company with a different email.
Q: Can you see our data? A: Every company is isolated from every other inside the system. See Teams & permissions for who sees what inside your own company.
Quick reference
| Action | Path |
|---|---|
| Create an account | The sign-up page → five fields → Start your free trial |
| Confirm your email | Enter the verification code → a 6-digit code → Confirm and start |
| Code didn't arrive | Resend code (up to 3 times every 15 minutes) |
| Switch system | The system-name button above the sidebar → Available systems → pick the row |
| Open Customers | Switch system → Customers (opens on Inbox) |
| Open Accounting | Switch system → Accounting (opens on Chart of accounts) |
| Add an employee | Employees → Add user → Create |
| Reissue an invitation | Employees → the employee's page → Resend invitation |
| Create a team | Employees → the Teams tab → New team |
| Create a project | Work → the Projects tab → Save project |
| Create a task | Work → the Tasks tab → Add task → choose the type |
| Start a shift (employee) | Attendance → Start shift |
| Supervise attendance (administrator) | Attendance → Records |
| Delete the sample data | Dashboard → Delete sample data |
| Bring the sample data back | Dashboard → Try with sample data |
| Follow the getting-started steps | Dashboard → the Get started with Duwam card |
| Grant the Customers permission | Employees → edit an employee → Permissions → Customers → CRM access |
| Grant the Accounting permission | Employees → edit an employee → Permissions → Accounting → View the books |
| Upgrade the plan | Sidebar → Upgrade plan, or Settings → My company → Billing |
| Extend the trial | The trial-ended screen → Extend the trial 10 days free (once) |
| Search everything | Sidebar → Search or ⌘K |
| A quick action | Sidebar → Quick actions |
Related articles
- Plans & billing — which plan opens which system, and what happens after fourteen days
- Employees — the employee card in detail, invitations and reports
- Teams & permissions — who enters which system and why
- Attendance — the employee's experience from their first shift
- Tasks — the three types and what follows
- Customers (CRM) — the second system, from the first conversation
- Accounting (ERP) — the third system, from the chart of accounts
- Settings & branding — why the settings sections change with the system
- The mobile app — the same screen in your pocket