Getting started

Set up your business

From an empty account to your first customer served: signing up, the four setup steps, getting your team signed in, and trying the whole loop yourself. Written for the owner, who is the person who signs up.

What setting up involves#

Setting up takes four short steps, and every step comes filled in with a sensible starting point for your kind of place. You correct what is there rather than describing your business from a blank page. Nothing you choose is final: you can go back a step while you are in setup, and you can change everything afterwards from the staff app.

The four steps are:

1. Your place — what kind of place this is.
2. Your lines — what people wait for.
3. Your people — who serves them, and who gets a login.
4. You're live — your address, your token letters, and your team's logins.

A progress bar across the top shows which step you are on. Setup is saved as you go: if you close the tab or refresh, you come back to the step you reached, with everything you saved still there.

Create your account#

The person who signs up becomes the business's owner. Use your own email address, because this is the login you will use every day.

1. Go to business.linemeup.in/signup. The page is headed Get your line running.
2. Type your Business name, as customers know it.
3. Type Your name.
4. Type your Email. You sign in with it.
5. Choose a Password: at least 8 characters, with a letter and a number. Press Show password to check what you typed.
6. Press Create account. The button says Creating your account… for a moment.

You are signed in straight away and taken to the first setup step. There is no separate log-in and no email to confirm.

Step 1: choose your kind of place#

The page asks What kind of place is this? and shows five cards. Each card lists what choosing it starts you with, under We'll start you with: the lines, how long each usually takes, and who serves them.

1. Read the cards and pick the one closest to your place.
2. Tap the card. There is no Continue button: choosing a card takes you straight to step 2, with its lines already filled in.

The kind of place also decides a few of the words your team sees. A clinic, for example, sees clinic words such as "Emergency" where other places see "Put above everyone". See Languages and the words on screen.

Step 2: set up your lines#

The page asks What do people line up for? A line is where people wait, in order. Make one row for each thing people wait for. Each row has three things to decide, and nothing else.

For each row:

1. Check the name in the box (What is it called? when empty). Customers and your team both see it, so use the words your customers use.
2. Under How do people join?, choose one:
   • Walk-in — people join on the day and wait their turn.
   • Bookings only — people choose a time; nobody joins without a booking.
   • Walk-in + booking — both: walk-ins wait, and booked visits come in at their time.
3. Under How long does it usually take?, choose the closest time: 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90 or 120 min, or 5, 6, 8, 10 or 12 h for a booking that takes most of a day. This is the starting point for the waits people are shown.

Under each name you will see Tokens start followed by two or three letters, such as GE-. Every visit on that line gets a token that starts with those letters, so your team and your customers can tell lines apart at a glance. Line Me Up chooses the letters from the name and makes sure no two lines share them.

To add, remove and save:

1. To add a line, press Add another and fill in the new row. You can have up to ten lines here.
2. To remove one, press the × beside its name.
3. When the rows are right, press Continue. Rows you left without a name are simply dropped.

Step 3: add your people and desks#

The page asks Who serves them? Each row is somebody who serves customers, or a place where they are served. Every row becomes a desk — the place a customer is called to — and a row for a person with an email address also becomes a login.

Your own row comes first, with your name filled in and the words That's you. You cannot remove it.

For your own row:

1. Under Do you see customers yourself?, tick the lines you serve in person.
2. Leave them all unticked if you do not serve customers yourself. You can still run the business and watch every line.

For everyone else:

1. Type their name, or the desk's name, in the Name box.
2. Under Is this a person or a desk?, choose A person for somebody with a chair or a room of their own (a doctor, a stylist), or A shared desk for a place several people take turns at (a reception counter, a wash bay).
3. For a person, type their email in Email (optional) if they should sign in. Leave it blank and they won't get a login — they will still appear on the board as a desk. A shared desk has no email box: it has no login of its own, because whoever works it signs in as themselves and picks it when their shift starts.
4. Under What do they handle?, tick the lines this person or desk serves. With more than one ticked, the page reminds you that calls will come evenly from those lines; you can change the share later on Desks.

Then:

1. Press Add another for each extra person or desk, or × to remove a row.
2. Press Continue. The button says Creating… while the logins are made.

Step 4: you're live#

The last page says You're live. and Your team can start putting people in line from the board. It also tells you, once, the things setup did not ask:

• Your address. "Customers will find you at …" followed by your page's address. It is made from your business name. If another business already had that name, a number is added on the end — check it here. The full link and your QR code are in Settings.
• Your time zone and, if you have added one, your city. The time zone decides when your day starts and ends: token numbers start again each day, and your opening hours and reports follow it. Check it before your first customer.
• Your opening hours. A new business starts with the usual hours for its kind of place, every day, and the page says which: "Customers will see you open … every day". Change them in Settings.
• Your city and phone, if you have not added them: "Customers find you by your city and can call you on your phone." Press Add them in Settings to finish setup and go straight there.
• Each line's token letters, for example "General Consultation — tokens start GE-".

Copy your team's logins#

If you gave anybody an email in step 3, a Logins card lists each person's email and a temporary password.

1. Press Copy all. Every email and password is copied, one person per line, and the button changes to Copied.
2. Paste them somewhere safe before you leave this page.
3. Give each person their own email and password yourself, in person or by your usual message app.

Finish setup#

1. Press Go to my board to open the Live Board, where you can see every line and desk.
2. Or, if you ticked lines for yourself in step 3, press Work my own desk to open your own Workboard and start serving.

Either button finishes setup. From then on, logging in takes you to the Live Board, and setup does not appear again.

Get your team signed in#

Each person does this once, on whichever phone, tablet or computer they use at work.

1. Open business.linemeup.in/login. It is a web page: there is nothing to install.
2. Type the Email and the temporary Password the owner gave you, and press Log in.
3. Staff land on their Workboard, the screen for serving at a desk. Somebody who has no desk of their own and takes a shared desk is asked Which desk are you at today? and picks one.
4. Change the temporary password straight away. Until you do, the app reminds you: "You are using a temporary password. Choose your own below…". Open Your account, type the temporary one in Current password, choose a New password of at least 8 characters, and press Change password.

Staff reach Your account from My day · Sign out at the foot of the Workboard. Owners and managers reach it from the round initials button at the top right. See Finding your way around the staff app.

If someone loses their temporary password#

1. Open Team in the sidebar and open the person.
2. Press Give them a new password. This happens straight away: their current password stops working.
3. The new password is shown once. Copy it and give it to them.

Adding people after setup#

New starters are added on Team with Add person, which works the same way: give them an email for a login, choose their role and lines, and hand over the temporary password it shows you. See Your team, roles and leave.

Try the whole loop yourself#

Before your first real customer, run one visit through from start to finish. The product is one loop — someone joins, waits, is called, is served, and is done — and seeing it once makes the rest of the app make sense. You can do all of this alone in a few minutes.

See your page as a customer sees it#

1. Open Settings and choose QR code and poster.
2. Point your phone's camera at Your QR code on the screen. Your business's page opens in the phone's browser — the same page a customer gets by scanning your poster.
3. Look it over: your name, whether you are open now, and your lines (or your services, once you add some). Nothing needs installing.

Joining from that page asks the customer to confirm a phone number with a 6-digit code first — see Finding a place and joining for what a customer sees from there.

Add a test visit at the desk#

1. Open Live board and press Add visit at the top.
2. Choose a line (or what they came for) under Choose what they came for.
3. Type a Name such as "Test". Phone is optional.
4. Press Add. The sheet shows the new token and its place in the line, and the board updates.

Call and serve it#

1. Open your Workboard: Work my desk at the foot of the sidebar (or Work my own desk at the end of setup). This needs a desk that takes from the line you used.
2. Press Start my shift.
3. Press Call Next. Your test visit is called to your desk.
4. Press They're here when the person arrives, to start serving them.
5. Press Complete when you are done. The visit is finished and counted.
6. Press End shift from My day · Sign out when you stop serving.

The visit now appears in Visits and in Insights. Every screen in the staff app is a view of that same loop. The Workboard is explained in full in Serving at a desk: the Workboard.

What to set up next#

Setup gets you serving. These are the things most businesses change in their first week, all from the sidebar of the staff app.

When something goes wrong#

Continue is greyed out

Every step needs at least one named row. Type a name in at least one row.

I chose the wrong kind of place

Press Back until you reach step 1 and choose again; the next steps refill with that card's starting rows. After setup, change it in Settings instead — your lines stay as they are.

I closed the tab halfway through

Log in again. You are taken back to the step you reached, with what you saved. You cannot skip ahead past a step you have not saved.

I left the last page without copying the passwords

They cannot be shown again. Give each person a new password from Team, as described above.

My address has a number on the end

Another business had already taken that name. You can change your link in Settings › Business; old links and printed QR codes keep working when you do.