General User

This manual teaches you how to think in Ceruleo. It is not a reference - the in-app Field Guide already documents every button and screen, and this manual links there whenever you need mechanics. What the Field Guide cannot tell you is which tool to reach for, when, and what it costs to choose wrong. That judgment is what these pages are for.

One idea runs through every chapter: the work drives the shape. Most project management tools are only useful once a project has been defined - they track a scope someone else finished. Ceruleo starts at the spark of an idea, and everything in it - the Organizer, the schedule, the templates - evolves as the project takes shape. So read the rules here as scaffolding around creative, non-linear, iterative work, not as procedure. And wherever the tool can be reshaped to fit your team - templates, permission grids, per-project configuration - this manual points it out with a ⚙ Make it yours note.

How this manual is organized

The chapters follow the life of real work, not the app's menu:

1. The Project Organizer - the skeleton everything else hangs from. Read this first even if you never touch project setup.
2. Sandboxes and Rallies - where ideas become assets, and how to pick the right container for creative work.
3. Scheduling - dependencies, milestones, and dates that maintain themselves.
4. Logs and entry templates - the daily record, and why its structure is decided before day one.
5. Everything else - the shorter tools (flags, RFIs, notes, meetings, tasks, library, and friends), each with the one decision that matters.

Parts 1 through 4 each follow one continuous story: Halcyon Exhibits building the Aurora Pavilion. The people in it - Morgan the project lead, Jules the designer, Dana the reviewer, Riley the outside fabricator - face the same choices you will, and every screenshot is taken from their project.

Getting around

Every page inside a project carries the project bar at the top: the project name (click it for your recent items here, your other projects, and the way back to your dashboard) plus one-click links to every tool you can open. However deep you are - a rally, a sandbox, a schedule - the next tool is one click, never a trip back through the dashboard. Like everything else, the bar shows only the tools your permissions allow.

A note on what you can see

Ceruleo distinguishes company users (people in your company's workspace) from project collaborators (people invited to a single project - clients, vendors, partners). Some tools in this manual are company-only: company Sparks, company contacts, programs, and everything under company settings. Each section that needs company membership opens with an eligibility callout like this one:

⚑ Company users only. If you were invited to a project rather than to the company, this section describes things you will not see - that is by design, not a missing permission.

If you administer the company, the Company Admin edition of this manual covers the other half: settings, templates, invitations, and the machinery behind what general users experience.