Getting started with RowFold

RowFold is a workspace of related tables — customers, projects, invoices, anything you track — with views, reports, and AI on top. This article walks you from creating an account through onboarding, templates, your first workspace and table, and a quick tour of Home, the sidebar, and the ⌘K palette. Create your account On the sign-up page, name the team or workspace and enter your email address. That is the whole opening form: no password, name field, or terms checkbox before you see RowFold build. Continue with Google or Microsoft if you prefer. After the workspace is ready, an email signup creates the password it will normally use. Google and Microsoft signups skip that step because their identity provider is the credential. A one-time email link remains available as an alternative whenever you do not have your password handy. If the address already belongs to an account or an unclaimed invitation, RowFold never opens a session from the typed address alone. It sends a sign-in link to that mailbox instead, so only its owner can continue. Signing up starts your 30-day free trial: every feature is on from the first minute, no card required. Walk through onboarding Right after sign-up, RowFold carries your sentence forward as the AI brief. It deliberately does not draw or list a predicted schema: the signed-out illustration uses small local rules, while the authenticated AI builder reasons about the full workflow. You can change the workspace name, icon, or colour, open the template library, import a spreadsheet, or start blank. Choose Build it to open the real builder. It reports the current phase immediately, adds a checked and linked line whenever an artifact really exists, and keeps its brief, conversation, and progress on the server. Refreshing or losing the connection therefore offers Resume build instead of starting over. The builder only works while its page is open. Following one of its links, or closing the tab, pauses the build: nothing it has made is lost, only the step it was on. Wherever you land, a Build paused chip at the foot of the sidebar takes you back, and Resume build picks up the exact request it was working on, such as adding an area of the plan. A business with several areas gets a plan first: a folder for each area and the records they share at the top level, with Build it all or Start with the first areas. The builder then works one folder at a time, and when it finishes with areas still to build, it offers exactly those. Explicit templates still show their known contents and build in the background while the optional invitation page is open. AI setups offer invitations after the workspace is ready, so inviting people never stands between you and the first result. The completed AI screen offers an email signup a password on the way in — skippable, since emailed sign-in links keep working either way. On Home, a chip beside the ✓ Built banner offers a 60-second tour — your tables, the Start here cards, Ask, the bell and Manage workspace; it never plays uninvited, and you can replay it any time from the bottom of this help panel. Choose a template or start blank A template creates a set of pre-wired related tables — complete with relation, lookup, and rollup fields, plus sample records so nothing looks empty. Onboarding leads with one recommendation and keeps Service Business, Project Delivery, Sales CRM, Product Roadmap, Talent Pipeline, Issue Tracker, Editorial Calendar, Events Co., Inventory & Supply, and Blank workspace behind Pick a different starting point. The full gallery lives on the Workspaces page. It goes much further — real-world setups like Cedarwood Salon Booking, Cedar Veterinary, Heritage Realty, Compass Magazine, Long Road Podcast, Velocity Legal, and Riverstone Academy, plus personal workspaces such as a wedding, trip, library, garden, or tabletop campaign. Your account has one home for its data, and a template pours into it — its tables land together in their own folder beside anything already there, able to relate to it rather than sitting on an island. Trying one is cheap for that reason, not because you can spin up a second account and throw it away. See Folders, not separate workspaces. The gallery presents each template as a worked example business; when one carries into sign-up and onboarding, its card is titled by what it does — Veterinary practice, Inventory & supply — and a first build files its tables under your workspace's name, not the example company's. Invite teammates AI-first onboarding offers invitations after the build; template onboarding can show them while its background build runs. Type an email, choose Editor (the default), Viewer, or Admin, and press Add or Enter. Paste a comma-, space-, or line-separated list to add several at once. The step is optional: Open it now or Open without inviting always remains available. Everyone you do add becomes a member with the chosen role, and an unclaimed address receives a secure invitation path. You can invite more people later from People & access. Editors and Admins take a paid seat only if you move to Team after the trial; read-only Viewers remain free. Find your way around Home Home greets you by the time of day on your own clock — by name once you have set one in your profile — with a one-line snapshot: the tables, records, relation fields and teammates in the workspace, counting only the tables you can open. Your tables themselves live in the left rail, and Ask is in the top bar (Ctrl/⌘ + /), so Home does not repeat either. One button is highlighted, and it is always the next thing worth doing: Back to table, the table you last worked in; on a workspace nobody has worked in yet, the first capability you haven't set up, such as Take bookings. Those capability cards stay once something is live, reporting its status instead of asking, and Not for us hides one you'll never want. Start here asks up to three things your workspace asks every morning — what is due in the next seven days, where the records in a status field are sitting, what a money column adds up to — each with a figure counted from your own records. Every card says exactly what it opens, and opens it: the grid filtered to the next seven days, a board grouped by that status, or a grid whose footer already totals that column. The figure on the card is the number that page shows. A money card appears only where a grid view already totals a money column; set one up from the grid's Summarise button. If your workspace has marked a home dashboard, that board shows here instead. Recently touched lists the six most recently updated records you can see. Beside it, when there is something to say: One thing left (swap a new build's sample records for your own), RowFold noticed (a count worth watching, offered once), and Your team with who has been around lately. Straight after a build, Home also says what the build made, as one line — Built just now, with the tables, links and records it created — and the full list one click away. It clears itself: once you've seen it, or as soon as you start adding records of your own, it doesn't come back. While nobody has typed anything into a table the build made, that table's line carries a Remove button, which sends the table to the Trash — or, if other tables still link to it, says which ones are in the way. Get around: the sidebar and views The left sidebar (the rail) is your map. At the top sit the RowFold logo — a click takes you Home — and your workspace; with more than one, it opens the Workspaces page to switch. Below come Home, Inbox, Bookings and Reports & dashboards, then your Tables with live record counts — the one part of the rail that scrolls, with a filter once there are more than a handful. Star something and a ⭐ Starred section appears at the top of that list. Pinned at the foot, Manage workspace opens everything you run and build: Reports & dashboards, People & access, Permissions, Import data and Audit log; Schema & relations, Automations, Channels, Integrations and Developers. Your account — Settings, Security, sign out — is below it. Open a table and its views run along the top of its page: Grid, Board, Gallery, Calendar, Timeline, Map and more. They are the same table through different lenses — switching views never changes your data. One rail, no modes There are no separate modes to switch between: browsing records, editing values, switching views, and asking questions all share the same rail as the structural work. Designing tables and fields, the schema map, permissions, import, automations, the developer API, and the audit log sit behind Manage workspace at the foot of the rail — one click away, never behind a separate mode. To create a table, open the Tables page and press New table: give it a Table name, pick a Template type (Custom starts blank; other types come pre-built with their typical fields), and press Create and add fields → to refine it. There's also Build with AI, which turns a plain-English description into a connected set of tables — you approve before anything is created. Both options appear only for workspace Admins. Search and ask with ⌘K Click Ask RowFold in the top bar, or press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K) anywhere, to open the palette. Type to search tables and records, move with ↑ ↓, open with Enter, and close with Esc. The same box accepts plain-English questions about your data. Prefer to go straight to asking? ⌘/ (or Ctrl+/) opens the ask prompt directly, and its History button brings back your past conversations. Tips • Your sentence becomes the authenticated AI builder's brief; only its live activity feed claims which schema and artifacts actually exist. • Press <kbd>⌘K</kbd> (or <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>K</kbd>) anywhere to search tables and records, or ask a question about your data. • The <strong>Getting set up</strong> checklist on Home tracks four milestones and links each one to the page where you complete it. • Click your workspace name at the top of the sidebar to open the Workspaces page and switch or create workspaces. • Star items to make a <strong>⭐ Starred</strong> section appear in the sidebar for one-click access. Good to know • The AI builder applies its first-draft schema after your Build it confirmation; watch the linked activity feed to see exactly what now exists. • Leaving the builder’s page while it works pauses the build. Open things you want to look at in a new tab, or come back through the Build paused chip in the sidebar and use Resume build. Do not start a second build to replace the first — everything already created is still safe. • Invited teammates do not get a password when you add them — the owner of the invited mailbox claims access through the secure sign-in flow. • Templates arrive with realistic sample records (customers, deals, invoices, and so on). Edit or delete them before relying on counts and rollups for real work. • The signed-out sketch is only a marketing illustration and is not repeated during signup or confirmation; the authenticated AI builder is the authority that designs the real schema. Who can do what • Finishing onboarding creates the workspace with you as its Admin. • Invited teammates join with the role you choose per invite: Editor (the default), Viewer, or Admin. • Only workspace Admins can create tables — the New table and Design tables with AI buttons appear only for Admins, and the server refuses table creation from anyone else even if submitted directly. • The + next to Tables in the sidebar and the Add first table shortcut appear only for workspace Admins. • Home, the sidebar, and the Tables page only ever list workspaces and tables you are a member of.