Soulhall Product handbook

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Quickstart

From signing in to your first result you can review — create an Office, create a Subject, summon it and hand it a task.

This page walks you once through the whole of Soulhall. It uses one example throughout: asking a "purchasing reviewer" to compare quotes from three suppliers and hand back a report you can review.

1. Sign in and choose your own password

  1. Open the sign-in page, enter the Email and Password your admin gave you, and choose Sign in.
  2. The first time, you see Choose your own password. The admin typed the one you have, so they know it; pick your own before going further.
  3. If you belong to several organizations, use Switch organization on the Me page.

You land on Workbench. If you have no Offices yet, you are taken to Offices instead.

2. Create an Office

An Office is the space for this piece of work: the conversation, files and results all live there.

  1. On Offices, choose New Office.
  2. Fill in:
    • Name: for example "Q3 supplier review".
    • Code: for example q3-suppliers. Lower-case letters, digits and hyphens only; it appears in the Office's address.
    • What it is for: one or two words such as research. It picks the Office's icon.
  3. Choose Create.

The new Office opens. For now only you can see it (admins and owners always can).

3. Create a Subject

A Subject records how a person judges things. It does not belong to this Office and can later be summoned into any project.

  1. On Subjects, choose New Subject.
  2. Identity: a Name (what the Offices will call it, for example "Purchasing reviewer") and a Code (for example buyer). The code cannot change once the Subject exists.
  3. Appearance: pick a figure. You can change it any time.
  4. Judgement: this step decides whether it sounds like the person.
    • Persona: who this person is and how they think and speak. For example: "You trust records you can check. A delivery date a quote does not state is a risk to you."
    • Expertise: what they are good at, one per line, such as "supplier evaluation" and "contract terms".
    • Decision principles: where they differ from everyone else, one per line, such as "A supplier with a poor delivery record is never first choice, however cheap."
  5. Confirm: look it over and choose Create.

4. Summon the Subject into the Office

  1. Back in the Office, choose Summon at the top.
  2. Pick the Subject you just created.
  3. Check the Code and Name (they default to the Subject's), then fill in Role, for example "Supplier reviewer". Everyone else in the room sees the role, which is how they know what to bring to whom.
  4. What that role does: the responsibilities, written for the Embodiment itself. For example: "Compare the suppliers' delivery risk. Cite the file behind every judgement."
  5. Choose Summon.

It appears straight away in the members row at the top of the Office and is ready to work in about two and a half minutes.

5. Upload your material

  1. In the Office, open the Files tab.
  2. Choose Upload and add the three suppliers' quotes.

Uploaded files are the Office's shared files: every Embodiment here can read them.

6. Hand it its first task

Write your request in the box at the bottom of the Conversation tab and choose Send. A good first task has four parts:

  • Question: what needs answering.
  • Material: what it may use.
  • Result: what to hand in, and who reads it.
  • Evidence: which claims must cite a source.

For example:

@Purchasing reviewer Using the three quotes in Files, compare the three suppliers' delivery risk. Hand in a report for the head of purchasing. Cite the file and passage behind every judgement; where a quote says nothing, mark it "not stated" rather than guessing.

Address someone with @name and only the Embodiments you name respond. Without a name, the message goes to every Embodiment in the Office.

7. Read and review the result

  1. When the Embodiment hands in a report, it arrives as a card in the conversation and is listed under the Results tab.
  2. Choose Read to open it.
  3. Check the reasoning behind each judgement, the assumptions it made, and what material was missing.
  4. Where something is doubtful, choose Ask about it in the room. The box is filled in with the report's name; add your question and send it.

A report is a document an Embodiment wrote, not a verified fact. The work is done when you can say which decision this evidence supports, and which it does not.