Everyone can see the work. Nobody has to ask.
cami turns a request into a card that your team can see. Every person on it moves their own part, at their own speed. This guide shows you every screen, every button, and what happens after you tap it.
Hello. I am cami. I look after your team's work, so you do not have to chase people. Read this page once and you will know everything. It takes about ten minutes.
01Who uses cami
Different teams, the same problem: you asked someone to do something, and now you do not know where it is.
You ask one person. You can see when they start and when they finish.
Two people share the job. One owns it. Everyone else can watch.
Your freelancer accepts the work in cami. You never have to ask “is it done yet?”
The checkpoint date warns you before the deadline, not after it.
Each engineer moves their own part. The team status shows the slowest one.
They are kept in the loop without joining your whole system.
Whatever your team looks like, cami works the same way. The rest of this guide follows one example so that every screen tells one clear story.
02The example we follow
A small company sells products to shops. Their supplier raised prices, so the price list must be updated.
| Who | Their part |
|---|---|
| Nara | She runs the business. She asks for the work. |
| Mei ★ | She owns the job. If it goes wrong, she answers for it. |
| Arif | He helps do the job. |
| Yuki and Somchai | They are kept in the loop. They do not do the work. |
The job is: “Prepare the October price list and send it to customers” — wanted by 30-Sep-26, with a checkpoint on 25-Sep-26 to make sure it is going well.
The due date is your promise to the person who asked. The checkpoint is an earlier date, where the team stops and checks progress. cami watches the checkpoint to decide if something is running late — so you hear about a problem while there is still time to fix it.
03The one rule
If you remember only one thing from this page, remember this.
The big button on your screen is always your real next move. If you only said yes to the work, the button says Start Work. It does not say Finish, because you cannot finish work you have not started. If you paused, it says Resume. This stays true even when the work is late.
Everything else follows from this. cami looks at two things — what you have done so far, and what the calendar says — and offers you only the moves that really exist from where you are.
04My status and the team status are different
This surprises people at first, so we explain it early.
Several people can share one job. Each person works at their own speed. So each person has their own status. When you open a card, you see your own.
| Where you are looking | Whose status you see |
|---|---|
| My Activity | Your own status — what you have done |
| Others' Activity | The team status |
| A card you are working on | Your own status |
| A card you are not working on | The team status |
Mei has started work. Arif has only said yes. So Mei's screen says In progress, and Arif's screen says Acknowledged. The team status is Acknowledged as well, because the team status follows the person who has done the least so far. All three are correct at the same time.
05The card, part by part
This is the full card, on a real phone screen. Below it, every part is explained.
- The red message at the topYou only see this when the checkpoint date has passed. If the date is very close, it is amber instead of red.
- The labels on the rightYour status is on top. If the work is running late, a second label appears under it. They sit together. The late label never hides your real status.
- High / MustThe two priority answers: how soon it must land (urgency), and how much it matters (importancy). Section 6 shows how cami crosses them.
- Checkpoint and Due dateA red border shows you which date caused the warning.
- Request toThe people doing the work. Each one has their own status. The star ★ marks the owner. Tap a name to see their dates.
- Invite toPeople kept in the loop. They have no status, because they have no part to move.
- Why we need this, and What to doThe reason for the work, and the instructions. Written once, so nobody has to ask again.
- Files and linksEverything needed for the job stays on the card. Nobody has to search their chat history.
- MessagesQuestions, answers and progress reports. A Checkpoint report appears here too.
- The buttons at the bottomThe filled button is your main move. The outlined buttons are the other choices.
06Which card comes first
Every card answers two small questions. cami crosses the two answers on a map, and the map decides which card deserves attention first.
| The question | Where you answer it | The answers |
|---|---|---|
| How soon? | Urgency | Extreme (within one week) · High (within one month) · Medium (within next quarter) · Low (no timeline yet) |
| How much does it matter? | Importancy | Must (strategic + novelty) · Should (business + novelty) · Could (business-as-usual) · Won't (can be later) |
These are two different questions, and cami never mixes them into one. A card can matter a lot and still not be in a hurry. A card can be in a hurry and still matter very little. The map below keeps both truths visible. It has a long name in management books — the Eisenhower matrix — but you do not need the name to use it.
| Extremewithin one week | Highwithin one month | Mediumwithin next quarter | Lowno timeline yet | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Muststrategic + novelty | 1Do now | 2Do now | 5Do next | 6Do next |
| Shouldbusiness + novelty | 3Do now | 4Do now | 7Do next | 8Do next |
| Couldbusiness-as-usual | 9Do later | 10Do later | 13Can wait | 14Can wait |
| Won'tcan be later | 11Do later | 12Do later | 15Can wait | 16Can wait |
- Do now — important and urgent
- Do next — important, not urgent
- Do later — urgent, less important
- Can wait — neither
The number in each box is that box’s place in line, 1 to 16. cami walks the map one area at a time: all of Do now, then all of Do next, then Do later, then Can wait. Inside one area, boxes closer to the top-left corner come first, and when two boxes are equally close, the more important one leads.
The number on this map is the box: 1 to 16, fixed forever. A Must that is Extreme is box 1 today, tomorrow and next year.
The number on your card is different. It is that card's place in your own line — Do now 1, Do now 2, Do now 3, then Do next 1 and so on. Only one card can be Do now 1, and that card is the next thing to do. Nothing to compare, nothing to work out.
So if you have three cards in box 1, they read Do now 1, Do now 2 and Do now 3. The map put them in the same box; your line puts them in an order. Finish the first and the next one becomes Do now 1.
Two words tell you what to do; the number tells you when in your day to do it, in a form that needs no English at all. The badge colour is the colour of its box on the map above. Open a card and it shows you which box it came from.
Filtering does not renumber it. If you filter the board, the numbers you see stay the numbers they really are — so you may see 2, 5 and 6 with gaps. That is honest: those are three of your eight Do now cards, not a new list of three.
Finished work leaves the line. A card that is done or rejected keeps its words but loses its number. It is not waiting for you any more, and a number would look like an instruction.
Urgency is not frozen at the moment you chose it. A card’s real urgency is how near its checkpoint is today, measured the same way the words are written: inside a week is Extreme, inside a month is High, inside three months is Medium, further out is Low.
So a card does not sit still. Set a checkpoint two months away and the card starts in Do next; when the checkpoint comes within a month it moves by itself to Do now, and the badge changes to say so. Nobody has to remember to raise it.
Two promises about that movement. A card can only ever become more urgent, never less — the level you chose is a floor, so cami can raise it but never quietly lower it. And importancy never moves on its own. Only a person can decide that something matters more.
Look at the map: a Must with no rush (box 6) comes before a Could that is extreme (box 9). This is on purpose. People naturally grab the loud task first, even when a quiet task matters more — researchers call this the mere-urgency effect. cami leans the other way, so the work that builds your business is never buried by the work that only shouts.
The tie breaks in this order, one step at a time:
1. A late card floats up — but only inside its own area. So a late card in Do now can pass an on-time card in Do now: both are work the team already committed to, and the one whose date is breaking is the one to do. A late card in Do later still never passes an on-time card in Do next. Being late moves you up your own queue; it does not buy you a better queue.
2. The earlier checkpoint comes first.
3. Then the earlier due date.
4. Then the usual status order.
5. Still tied? The older request goes first. Nobody’s card is forgotten just because it is old.
A quiet card could sit in Do later or Can wait for a long time. cami does not fix that by slowly promoting it — if waiting made a card important, everyone would learn to wait, and a Won’t would end up above a Must.
Instead, one week after a card passes its checkpoint, cami sends a message to the owner and the person who asked, with three ways out: do it now, set a new checkpoint (an honest new date, which the map then reads as real urgency), or drop it — reject it or keep it for backlog. All three are answers. cami asks once per slip, not every night.
Choosing Decide later is a real answer — you looked, and you chose to wait. If you deferred the urgency but still set a checkpoint, the date speaks for you and the card takes its place on the map normally. If you deferred how much it matters, no clock can answer that for you, so the card waits on a shelf just below the map with the badge To decide. A card with no answer sits below that shelf. Deciding to wait is a decision; silence is not.
The numbers and the words on this map are not written by hand. They come from the same code I use when you ask me to rank your plate, so if the rule ever changes, this page changes with it. And one honest note: your board still groups cards by status and sorts each group by checkpoint. The badge tells you where a card stands; the board tells you where it is in the work.
07The whole journey, in one picture
Boxes are things that happen. Diamonds are choices you make. Round shapes are the start and the end.
There is no arrow from Acknowledged straight to Done. Saying yes and doing the work are two different things. cami keeps both, so finished work always shows when it started.
08Every screen you can see
Your own status, and what the calendar adds to it. The buttons shown under each screen are exactly the buttons that screen gives you.
Drafting
You are still writing it. Nobody else can see it yet.
A draft is private. It has no dates yet and sends no messages.
- Submit Requestmain buttonAsks how you want to tell people, then sends the request
- Deleteother buttonAsks you to confirm, then removes it for everyone
Requested
Someone sent this work to you. You have not answered yet.
- Acknowledgemain buttonAsks you to confirm. If you are the owner, you first choose how the work will be shared
- Acknowledge with Mentionother buttonAccepts the work and posts a message at the same time
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Your middle button is different. You get Keep for Backlog instead of Acknowledge with Mention. Parking the work is the owner's decision, and it moves everybody to Backlog together.
- Acknowledgemain buttonAsks you to confirm. If you are the owner, you first choose how the work will be shared
- Keep for Backlogother buttonAsks you to confirm, then parks the activity for every member
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Acknowledged
You said yes. You have not started the work.
- Start Workmain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Your buttons stay Start Work and Reject. They stay the same when the work is on time, almost late, or late. Late work is work your team needs to see, so cami changes the colour of the card and not the choices you have.
In progress
You are doing the work now.
- Finish Activitymain buttonOpens a form. You may add a message, files and links, or leave it all empty
- Checkpointother buttonSame form, saved as a progress report. Your status does not change
- Pauseother buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes Paused
There is no Reject here, and being late does not add one. Once you have started, the three things you can do are finish it, report where it stands, or stop it.
If you want to hand the work back, press Pause first. Stopping is what you are really doing, and the paused card then asks you the only question left: pick it up again, or give it back to the person who asked.
Your buttons stay Finish Activity, Checkpoint and Pause. They stay the same when the work is on time, almost late, or late. Late work is work your team needs to see, so cami changes the colour of the card and not the choices you have.
Paused
You started, then stopped for now. You will come back to it.
- Resumemain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress again
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
You get one more button than everybody else: Keep for Backlog. You stopped the work, and parking the whole request is a third answer to that — not only pick it up again or give it back. Parking the work is the owner's decision, and it moves everybody to Backlog together.
- Resumemain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress again
- Keep for Backlogother buttonAsks you to confirm, then parks the activity for every member
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Your buttons stay Resume and Reject (and Keep for Backlog if you are the owner). They stay the same when the work is on time, almost late, or late. Late work is work your team needs to see, so cami changes the colour of the card and not the choices you have.
Backlog
The owner parked it for later, on purpose.
This status never shows Almost delay or Delayed. cami only watches the clock for work that is still open. Work that is finished, refused, or parked on purpose is left alone.
- Start Workmain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Done
You finished your part.
This status never shows Almost delay or Delayed. cami only watches the clock for work that is still open. Work that is finished, refused, or parked on purpose is left alone.
- Notifymain buttonChoose who to tell that you are finished. You choose once
Rejected
You said no to this work.
This status never shows Almost delay or Delayed. cami only watches the clock for work that is still open. Work that is finished, refused, or parked on purpose is left alone.
- Undo Rejectmain buttonAsks you to confirm, then puts you back where you were before
You may have noticed that the buttons never change very much. That is on purpose. When you open a card, you should already know what the big button will say.
09Step by step, from start to finish
The normal path, one screen at a time, using our example.
Nara writes the request
She fills in the form: the name of the job, who should do it, the checkpoint date, why it matters, and what to do. Save Draft keeps it private. Submit Request sends it.
- Submit Requestmain buttonAsks how you want to tell people, then sends the request
- Deleteother buttonAsks you to confirm, then removes it for everyone
Mei and Arif receive it
Everybody in Request to gets the card. Nobody has answered yet. You can accept it, or you can say no.
- Acknowledgemain buttonAsks you to confirm. If you are the owner, you first choose how the work will be shared
- Acknowledge with Mentionother buttonAccepts the work and posts a message at the same time
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Arif accepts it
He said yes. He has not started yet, and cami knows the difference. His main button is Start Work.
- Start Workmain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
Arif starts the work
One tap on Start Work. No form, no confirmation. His status is now In progress.
- Finish Activitymain buttonOpens a form. You may add a message, files and links, or leave it all empty
- Checkpointother buttonSame form, saved as a progress report. Your status does not change
- Pauseother buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes Paused
He reports how far he has got
Checkpoint saves a short progress report. His status does not change. The badge simply starts to read In progress - Checked.
- Finish Activitymain buttonOpens a form. You may add a message, files and links, or leave it all empty
- Checkpointother buttonSame form, saved as a progress report. Your status does not change
- Pauseother buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes Paused
The checkpoint date passes
The card turns red. His buttons do not change: he can still finish it, report on it, or stop it. Late work is work the team needs to see, not work with fewer choices.
- Finish Activitymain buttonOpens a form. You may add a message, files and links, or leave it all empty
- Checkpointother buttonSame form, saved as a progress report. Your status does not change
- Pauseother buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes Paused
He finishes
Finish Activity opens a form. Every field is optional. An empty form still finishes the work.
- Notifymain buttonChoose who to tell that you are finished. You choose once
He tells the team
Notify is one choice, made one time. After he makes it, the button goes away and his part is closed.
There is nothing to tap here. You can still read the card, add a message, and link other activities.
10Who can do what
The same card looks different depending on your part in it.
You asked for the work, and you are not doing it
You watch and you remind. You cannot move someone else's work.
- Follow Upmain buttonChoose who to remind. You can do this once a day
- Withdrawother buttonAsks you to confirm, then pulls the activity back to a draft
You asked for the work, and you are also doing it
Your own work comes first. You get the buttons of a person doing the work.
- Start Workmain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
You are doing the work (Responsible)
You move your own part. You cannot move anybody else's.
- Start Workmain buttonHappens at once. Your status becomes In progress
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
You own the work (Accountable, the star)
You own it. Some of your buttons act for the whole team at once.
- Acknowledgemain buttonAsks you to confirm. If you are the owner, you first choose how the work will be shared
- Keep for Backlogother buttonAsks you to confirm, then parks the activity for every member
- Rejectother buttonOpens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no
You are only kept in the loop
You can read everything and join the conversation. You have no part to move.
There is nothing to tap here. You can still read the card, add a message, and link other activities.
You just opened the card
You are in the group but not on this card. You see the details, but not the files or messages.
There is nothing to tap here. You can still read the card, add a message, and link other activities.
You get the buttons of a person doing the work. You asked for it, but you also have a part in it, and moving your own part is more useful. To remind the others, use a message on the card.
11Every button
The colour tells you how heavy the action is. Blue is the normal next step. Green finishes something. Amber pauses or pulls back. Red refuses or removes.
| Button | What happens when you tap it |
|---|---|
| Acknowledge | Asks you to confirm. If you are the owner, you first choose how the work will be shared |
| Acknowledge with Mention | Accepts the work and posts a message at the same time |
| Reject | Opens a form: who to tell, and why you are saying no |
| Start Work | Happens at once. Your status becomes In progress |
| Finish Activity | Opens a form. You may add a message, files and links, or leave it all empty |
| Checkpoint | Same form, saved as a progress report. Your status does not change |
| Pause | Happens at once. Your status becomes Paused |
| Resume | Happens at once. Your status becomes In progress again |
| Notify | Choose who to tell that you are finished. You choose once |
| Undo Reject | Asks you to confirm, then puts you back where you were before |
| Keep for Backlog | Asks you to confirm, then parks the activity for every member |
| Submit Request | Asks how you want to tell people, then sends the request |
| Delete | Asks you to confirm, then removes it for everyone |
| Follow Up | Choose who to remind. You can do this once a day |
| Withdraw | Asks you to confirm, then pulls the activity back to a draft |
| Appreciate | Opens a form to send a thank you with an emoji |
| Request Again | Starts the same request again from the beginning |
| Edit Request | Opens the form so you can change the request |
| Notify Requester | Sends a message to the person who asked, saying this is stuck |
| Take Ownership | Asks you to confirm, then lets you give each person a part |
| Done For All | Inside the finish form. Marks every member finished, except anyone who said no |
Start Work, Pause and Resume work the moment you tap them. There is no form and no confirmation, because they are easy to undo. Every button that tells somebody something will always ask you first.
12When you must choose
Some buttons open a choice. Here is each one.
That “last short period” is one day before the checkpoint, or the last fifth of the time between the request and the checkpoint — whichever one starts later. If the job has a week, you are warned one day before. If the job has only two days, you are warned a few hours before.
13Special situations
Keep for Backlog — parking work on purpose
Only the owner can do this, and only before they start. It moves everybody to Backlog together and tells them in cami. Parked work is never marked late, because someone decided on purpose that it can wait. To start again, tap Start Work — it goes straight to In progress.
Take Ownership — saving refused work
When an owner refuses a job for the whole team, everybody else is offered Notify Requester and Take Ownership, instead of a card that can do nothing. Take Ownership has two steps: agree to become the owner, then give each person a part. It moves ownership only. The work stays refused, so bringing it back is a separate decision you make with Undo Reject.
Checkpoint — a report, not a step
A checkpoint says how far the work has got. It does not change your status. After one, your label reads In progress - Checked: same status, same colour, now with a report attached.
Hidden buttons for cleaning up
Tap the status label ten times quickly and two extra buttons appear: Forced Done and Delete Activity. Both ask you to type a word first, so you cannot use them by accident.
14Our Group
Tap your group’s name or picture at the top of the activity list. Two things live there, and both belong to the whole group rather than to any one card.
Our Group Management
Group activity category. Your group writes its own list of labels — Marketing, Client Work, Admin, whatever your team actually does. Anyone in the group can add one, and everyone picks from the same list.
When you create or edit an activity there is now an Activity category field, just above Relate activity. Pick one and its label is written in front of the name on every card: [Marketing] Prepare the October price list. You cannot delete those brackets by typing — they are not really part of the name. To remove them, clear the category on the activity. Choosing a category is always optional, and you can only choose one.
Open any activity and you will see an Activity category section just above Related activities, showing which label the card is filed under. To change it, open the activity for editing — that is where the field lives.
Renaming a category renames it on every card that uses it. Removing one takes the label off those cards too — cami tells you how many before you confirm, and the activities themselves are untouched.
Housekeeping mode. Switch it on and, for the next ten minutes, you can edit any activity in the group — anyone’s card, at any status. It is for tidying up: a wrong date, a name nobody can read, a brief that was pasted twice.
It switches itself off after ten minutes. You do not have to remember. While it is on, an amber line sits above your activity list with the time remaining, and every card you open says the same thing, so it is never running quietly in the background. The rest of the group can see who is housekeeping, too.
Our Activity Dashboards
The same dashboards as before: workload per person, what is slipping, what is waiting and who is waiting on it, filtered by period and by member. Nothing about them changed — they simply now sit behind this menu instead of being the only thing the group name opened.
15How we keep this page true
Guides usually go out of date. This one cannot.
Every screen and every button on this page is produced directly from the working product. A computer reads the app, lists all 62 possible screens, and draws them here. Nobody types them by hand.
If a button is renamed, or a colour changes, or a rule is updated, this page refuses to build until it matches again. So what you read here is what you will see on your phone. All 21 buttons are checked against the real app every single time.
That is everything. If you forget a detail, come back to the picture in section 7 — it holds the whole story. Thank you for reading, and good luck with the work.