Workspace Layout

The Beagle workspace on Mac

Beagle's Mac window has three regions — a left rail holding firm identity, a calendar and app controls; a centre workspace with nine modes; and a right rail holding the timer and a calculator. Either rail can be collapsed.

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Workspace Layout
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The Beagle window is three vertical regions that never move. The middle one is where you work; the two rails either side hold things you want within reach at all times rather than sections you navigate into.

#What the left sidebar is for

From top to bottom:

  • The Beagle shield and your firm name. The shield is fixed artwork, not a slot for your own logo — there is no upload, drop or picker for it anywhere in the app. The name below it comes from Settings → General.
  • A calendar date picker. This is not a diary. The date you select here sets the date range Reports uses, so it belongs to reporting rather than to scheduling.
  • Three round buttons. X quits Beagle, saving any pending work first; the lock turns on Desk Lock immediately; the gear opens Settings.
  • The Quick Help panel, titled Quick Help, which appears here only while the Quick Help Panel setting is on.

#The centre workspace

A segmented picker across the top switches between nine modes — Dashboard, Contacts, Matters, Clients, Billing, Tasks, Expenses, Reports and Notepad. This is Beagle's real navigation. Neither rail is a folder tree, and neither contains a list of sections to click through.

#The utility column on the right

Three stacked cards:

  1. The timer clock — the live face and the elapsed time, reading 00h 00m 00s when nothing is running.
  2. The timer controls — client and matter pickers, an entry colour, the activity description, a Billable toggle, a New Manual Entry button, and Start/Resume, Pause, Stop and Discard.
  3. A calculator. Easy to miss, because it sits below the timer and only comes into view on shorter windows when you scroll the rail.

#Showing and hiding the side panels

Two small buttons sit in the top corners of the window, one per rail. Collapsing the right rail is the useful one: it gives wide tables in Reports and Billing noticeably more room.

Collapse state is not remembered. Both rails come back expanded the next time you open Beagle, every time.

#What you cannot change

The layout is fixed, and deliberately so — in a firm where several people use the same screens, a workspace that everyone has rearranged differently is harder to talk about, not easier. You cannot:

  • reorder the nine modes, or hide one you do not use;
  • move the timer to the other side, or out of the rail;
  • replace the shield with your own logo;
  • set an interface density, text size or accent colour.

What you can adjust is covered in Theme and the Quick Help Panel.

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