Getting started

This page covers what happens between "someone sends you a link" and "the workspace is actually usable": your first sign-in, the setup wizard, the first-run checklist it leaves you with, inviting the rest of the team, and connecting a label printer.

First sign-in

There's no public sign-up — accounts are provisioned for you. Artefact staff sign in with Continue with Google; invited guests get an email invite and then use a password or a one-time code. Signing in has the full story, including roles and what to do when you can't get in.

The first person from a company to sign in creates the workspace; everyone who signs in after that joins it.

Only an Owner or Admin is offered the setup wizard, because finishing it writes real data into the shared workspace (categories, locations, tags and custom fields). If you're the first person in and you're an Owner/Admin, you'll see it; if you're joining an already-set-up workspace, you'll land straight on the dashboard with a first-run checklist instead.

The setup wizard

The wizard is six short steps, and every question tells you why it's being asked — this isn't a generic "tell us about your company" form, it's tuned for event and production companies specifically (not IT departments or facilities managers, which is who the underlying product was originally built for).

Step	Asks	Why it matters
Your details	Your name, username, how you heard about Shelf	Your username is how crew see who added a note or signed off a job
What you do	What kind of outfit this is (production company, venue, agency, hire company, freelancer)	Decides the starting categories and locations
The work you run	Which kinds of work you do (live events, corporate AV, film/TV, dry hire, touring, conferences, activations, and more — pick as many as apply), and roughly how much gear you own	The single biggest driver of what gets seeded for you
Your crew	Team size, whether you bring on freelance crew	Shelf can hold crew who have no login at all, so a "yes" here matters
First thing you want sorted	What you want Shelf doing for you first (know where the gear is, get jobs organised, do a proper stocktake, get on top of what's out on hire, or just having a look) — and what you need to be able to prove	Sets the order of your first-run checklist
A few more things	Where your gear actually lives, how you want to find a case in the store, whether you hire gear out, whether you print your own labels, whether you want to invite your team now	Fills in the last few seeding decisions (see below)

Based on your answers, finishing the wizard creates real starting data in your workspace — not placeholder text, actual rows you can rename or delete:

• Categories matched to the kinds of work you picked (e.g. picking "Live events" and "Corporate AV" seeds different starting categories than picking only "Film and TV shoots").
• Locations — everyone gets a store and a prep bay; answering "gear lives on client sites" or "spread across a few locations" adds one more to match.
• Tags and custom fields matched to what you said you need to be able to prove — test-and-tag dates, who had it, what it cost.
• Your code display preference, from the "how do you want to find a case in the store?" answer. See Barcodes & codes; answering "not sure" leaves it alone and adds "print a label" to your checklist so you can look at one first.
• An ordered first-run checklist, built from your "first thing you want sorted" answer, with unrelated tasks demoted rather than removed.

The first-run checklist

Once setup is done (or skipped), the dashboard shows a checklist tailored to your answers rather than a generic tour. The possible tasks are:

• Add your gear — start with the ten things you'd notice missing. If you said you're coming off a spreadsheet, this becomes Import your gear list instead.
• Print your first label — pick a layout, print one, stick it on the case you'd hate to lose. See Printing labels.
• Connect your label printer — only shown if you told the wizard you have a Brother or Zebra printer.
• Check your locations — Shelf made a few based on your answers; rename them to match how you actually talk about them.
• Build your first kit — a flight pack, a camera package, a DJ rig. See Kits & custody.
• Add your crew — freelancers included; they don't need a login to take custody of a case.
• Invite your team — only shown if you said you wanted to invite people straight away.
• Create your first job — dates, gear and crew in one place. Everything else in Shelf hangs off a booking.
• Run a stocktake — walk the store scanning as you go. See Audits.
• See what the reports tell you — nothing to set up; they read the gear you've already added. See Reports.

Which of these you get, and in what order, depends on your wizard answers — a workspace that said "just having a look" gets a different top of the list from one that said "do a proper stocktake".

Tasks the workspace has already satisfied (gear already added, crew already invited) are marked complete automatically rather than nagging you about something that's already done.

Inviting the team

From Settings → Team, an Owner or Admin can:

• Invite a user — sends an email invite that creates a real login. Use this for anyone who needs their own account and role (Owner, Admin, Base, or Self-service).
• Add a non-registered member — a team-member record with no login at all. This is the right choice for freelancers and casual crew who only ever need to be assigned custody of gear or named as a booking's custodian; they never sign into Shelf, so there's no seat and no password to manage. See Kits & custody.

Pending invites and non-registered members each have their own tab under Settings → Team so you can see who's been invited but hasn't accepted yet.

Connecting a printer

If your workspace prints its own asset labels, connect a printer from Settings → Printers. Shelf supports two physical printers out of the box: a Brother VC-500W (colour tape, 12/25/50mm) and a Zebra ZD411D (monochrome direct-thermal). Printing works as a cloud print queue, not a direct browser-to-printer connection — this is deliberate, and it's what makes printing work from a phone anywhere on your WiFi, not just from a laptop sitting next to the printer:

1. An always-on machine on your local network (an office Mac, a Mac mini, a Raspberry Pi, a small server) runs the print relay — a small program that polls Shelf over the internet, claims print jobs, and talks to the printer directly over your local network.
2. In Settings → Printers, click Add relay to get a one-time key and an install command pre-filled for your workspace.
3. Once the relay is running, it appears in Settings → Printers within about a minute, along with any printer it finds. From then on, printing a label from any phone or laptop on your team just works — the browser never talks to the printer directly.

If a printer or its relay goes offline, Shelf shows exactly that on the Printers page (not a vague error) and emails your Owners/Admins if it stays offline for more than 15 minutes. Printing labels has the full version — tape sizes, what fits on each label, the calibration print, and what to do when nothing comes out.

Related

• Your first week with Shelf — the ordered version of what to do next, and what can wait
• How Shelf works — the full picture and where to start by role
• Signing in — Google, invites, passwords and roles
• Assets, kits & labels — Shelf codes, labels, scanning
• Organising your gear — the categories, tags and custom fields the wizard seeds for you
• Printing labels — connecting a printer properly
• Bookings & the calendar — your first job, once gear is in