Keeping your team aligned on daily progress is vital for running an effective organization. BeSync’d simplifies this with its Update Types feature, which allows administrators to set up recurring, scheduled work update requests for team members. Whether you need hourly task updates, daily check-ins, or weekly progress reports, the Update Types page gives you full control over when and how these requests are sent.
This guide explains how to create your first Update Type from scratch, covering prompt selection, team role assignment, scheduling, and notification settings. By completion, your team will be prepared to receive automated, organized work update requests on a schedule tailored to your organization’s workflow.
Here’s a quick video tutorial:
What Are Update Types?
Before diving into the steps, it’s useful to understand what Update Types are and why they are important.
An Update Type is a scheduled request for team members to report on their tasks and progress. These requests are automatically sent at regular intervals, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on your needs. They help keep everyone informed and ensure work updates are shared consistently according to your team’s schedule.
For example, you could set up a daily Task Update sent to your development team at 5:00 PM every weekday, prompting them to summarize their work for the day. At the same time, you might establish a separate weekly Update Type for your managers to report on project milestones.
This flexibility allows BeSync’d to adapt to teams of all sizes and working styles, all managed from a single central configuration page.
Part 1: Getting Started: Accessing the Update Types Page
1. Go to the Update Types page. Navigate to the Quick Start menu if you’re setting up a new organization, or go to the Settings menu from the sidebar and select Update Types.
2. Open the Quick Config panel. On the Update Types page, use the Quick Config menu to begin setting up your first update request.
Part 2: Configuring Your First Update Type
3. Select a work update prompt type. Choose the type of work update you’d like to set up, such as a Task Update. The prompt type defines the structure and goal of your update request. For instance, a task update might include progress, obstacles, and upcoming steps. Common options include:
- Task Update – Focuses on what the team member worked on, what’s next, and any obstacles.
- Progress Update – Reports progress on milestones, identifies risks, and assesses overall status.
- Custom Prompt – Enables you to craft your own questions or instructions.
For most teams, starting with Task Update provides a good balance of detail and brevity. In this guide, we’ll use Task Update.
4. Assign one or more team roles. Next, select the team roles that will receive this Update Type. You can choose one or more roles at once, based on who needs to be notified in this update cycle. This helps ensure that the appropriate team members are prompted for updates at the correct times.
Note: Update types are assigned based on roles. You can assign a single update type to multiple roles, such as “Developer,” “Account Manager,’ or “Project Lead.’ This way, only the relevant team members will receive the request. Later, when generating reports, you can filter the data by role.
5. Choose the update frequency. Select how often this Update Type should be sent to the assigned team members. BeSync’d supports:
- Hourly – Suitable for quick operations or incident reporting.
- Daily – Ideal for stand‑in replacements or end‑of‑day summaries.
- Weekly – Common for project status or team syncs.
- Monthly – Ideal for advanced performance or client reports.
Note: You can set up several different Update Types to occur at the same frequency for the same role. For example, you could create two separate daily updates for your design team, one in the morning and one at the end of the day, each with different content.
6. Set the update prompt text. This message is what your team members will see when they receive a work update request. You can change this message to specify the kind of information you want to gather. For most common situations, the default message from BeSync’d is suitable and does not need to be changed.
If you’d like to customize it, edit the text in the prompt field before proceeding.
7. Configure the notification schedule. Now it’s time to set exactly when the update requests will be sent.
For example:
- Time: 5:00 PM (end of workday)
- Days: Monday to Friday
Scheduling updates at regular times helps your team develop a routine and ensures they submit updates while the work is still fresh in their minds.
8. Confirm the notification delivery method. The final setup step is choosing how notifications are sent to your team members. Email notifications are the default method on BeSync’d. Make sure Email is selected before moving on.
9. Click “Done” to save your new Update Type. After reviewing all settings, click the Done button to save your changes. The new Update Type will then appear on the Update Types page, listed under each assigned role, with the notification frequency shown to the right.
Part 3: Managing Your Update Types After Setup
Once you save your Update Types, you can use several tools on the Update Types page to manage and improve them.
On the left side of the page, each Update Type has a dropdown menu with options to edit, duplicate, or delete that update. This allows you to quickly modify an existing setup without having to go through the entire configuration process again.
On the right side of the page, the frequency section includes management options, especially the feature to copy frequency settings from one Update Type to another role or interval. This makes it much easier to set up schedules in large organizations, allowing you to replicate the same timetable across multiple teams without having to manually handle everything.
Tips & Notes
- Multiple update types per role are fully supported. You can create multiple daily or weekly updates for the same role if needed, with each having its own prompt and sending time.
- The Quick Config panel only appears automatically when no Update Types exist. Once you’ve saved your first item, you can access configuration options directly from the Update Types page in the future.
- Only organization owners and administrators can access the Update Types settings. Regular team members will see only their update requests in their inbox and will not have access to the configuration page.
- Tailor your prompts for better responses. The more precise your prompt, the more helpful and relevant updates you’ll get from your team.
- Use the copy action carefully: if several roles require the same update schedule, set it up once and then copy it to the others. This helps prevent the same settings from being entered multiple times.
- Choose your update frequencies carefully. Sending too many requests at once can overwhelm your team. Begin with one or two types of updates, and add more as your team becomes accustomed to the process.
Next Steps
Configuring Update Types is the first step toward automating team communication and eliminating manual status reporting. By defining who is asked, what they’re asked, and how often, you create a predictable rhythm of updates that feeds directly into BeSync’d’s AI‑powered summaries, dashboards, and reports.
Once your Update Types are live, team members can respond with a quick voice note or text, and BeSync’d transforms those inputs into polished, structured updates. You’ll gain real‑time visibility into work progress, and leadership or clients will receive professional reports without any extra compilation work.
Ready to take the next step? Once your Update Types are configured, you can move on to setting up your Project Configuration to connect your team’s updates to specific projects and workflows within BeSync’d.
Here’s how to Configure Projects and Customers in the BeSync’d Platform