Slate client documentation overview and table of contents

Documentation

Slate, explained for the people who use it

Slate is the system your agency runs on. It carries a piece of work from the first conversation with a lead all the way through to a posted video and a performance report — keeping every approval, deadline, and decision in one place.

This documentation is written for your whole team, not just for administrators. Each role gets its own guide describing exactly what that person sees when they sign in, what they are expected to do, and who they hand work to next.

New here? Read Getting started first — it takes ten minutes and covers signing in, finding your work, and the four things everyone should know. Then read your own role guide.

Two things worth knowing before you read on

Your clients do not get a password

Each client receives a portal link instead. They open it and land in their own portal, scoped to their work and nothing else. Links can be labelled, given an expiry, and revoked — and revoking one ends any session it opened. See the client portal.

Work reaches you on your phone

Reminders, handovers, approvals and anything waiting in your queue arrive as notifications — in the app, and as push notifications on an installed phone app. On iPhone this needs Slate added to the Home Screen first. See how work reaches you.

Start here

01 Getting started Signing in, finding your work queue, and the handful of concepts that make the rest of the system make sense. 02 How the system works The monthly content cycle, from approved plan to shoot, edit, quality check, client review, and posting.

Roles

Every person in Slate holds exactly one role. The role decides which screens appear, which actions are permitted, and which approvals a person is allowed to give. Start with the permissions table, then read the guide for your role.

03 Roles and permissions The eleven roles in Slate, what each one can do, and the complete permission matrix in one table. 04 Leadership and admin For owners and administrators: the health of the whole agency, approvals, exceptions, and bottlenecks. 05 Sales and marketing Capturing leads, qualifying them, running the pipeline, and turning a won deal into a paying client. 06 Operations and finance Client activation, invoices and approvals, payment confirmation, receipts, expenses, and VAT. 07 Production team For the creative director, content operations, videographers, editors, and social managers. 08 The client portal What your clients see, how they approve work, and how the 48-hour review window behaves.

Reference

09 The ten rules The non-negotiable operating rules, what each one protects against, and how Slate enforces it. 10 Glossary Every term used in Slate, defined in plain language with its position in the workflow. 11 Questions and answers Common questions from each team, plus what to do when something looks wrong.

The system in one line

A client is qualified as a lead, won by sales, paid and activated, then delivered a monthly content cycle of four videos — each passing through planning, shooting, editing, quality control, client approval, and posting, with a performance report closing the loop.

Lead→ Won deal→ Payment received→ Activated client→ Approved plan
4 shoots→ Edit (2-day SLA)→ QC + creative approval→ Client review (48h)→ Posted→ Report
A note on this documentation These guides describe the operating model your agency defined in the MDM Playbook v1.0 and the decisions confirmed in the optimisation audit. Where the software enforces a rule, that is stated plainly — and every rule in this documentation is now enforced by the system rather than trusted to memory. Where something is still being built, it is marked as such rather than implied to be live.
Slate — client documentation Prepared for Marvels Digital Marketing