Why it matters
You start every day with the same questions: who's on the floor today, which jobs are slipping, and who do I still need to call back? The daily briefing answers all three before you've had your coffee. Foreman reads your shop's own data overnight and writes you a plain-spoken summary, so you walk in already knowing where to point your attention.
How it works
Before the shop opens, Foreman reads your shop's own numbers and writes one short briefing for the day. It opens with a single headline — the one thing you most need to know today — and then weighs what matters and tells you where to point your attention first. It looks at:
- Today's crew — who's scheduled, in which department, and when
- Your active jobs — the ones that matter most, ranked by dollar value and the hours they'll take, with each job's stage, how long it's been there, and whether it's running over
- Anything due today — jobs with a due date, a committed start or finish, an expected close, or a quote about to expire
- Your biggest customers — where the most active work and dollars are concentrated right now
- New leads — fresh leads waiting for a follow-up, and how long they've been waiting
When the briefing mentions a job, customer, worker, or lead, that name is a link — tap it to jump straight to that record.
It also remembers. Foreman keeps the last few mornings in mind, so it can tell you a job has been red for the sixth day running, or that something moved to production yesterday, instead of handing you the same snapshot every day with no sense of what's changed.
Foreman uses your real numbers and only your real numbers — it never makes anything up. If a job doesn't have a price set yet, it says so instead of guessing.
It arrives each morning at 6:00 in your shop's local time, and you can ask for a fresh one any time with a tap.
Where to find it
- Page: Dashboard
- Path: admin.fabwise.app (the home page after sign-in), and in the FabWise iOS app on your phone
- Who can see it: Supervisors, managers, admins, and account owners — on the Professional plan
- Turn it on: Each person opts in for themselves (see below). It's off until you switch it on.
What you'll see
A short banner at the top of your dashboard with this morning's headline. While Foreman is writing it, the banner shows "generating…" and then flips to the finished headline on its own — no need to refresh. Click the banner to open the full briefing, where you'll read the whole summary and tap any job, customer, worker, or lead to go straight to it.
Across the top of the full briefing you'll see the last week of briefings, one date each, with today's marked. Click any of them to read that morning again. It's there because the briefing talks about the past — "red for the sixth consecutive day," "moved to production yesterday" — and those days should be days you can go and read for yourself.
If you've turned on notifications, you'll also get a push to your phone when the briefing is ready — and the push leads with the headline, so you know what's waiting before you even open the app.
Tip of the Day
Some mornings the briefing closes with a short Tip of the Day — two or three sentences about one thing in FabWise that would make your shop's numbers better, using your own numbers to make the point. It might be putting dollar values on jobs, running payroll straight out of FabWise instead of retyping hours, or hosting your shop's website on FabWise so quote requests arrive as leads.
A few things worth knowing:
- You'll never get more than one a day, and it's always at the bottom. It never pushes the real news of the day out of the way.
- Most mornings there won't be one at all. That's normal, not a bug. If a tip has already come up recently, or your shop has a genuinely busy morning with a lot to deal with, Foreman keeps quiet.
- When you fix something, it says so. If you put dollar values on six more jobs after a tip about pricing, the next briefing tells you — once — and then moves on.
What to do
Turn it on
The briefing is off by default, and there are two switches — one for the shop, one for you.
1. Turn it on for the shop (an admin does this once)
- Go to Settings → Briefing
- Switch on Turn on the daily briefing for this shop
- Save
While that's off, no briefing is written for anyone at your shop, no matter what their own settings say. It needs the Professional plan.
2. Turn it on for yourself (each person does this for themselves)
- Open Notifications from the avatar menu in the web app
- Switch on Daily Briefing
- Optionally switch on the push notification so it reaches your phone each morning — you can manage that push from the web app or from the FabWise iOS app on your phone
Both switches have to be on. If the shop switch is on but nobody has turned it on for themselves, nothing is written — Settings → Briefing tells you how many people are set to receive it, so you can see at a glance whether that's the problem.
Turning the briefing on is done from the web app. The iOS app lets you turn its push notification on or off, but the briefing itself is switched on from the web.
Your personal choice is yours alone — turning it on for yourself doesn't turn it on for anyone else on the team. Each person opts in for themselves.
Point Foreman at what matters to you (optional)
If there's something you always want the briefing to lead with — a big job, a slow season, a push on new sales — set a focus for your shop. Admins can add a short note (up to 500 characters) that nudges Foreman to emphasize what matters most to you, while it still ranks your work by value, hours, and what's due. You'll find it in your company settings.
Turn off a tip you don't need
If a Tip of the Day is about something your shop handles a different way — you invoice out of another system, you run your website somewhere else — you don't have to keep seeing it. Click "Not interested — we handle this differently" on the tip itself, and that subject is done. Foreman won't raise it again, and it won't congratulate you about it later either.
It's a shop-wide choice, not a personal one, and it doesn't touch anything else in the briefing — the jobs, the crew, and the dates are exactly the same. You can bring a tip back any time from Settings → Briefing, where the ones you've turned off are listed with a way to restore them.
Get a fresh one on demand
The morning briefing covers the start of the day, but the floor moves. Tap Generate (or Retry, if the morning run didn't land) on the dashboard banner — or Regenerate on the full briefing page — any time to rebuild today's briefing with the latest numbers.
Common questions
Q: Why don't I see the briefing card?
A: The daily briefing is a Professional-plan feature for supervisors, managers, admins, and account owners. If you're on a Professional plan and still don't see it, check both switches: an admin turns it on for the shop under Settings → Briefing, and then you turn it on for yourself under Notifications in the avatar menu. It's off until both are on.
Q: I turned it on for the shop and nothing happened. What did I miss?
A: Almost certainly the second switch — nobody has turned it on for themselves yet. Settings → Briefing tells you how many people are set to receive it; if it says nobody, follow the link there to your Notifications page and switch it on.
Q: I turned it on for myself but nobody else got it. Is that a problem?
A: No — that's how it works. Each person opts in for themselves, so turning it on for yourself only affects your own account.
Q: When does it arrive?
A: Each morning at 6:00 in your shop's local time. You can also generate a fresh one any time from the dashboard card.
Q: Can I get it on my phone?
A: Yes. Once the briefing is switched on in the web app, turn on its push notification — from your web notification settings or right in the FabWise iOS app — and you'll get a notification each morning when it's ready, led by that day's headline.
Q: Can I go back and read an older briefing?
A: Yes — the last week is right there across the top of the full briefing, one date each. Click a date to read that morning. Only mornings that actually produced a briefing appear; if one didn't run, there's nothing to read for that day.
Q: Can I regenerate an old day's briefing?
A: No. Regenerate always rebuilds today's briefing with the latest numbers, so you'll only see the button on today's. Past mornings stay exactly as they were written.
Q: Does it tell me about no-shows and late arrivals?
A: Not in the briefing — those are live alerts that reach you the moment they happen, so they're already covered. The briefing is your forward-looking morning summary.
Q: There's no Tip of the Day this morning. Did something break?
A: No. Most mornings there isn't one. Foreman only offers a tip when it has something genuinely useful to say that it hasn't raised recently — and on a morning with a lot going on in the shop, it stays out of the way entirely.
Q: I turned off a tip. Can I get it back?
A: Yes. Go to Settings → Briefing — every tip you've turned off is listed there with a way to restore it.
Q: Can I turn off tips from the iOS app?
A: Not yet. The app shows the tip; turning one off is done from the web app for now.
Related
- Dashboard — the home screen where the briefing card lives
- Company settings — where you set a focus and restore tips you've turned off
- Managing leads — following up on the new leads the briefing surfaces
- Roles and permissions — who can see the briefing
Last updated: 2026-07-26