Working solo vs with a team

Scout behaves differently in a one-person workspace than in a workspace with a team, and the differences are deliberate: when there is nobody to hand work to, the controls for handing work around only get in the way. This article says exactly what changes, and what happens the day a second person joins.

On your own

In a workspace with a single active person who can act on work, three things are true:

• Everything is automatically yours. As each new item is published, Scout claims it for you. You do not have to press Claim on anything, and no item ever sits unclaimed waiting for a decision about who owns it.
• There is no scope pill. Mine, All and Teams are hidden entirely, along with the team chips on rows. There is no other queue to look at, so Scout does not pretend there is.
• Nothing lapses. Because Scout treats a solo workspace's work as already claimed, items do not move to the Lapsed shelf. Overdue work stays in your Overdue section until you deal with it.

Everything else works normally: evidence still settles items for you, the morning brief still arrives, Settled still records every decision, and Handled and Dismiss still behave as they do for a team — including the required note on Dismiss.

The day a second person joins

As soon as there is a second active seat, Scout switches to team behaviour:

1. Automatic claiming stops. New items arrive UNCLAIMED in a team's queue, with a Claim button and Scout's one-line explanation of how they were routed there. Items you had already been given stay yours.
2. The scope pill appears. You get Mine, the Teams menu, and — if you are an Owner or Admin — All.
3. Team chips appear on rows, showing which queue each item belongs to: EVERYONE, SALES, PRODUCTION, and any teams you have created.
4. Lapsing switches on. Past-due work that nobody claims for ten business days moves to the Lapsed shelf.
5. The visibility review can appear. With more than one person in the workspace, Scout asks before work derived from someone's personal mailbox is shown more widely. The Housekeeping row gains a Visibility review counter for Owners and Admins.

A useful surprise: a second seat counts even if it holds only the Viewer role. A Viewer cannot claim anything, but their presence means the workspace is no longer a single-person workspace, so automatic claiming stops and the team controls appear. If you invite a bookkeeper as a Viewer, expect the Inbox to change shape.

Practical advice for a shop of two or three

• Create the teams you actually work in before inviting people, even if a team has one member. Routing is much better when Scout has somewhere sensible to send money items, production items and sales items; otherwise they fall to Everyone, and Scout will tell you so on the row.
• Claim early rather than late. A claimed item never lapses, and claiming is what tells your colleague you have it.
• Use Return to team rather than Dismiss when work is real but not yours. Dismiss closes it for everybody.
• Watch the weekly lapse count on the Lapsed shelf in the first month. A climbing number almost always means work is landing in a queue nobody has adopted yet.

Good to know

• Deactivating a seat can put you back to one active person, and the solo behaviour returns.
• Automatic claiming makes you accountable; it does not widen what you can see. It never grants access to another person's mailbox evidence.
• Owners and Admins can assign work across teams; Members can assign within teams they belong to; Viewers cannot assign, claim, handle or dismiss anything, and may change only their own notification preferences.
• If you cannot see the scope pill and you expect to, check whether you really have a second active seat — an invitation that has not been accepted does not count.