Today

Each morning Parachute reads your Outlook mail, your calendar and your matters, and opens Today on what needs you first: emails waiting on a reply, deadlines someone has actually stated, and the meetings in your day. Every item links back to where it came from and comes with its next step.

Turn on your briefing

Your briefing is personal to you. Turning it on does not change what anyone else in your firm sees.

1. Open Today - click Today in the sidebar
2. Connect Outlook - click Connect Outlook and sign in to your Microsoft account. Parachute reads your inbox, it never sends mail on your behalf
3. Turn it on - click Turn on your daily briefing
4. Add your calendar - optional. Click Add calendar to bring in your meetings and hearings

A connected mailbox is the only requirement. Without a calendar you still get the email and matter side of the briefing, just no agenda. Outlook is the only mail provider supported today.

Connected Outlook a while ago?

Calendar access was added to Parachute’s Outlook connection after some people had already connected. If your agenda stays empty, reconnect Outlook from Today or from the Customise panel and accept the calendar permission.

What’s on the page

Top priority - two or three sentences naming the single most important thing today and when it is due, with a button for its next step.

Important work - up to eight items ranked by consequence, drawn from your inbox, today’s calendar, your matters and your recent Parachute threads. Overdue comes first, then today, then upcoming.

Deadlines only appear when something states one, and each deadline names the email or meeting it came from. Hover a deadline to see that source. Parachute will not invent a due time because an email said “urgent”.

Your agenda - your day by the hour, with a next-up card and a countdown to it. All-day items sit at the top and tomorrow’s schedule sits underneath.

Since your briefing - emails that landed after your briefing was built. Click Triage into Important work to fold them into the list.

What you can do with an item

The buttons change with what the item is.

Button	What it does
Draft reply	Writes replies for you to pick between and edit
Open email or Open event	Opens the message or meeting in Outlook
Start matter	Turns a client email into a matter with a thread already seeded
Prep for meeting	Starts a thread that briefs you on the meeting
Visit thread or Go to matter	Jumps to the work already underway
Start draft	Sends the item to chat with its source attached

Draft reply

Parachute drafts a few replies in different tones. Edit the recipients, subject and body, then either Draft in Outlook, which puts an unsent draft on the original conversation, or Copy email to paste it in yourself. Parachute never sends the reply. You press send in Outlook.

Start matter

Pre-fills the matter title from the email subject and suggests one of your precedents where it can. Edit the title, swap the precedent, adjust the prompt, then click Start matter. Parachute creates the matter and opens a thread with the client’s email attached.

Prep for meeting

Pre-fills a prompt covering what the meeting is about, what in your matters relates to it, likely discussion points, and what to have ready. Edit it if you want, then click Start prep. It runs in a new thread.

When your briefing updates

• Each morning - your briefing is built the first time you open Today on a given day, not on a schedule. Open it at 6am and it is ready at 6am
• Through the day - new email that needs you is added to the bottom of the list with a New badge. Your existing list is never reshuffled, so you keep your place
• On demand - Regenerate in the Top priority card rebuilds the whole briefing from scratch

Change what your briefing reads

Click Customise at the bottom of the page to see what your briefing draws on, and to connect or reconnect a source. Sources are managed per person and are never shared with your team.

More sources are on the way, including practice management systems like Clio.

Good to know

• Ticking an item is temporary - it greys the item out while you are on the page, but it does not stick after a reload
• There is no dismiss or snooze - items drop off as their source stops mattering
• Your briefing is yours - it only reads mail, calendar and matters you can already see, so two people in the same firm get different briefings
• Timezone follows your computer - changing timezone rebuilds your briefing for that day
• If it fails - click Try again. Your emails and calendar are untouched, and it usually passes quickly

Next steps

• Matters - how matter context feeds your briefing
• Document templates - upload precedents so Start matter can suggest one
• Meeting notetaker - have Parachute write up the meetings on your agenda