How do I use business advising?

In this article, we'll cover the different permissions associated with business advising, walk through the process of creating a new advising session, and explore the dashboard views available to manage your community's business advising activities.

Permissions and Access

There are three types of permissions associated with Business Advising:

• Moderators: Have access to the full history of Business Advising sessions.
• Advisors: Can only access the sessions they've personally conducted with community members.
• Advisees: Community members who receive business advising can view the details and notes from their own sessions, but cannot see other advisees' information.

Getting Started

1. Sign into your Startup Space account.
2. From the left-side menu, go to "Business Advising" and click "Dashboard" to open the main interface.
3. Click the "Tutorial" button to get an overview of how the feature works.

The other articles in this section will explain each of the tools and buttons in the Business Advising interface.

Creating a New Session

Business Advising allows you to meet with startups, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, and track their progress over time. When you create a new session:

• You can meet with a community member who doesn't have a Startup Space account yet, but an account is required to track the session details.
• Click "New User" to open a form and create an account on the advisee's behalf.
• Enter the community member's name, email, phone (optional), and your community location.
• This will generate the account and send the advisee an email notification.

When creating a new session, you can save it as a draft or publish it immediately. Draft sessions can be revisited, updated, and then published later.

Dashboards and Views

There are two main dashboard views in Business Advising:

1. Main Dashboard: Accessed from the left-side menu. Provides an overview of recent sessions, including the community member, venture name, first session date, session entry date, and last modified date.
   • Click "View" to access all past sessions for a community member.
   • Click into each "Detail" to see updates and session notes.
   • Click "New Session" to create a new session.
2. Advisor Dashboard: Accessible by clicking the "Advisor Dashboard" button in the toolbar.
   • Gives an overview of advisors, number of sessions, hours spent advising, total venture owners/ventures, and most recent session date.
   • Use the calendar toggle to see stats over time.
   • Export the data using the "Download" button in the top toolbar.

The "Advisee Dashboard" provides similar information, but from the advisee's perspective, allowing them to view their own session history and details.

If you have questions, please reach out to helpdesk@startupspace.app