What is the morning brief?
The morning brief is the daily report a Digital FTE writes to its manager at the start of each working day, in the first person, in the Today tab of its workspace. It has a fixed order: what is waiting on the manager, what happened yesterday against the role's targets, what the FTE detected that may need a decision, and what it spent against its budget.
The term is deliberate. A brief is what a direct report gives a manager before the day starts: short, prioritised, honest, and written by the person who did the work. The Digital FTE's brief is the same thing, from a worker that never forgets to write it.
How does the morning brief work on ftes.ai?
On ftes.ai the brief is generated each morning from the role's own record: the proposals it made and their status, the actions it took under promoted classes, the targets it progressed, the detections it raised, and the tokens it consumed. Waiting items link to the evidence behind them, so approving a proposed match or a drafted reply from the brief takes seconds.
For an organization running several Digital FTEs, the workforce view combines the briefs into one list ordered by what blocks the most, so a manager reads one brief for three roles rather than three.
Why does the order matter?
The order matters because unapproved proposals block the work. A draft that has not been approved does not publish; an exception that has not been decided leaves a ledger line open; an escalation that has not been picked up leaves a customer waiting. Putting waiting-on-you first means the manager's first minutes go to the decisions that unblock the day.
Yesterday comes second because it is the accountability: what was delivered against targets, with misses stated and reasons given. Detections come third because they are optional decisions. Spend comes last but always, because a manager should never be surprised by cost.
What are detections?
Detections are things the Digital FTE noticed that the manager may want to act on: a possible duplicate payment, a competitor's page that started outranking yours, a spike in one ticket category, a candidate source that dried up, a risk signal from a market-entry plan that moved. Each comes with the evidence and, where appropriate, a proposed response for approval.
Detections are what distinguish a colleague from a tool. A tool does what it is told; a colleague tells you what they saw. The brief is where that happens.
- Waiting on you: proposals and escalations, evidence attached
- Yesterday: work against targets, misses with reasons
- Detections: anomalies, changes, opportunities, risks
- Spend: tokens against budget, external spend where applicable
What is the morning brief often confused with?
It is confused with a dashboard, which shows metrics without judgement; the brief is written, prioritised, and states what the FTE thinks needs a decision. It is confused with a notification stream, which interrupts throughout the day; the brief is once, in the morning, and the workspace header's waiting count covers the rest. It is confused with the monthly review, which is the longer first-person report against targets that the Performance tab holds.
It is sometimes expected to be long. It is short by design; a brief that takes twenty minutes to read is a report, and the manager would stop reading it.
Where do you see it in the workspace?
The Today tab of each Digital FTE's workspace holds the day's brief, with the waiting count also in the sticky header. The workforce view combines briefs across roles. Past briefs are kept, so a manager can read what the FTE said on a given day, which is useful in an incident review.
Related terms: detections, targets, approvals, workforce view, monthly review.
A useful habit for a new manager is to read the brief before opening anything else in the morning, decide the waiting items in one pass, and leave detections for a second look later in the day. Read that way, the brief takes the five minutes it was designed for, and the rest of the workspace is there when a detection deserves the time.