Quick start guide

Everything you need to get up and running with Dashlee in a few minutes.

Open Dashlee

What Dashlee is

Dashlee is a personal dashboard built for people who live inside their Google account. Instead of hopping between Gmail, Google Tasks, Google Calendar and Google Drive, Dashlee gathers the things you care about into one calm, single-page workspace that you can open first thing in the morning and keep beside you all day.

It does two things at once. First, it reads a handful of items live from Google — your tasks, your calendar events, your starred emails and your starred Drive files — and shows them together. Second, it lets you build your own layer of organisation on top: sticky post-it notes, quick links, task labels, custom boards, colours and templates that are saved by Dashlee and follow you every time you sign in.

The result is a home base that is genuinely yours. Your Google data stays in Google; the little extras you create to make sense of it live in Dashlee.

  • Live from Google: tasks, calendar events, starred emails, starred Drive files.
  • Created and saved in Dashlee: post-its, quick links, task labels, ordering, custom boards, templates, list colours and shared-list settings.

You can try everything free for 15 days, no card required. The app runs at dashlee.app/user.

Signing in with Google

Dashlee uses Google sign-in (OAuth), so there is no separate password to create or remember. You approve access once, and Google issues Dashlee a secure token it uses to fetch your information on your behalf.

1Go to dashlee.app/user and select Sign in with Google.
2Choose the Google account you want to use. If you are signed in to several, pick the right one carefully.
3Read the permissions screen from Google and select Allow (or Continue) to grant access.
4You are returned to Dashlee and your dashboard loads. Your free 15-day trial starts automatically.

Here is exactly what Dashlee asks for, and why:

  • Gmail (read and modify labels & stars): to show your starred emails and let you star, unstar and label them from the dashboard.
  • Google Tasks (read and write): to display your tasks and let you add, complete, reorder and edit them.
  • Google Calendar (read-only): to show today's events and what is coming up. Dashlee never edits your calendar.
  • Google Drive (read-only): to list and open your starred Drive files. Dashlee never edits or deletes files.
  • Basic profile (email, name, picture): to greet you and identify your account and licence.

You stay in control: you can review or withdraw these permissions at any time from your Google Account under Security → Third-party access.

A tour of the dashboard

When Dashlee opens you see everything at a glance, organised into clear areas. Nothing is hidden behind menus you have to hunt for.

  • Task boards: your Google Tasks lists shown as tidy columns you can scan, tick off and rearrange.
  • Calendar / today's events: what is happening today and what is coming up next.
  • Starred emails: the messages you have flagged in Gmail, ready to open or clear.
  • Notes and post-its: your colourful sticky reminders and quick links.
  • Quick links: one-tap bookmarks to the sites and tools you use most.
  • Starred Drive files: the documents you starred in Google Drive, one click away.

A few habits make the tour quick to master:

  • Most items support drag and drop — reorder tasks, move cards, rearrange boards.
  • Your layout, colours and language live in the settings / personalisation area (see that section).
  • Changes to your Google items (ticking a task, starring an email) sync back to Google; changes to your Dashlee extras (post-its, links, boards) are saved instantly in Dashlee.

Give yourself five minutes on the first day to arrange the boards the way your brain works — after that, Dashlee remembers it for you.

Task boards

Task boards are the heart of Dashlee. They are powered by Google Tasks, so anything you do here shows up in Google Tasks on your phone and elsewhere — and the other way round.

Each of your Google Tasks lists appears as a board. To work with them:

1Type into the quick-add field at the top of a board and press Enter to create a task.
2Tick the circle beside a task to mark it complete; tick again to bring it back.
3Drag a task up or down to change its priority, or drag it onto another board to move it.
4Open a task to add details — a due date, notes, or a checklist of subtasks.

Dashlee remembers a few things that plain Google Tasks does not: your custom ordering and positions, your task labels, and your list colours. These sit in Dashlee's own database and layer neatly on top of your real Google tasks, so your board looks the way you like without changing anything in Google itself.

You can also create custom boards and task templates for routines you repeat — a weekly review, a packing list, an onboarding checklist — and drop them in whenever you need a fresh copy.

Checklists & subtasks

Big tasks feel lighter when they are broken into steps. Inside any task you can build a checklist of subtasks and tick them off one by one.

1Open a task to reveal its detail view.
2Add subtasks one line at a time — for example the individual steps of "Prepare the presentation".
3Tick each subtask as you finish it and watch progress build.
4Reorder subtasks by dragging, so the next thing to do is always at the top.

Because tasks and subtasks live in Google Tasks, your checklist travels with you across every device where you use Google. It is the same underlying list, simply presented in Dashlee in a clearer, more scannable way.

Tip: turn a checklist you use often into a task template, then re-create it in a single step whenever the routine comes round again.

Due dates & task notes

Every task can carry a due date and its own notes, so the full context lives with the thing you actually have to do.

1Open a task and choose a due date so it appears in the right order and stands out as it approaches.
2Add notes to the task — a phone number, a link, a reminder of what "done" means.
3Save, and the date and notes sync straight back to Google Tasks.

A word on wording, because we like to be accurate: due dates and task notes are stored in Google Tasks, not copied into Dashlee. What Dashlee adds and stores itself are the organising extras around your tasks — labels, ordering and list colours — which make dates and priorities easier to read at a glance.

Give urgent items a due date and a colourful label, and your busiest board instantly tells you where to look first.

The calendar & today's events

Dashlee shows your Google Calendar so you always know what today holds and what is coming next — right beside your tasks, where planning actually happens.

  • Today's events are highlighted so the next thing on your schedule is easy to spot.
  • Upcoming events give you a gentle look ahead without opening a separate app.
  • Times, titles and details come straight from your calendar and stay in sync.

Access here is read-only: Dashlee shows your events but never creates, edits or deletes them. To make a change, open the event in Google Calendar and it will update in Dashlee automatically. This keeps your real schedule firmly under your control, with Dashlee acting purely as a clear window onto it.

Reading tasks and calendar side by side is where Dashlee earns its keep — you can see the day's commitments and the day's to-dos in one glance and plan realistically.

Starred emails

The emails you star in Gmail are the ones you have decided matter — a reply you owe, a booking to confirm, a message to act on. Dashlee brings that shortlist onto your dashboard so it never gets buried under new mail.

  • See your starred messages together, with sender and subject, ready to scan.
  • Star or unstar right from Dashlee — unstar an email once you have dealt with it and it clears from the list.
  • Apply or manage labels to keep related messages grouped.
  • Open a message to jump to it in Gmail when you are ready to reply.

This is why Dashlee asks for Gmail permission to read and modify labels and stars: it needs to show the starred list and to let you star, unstar and label from the dashboard. Dashlee reads these messages live and does not copy your email content into its own database — your mail stays in Gmail.

Used well, your starred list becomes a tidy "needs my attention" queue you can clear through the day.

Notes

Sometimes you just need somewhere to think — a place for the idea, the draft, the list that is not quite a task. Dashlee's notes give you exactly that, always on your dashboard.

1Create a new note and give it a title so you can find it again.
2Write freely — meeting notes, a rough plan, things to remember.
3Your note is saved in Dashlee and is there next time you sign in.

Notes stay with your Dashlee workspace, alongside the other extras you create, rather than in Google. That means they stay with you across devices whenever you sign in to Dashlee, and they never touch your Gmail, Tasks, Calendar or Drive.

Reach for a note when something is worth keeping but is not a step to tick off — and reach for a task or post-it when it is.

Opening your starred Drive files

The documents you star in Google Drive appear in Dashlee, so the files you reach for most are always one click away — the spreadsheet you update daily, a shared plan, a contract in progress.

  • See your starred Drive files listed on the dashboard.
  • Click a file to open it in Google Drive in the usual way.
  • Keep your key documents beside your tasks and calendar, so everything for the day is in one place.

Access to Drive is read-only: Dashlee lists and opens your starred files but never edits, moves or deletes anything. To change which files appear, simply star or unstar them in Google Drive and the list in Dashlee follows.

Like your other Google content, these files are read live from Drive and are not copied into Dashlee's database — the files themselves stay safely in your Google Drive.

Labels, colours & custom boards

This is where Dashlee lets you shape a plain task list into a system that fits your work. These organising tools are all saved by Dashlee and sit on top of your Google Tasks.

  • Task labels: tag tasks by project, client, context or priority, then find related work at a glance.
  • List colours: give each board its own colour so your eye lands on the right one instantly.
  • Ordering & positions: arrange tasks and boards exactly how you want; Dashlee remembers the layout.
  • Custom boards: build boards for the way you think — "This week", "Waiting on", "Someday" — beyond your default Google lists.
  • Task templates: save a reusable set of tasks and drop in a fresh copy whenever a routine repeats.
  • Shared-list settings: manage how a list is shared, when you collaborate with others.
1Open a task or board's options to add a label or choose a colour.
2Create a custom board and drag the relevant tasks into it.
3Save a frequently used board as a template for next time.

Because these live in Dashlee's own database, they enrich your view without altering anything in Google Tasks itself.

Personalisation: accent colour, layout & language

Dashlee should feel like yours from the first day. A few quick settings let you tune how it looks and reads.

  • Accent colour: choose the highlight colour that runs through the interface, so the app matches your taste.
  • Layout: arrange the boards and panels — tasks, calendar, emails, notes, links — in the order that suits your day, using drag and drop.
  • Language: switch the interface language; your choice is remembered in the site's lang preference cookie.
1Open the settings / personalisation area.
2Pick your accent colour and language.
3Rearrange the boards until the dashboard reads naturally to you.

Your personalisation is saved with your Dashlee account, so the workspace looks the same each time you sign in. Spend a moment here early on — a dashboard that matches how you think is one you will actually keep open.

Your data & privacy

We like to be plain about this. Dashlee handles two kinds of information differently, and we will not pretend "nothing is stored".

Read live from Google, not retained by Dashlee: your tasks, calendar events, starred emails and starred Drive files. These are fetched on demand through Google's APIs using your token and shown to you — the content stays in Google.

Stored in Dashlee's own database (the extras you create here): sticky post-it notes, quick links, task labels, task ordering and positions, custom boards, task templates, list colours and shared-list settings — along with your account email, your licence (type, status, expiry) and your order history.

A few points worth knowing:

  • Dashlee uses Google sign-in and the permissions listed earlier; you can withdraw access any time from your Google Account.
  • The third parties that process data are Google (authentication and the APIs), Stripe and PayPal (payments), and the hosting provider.
  • Some processing may take place outside the EU under appropriate safeguards such as Standard Contractual Clauses.
  • The data controller is Mirko Montecchiani — mirkomontecchiani.com, mirkomontecchiani@gmail.com.

On cookies, the site uses only a session cookie (PHPSESSID, for CSRF protection and the admin area), a lang preference cookie, and cookies set by Stripe or PayPal during checkout. There is no advertising or third-party tracking cookie by default.

Trial, licence & billing

You can explore the whole of Dashlee before paying anything.

  • Free trial: 15 days, no card required. It starts automatically when you first sign in with Google.
  • Plans: when you are ready, choose a Monthly or Yearly licence.
  • Payment methods: pay by card via Stripe or with PayPal.
1When your trial is ending, open the licence or upgrade option in Dashlee.
2Choose Monthly or Yearly.
3Pay securely by card through Stripe, or with PayPal.
4Your licence activates and your dashboard keeps working without interruption.

On billing and privacy: your card details are handled entirely by Stripe or PayPal and are never stored by Dashlee. Dashlee keeps only the order record — the plan, amount, gateway reference and status — and the licence that results from it.

You can review your orders and licence in the /account area. If anything about a payment or licence looks wrong, contact us and we will help (see Getting help).

Troubleshooting, FAQ & getting help

Most hiccups have a quick fix. Here are the common ones.

  • My tasks, events, emails or Drive files are not showing. Dashlee reads these live from Google, so it is usually a permissions or connection matter. Refresh the page; if it persists, sign out and back in with Google, and check that access is still granted under your Google Account's Security → Third-party access.
  • Something I added in Google is missing. Give it a moment and refresh — Dashlee fetches live, but a refresh forces the latest. Confirm you are signed in to the same Google account.
  • A starred email or file will not clear. Star and unstar happen in Gmail/Drive; refresh Dashlee after changing them there.
  • My calendar looks out of date. Calendar is read-only in Dashlee — edit the event in Google Calendar, then refresh.
  • My post-its, links or boards vanished. These are stored by Dashlee against your account — make sure you signed in with the same Google account you set them up on.
  • A payment or licence problem. Check the /account area for your orders and licence status, then contact us if it still looks wrong.

FAQ in brief: The trial is 15 days with no card. Plans are Monthly or Yearly, paid by card (Stripe) or PayPal. Dashlee never stores your card details or copies your Gmail, Calendar or Drive content into its database. Calendar and Drive access are read-only.

Still stuck? We are happy to help. Contact Mirko Montecchiani at mirkomontecchiani@gmail.com or via mirkomontecchiani.com. The public site is dashlee.app and the app runs at dashlee.app/user.