As discussed in the asynchronous communications guide, written communications are cornerstone of working at LinkORB.
In addition to specific topic and task discussions in Cyans and Team HQ, each LinkORB team member is asked to provide a brief status update every week that includes:
- Completed tasks since the last update🏁
- Planned work until the next update🔮
Other relevant update items are:
- Requests for assistance when unsure who to ask
- Reminders about expected absences or vacations
- Key performance indicators (KPIs). We love numbers!
- Fun things 😺 like jokes, a photo from your holiday, a reminder about a special event in your country, or any other personal updates you would like to share.
Please know that everyone wants the weekly update to be quick and painless to create as well as fun and painless to read. It’s fine to keep it short and it’s fine to drop in a meme!
The remainder of this guide will address the following topics.
Types of Updates
Depending on your role, you may be required to provide one or more of the following types of updates:
Project updates
Project owners can view their respective projects at the owned projects dashboard. Project updates can be initiated from the dashboard by selecting +Add update from the Last Update column.
Alternatively from within the project, owners can select the Update tab from the project menu. The +Update button will open the project update input.
Project updates can be edited after saving and while only one project update per week is suggested, Team HQ will allow creation of multiple.
Task updates and announcements
All team members can provide task updates and other announcements through the update tool.
The update tool is easily accessible from the bullhorn icon 
found in the bottom left menu of Team HQ.
Task updates and announcements are editable by selecting My week update under your alias in the top right menu of Team HQ.
Unlike the suggested single project update per week, mulitple weekly task updates and announcements are often provided by team members. For example, if multiple Team HQ cards have been completed in a given week, each would receive its own update.
Referencing team members
When submitting your weekly update, use the Associates field to acknowledge team members you worked with during this period. To do so, place an @ symbol before each username and separate them with a space.
For example:
@janedoe @marke @luluj
Weekly updates disitribution and reminders
Every Tuesday at 5:30am (GMT+2), updates are automatically distributed company-wide and include all new updates since the prior Tuesday.
Some team members prefer to create individual updates as tasks are completed throughout the week. Others prefer to spend a few minutes on Monday writing updates for distribution the following day. A special few, rise with the roosters🐓 on Tuesday and write updates as the sun comes up🌄.
No matter your preference, Fonzie 
will send you a friendly reminder every Monday at 11:30am (GMT +2) in Mattermost.
Previewing your updates
Team members can preview their submitted updates at anytime with the weekly update preview within Team HQ.
The update preview can be accessed by selecting My week update under your alias in the top right menu of Team HQ.
Viewing updates history
You can view and search through the history of your updates using the timetrack search feature on Team HQ.
Weekly updates for non-engineering team members
Engineering and technical writing team members are required to use the above tooling and process for weekly updates.
While all LinkORB team members are similarly encouraged to do so, non-engineering team members may send a company-wide email on Tuesdays to the email address provided on the internal wiki.