Boxcurve Unity: User Guide
Welcome to Boxcurve Unity. This guide is for everyday users. It explains, in plain language, how to do the things you will do most often: find your work, edit a task, assign someone to a task, update a task's status, and compare projects. No technical knowledge is needed.
Boxcurve Unity helps your organisation keep track of who is responsible for what. It does this through an Accountability Map, a grid that shows each item of work down the side and the people involved across the top, with a letter in each cell showing how each person is involved (for example, who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted or Informed).
What you can see and do in Boxcurve Unity depends on the role your administrator has given you. If a screen or button described here is not available to you, that is normal, it means your role does not include that action.
Signing in
Boxcurve Unity opens like any other app in your Microsoft 365 environment. You sign in with your normal work account; there is no separate Boxcurve Unity password to remember.
Sign-in and account problems (passwords, multi-factor prompts, "you don't have access to this app") are handled by Microsoft, not by Boxcurve Unity. See Microsoft's guidance: https://learn.microsoft.com/power-apps/user/
What happens when the app opens
When you open Boxcurve Unity, a brief loading screen appears first. During this moment the app works out who you are, which role you have, and which projects you can see, then takes you to your home screen. This usually takes only a few seconds.
"You are not in the stakeholder list"
If, instead of the home screen, you see a message telling you that you are not in the stakeholder list, it means your name has not yet been added to the list of people set up to use this Boxcurve Unity environment. This is not an error on your part.
To resolve it, contact your Boxcurve Unity administrator and ask to be added as a stakeholder. Once you have been added, sign in again.
"You are not a System Administrator"
You may instead see a notice that you are not a System Administrator. This appears only during first-time setup of a brand-new environment, which must be carried out by a System Administrator. The notice lists the people who can do this, with a link to start a chat with each one. As an everyday user you will not normally see this screen.
Finding your way around
A navigation menu runs down the side of the app. The items you see depend on your role, but the main destinations are:
- Home, your Accountability Map and your tasks. This is where you will spend most of your time.
- Compare Projects, view two projects side by side.
- Settings and Administration, management areas, shown only to users with the appropriate role.
The Home screen and the Accountability Map
The Home screen shows the Accountability Map for the project you are currently working in. Read it like a grid:
- Each row is a task, an item of work.
- Each column is a person (or team) involved in the project.
- The letter in a cell shows how that person relates to that task, for example R (Responsible), A (Accountable), C (Consulted) or I (Informed). The exact set of letters reflects the responsibility format your organisation has chosen.
Seeing just your own tasks
Rather than scanning the whole matrix, you can focus on the tasks that involve you. Boxcurve Unity can show your tasks, the items you are assigned to, so you can see your own responsibilities at a glance without reading every row.
If you also lead a team, your view can include your department's tasks as well as your own, so you can keep an eye on the work your team is responsible for.
Editing a task
Open a task from the Accountability Map to view or change its details. Depending on your role, you can update:
- Notes, free-text detail about the task.
- The task's schedule, including a starting date and which days of the week the task applies to (Monday through Sunday).
- Comments, type a message and choose Send to add it to the task's discussion. Comments stay with the task so everyone working on it can see the conversation.
Other details, such as how the task is classified, its priority, risk and how often it recurs, may also be available to edit, depending on how your organisation has set the task up and the role you hold.
Save your changes before leaving the task. Comments are added as you send them.
Assigning responsibility to a person
To say who does what on a task, assign a person to it against a responsibility letter.
- Open the task you want to assign.
- Choose the option to assign a person.
- Search for the person by name or email and select them.
- Choose the responsibility letter that describes their involvement, for example R, A, C or I.
You can assign more than one person to the same task, each with their own letter, and you can remove an assignment when someone is no longer involved.
Notifications when someone is assigned
When you assign a person to a task, Boxcurve Unity can let that person know automatically. The notification is sent through Microsoft Outlook (email) and Microsoft Teams, so the person you assigned is told about their new responsibility without you having to message them separately.
Updating a task's status
As work progresses, keep its status current from the Home screen. Updating the status keeps the Accountability Map accurate for everyone and is the simplest way to show that an item is moving forward or is finished.
Your organisation can decide which roles are allowed to close tasks. If you are not able to mark a task as closed, your administrator has reserved that action for certain roles.
Comparing projects
If you work across more than one project, Compare Projects lets you place two projects side by side so you can see the differences between them, for example how their tasks or accountability are arranged. This is useful when aligning a new project with an established one, or checking that two related projects are consistent.
Where notifications come from
You may receive messages from Boxcurve Unity in two places:
- Email and Teams, when you are assigned to a task, as described above. These come from Boxcurve Unity through Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams.
- In the app, administrators may see an update banner at the top of the Administration area when a new version of Boxcurve Unity is available. A recommended update improves functionality and performance; a required update should be installed promptly. Installing updates is an administrator task, not something everyday users need to act on.
If Microsoft Planner or Azure DevOps is involved
Your organisation may have connected Boxcurve Unity to Microsoft Planner or Azure DevOps so that tasks also appear on a Planner plan or a DevOps board, with their status kept in step. If so, a task you work on in Boxcurve Unity may also show up in those tools. This is set up and managed by your administrator; as an everyday user there is nothing extra for you to configure.
Getting help
If you are stuck, the first place to look is this guide and the other documents in this section.
- Access problems (you are not in the stakeholder list, or a screen you expect is missing): contact your organisation's Boxcurve Unity administrator. They manage who can use the app and what each role can do.
- Sign-in problems (password, multi-factor, "no access to this app"): these are handled by Microsoft. Ask your IT support team.
- Product support: Boxcurve Unity is supported by email. Your administrator holds the current support contact details for your organisation.
When asking for help, it is useful to note which project you were in, the task name, and exactly what you were trying to do. That helps whoever assists you reproduce and resolve the issue quickly.