The Hub Menu
The staff menu can be grouped into Dashboard plus five hubs, so every page sits under the job it belongs to instead of in one long list. New portals start this way; existing portals can switch with one click and switch back just as easily.
New in v4.213.0. Your current menu doesn't change when you upgrade. Nothing moves until an administrator chooses Use this layout in Settings → Menus.
Overview
In the hub layout the sidebar shows Dashboard at the top, then one entry per hub. Click a hub to open it and see its pages.
Users, System Settings and Messages stay in the account menu (under your name), as before. Transfers is in the account menu and under Files & forms.
The hub layout is for the Administrator Menu — the menu your team uses. Client menus and the Sales Rep menu are separate and aren't changed.
The Five Hubs
| Hub | Pages |
|---|---|
| Work | Tickets, My tasks, Projects, Calendar, Crew dashboard |
| Clients | Clients, Locations, Assets, Dashboards |
| Financial | Estimates, Invoices, Orders, Products, Revenue, Agreements, Contracts |
| Files & forms | Resources, Transfers, Intake forms, Knowledge Base |
| Automate | Actions, Agents, Automations |
- Pages for features you've switched off are left out. A hub with nothing in it isn't shown, and a hub with a single page shows that page on its own.
- Every business type gets the same five hubs in the same order. Some types use their own page names — for example agencies and consultants get Requests instead of Tickets, and some types get Documents instead of Resources.
New Portals
The Setup Wizard builds the Administrator Menu with the hubs. When you switch a feature on later in Settings → Core Features, its page is added to the right hub for you — as long as nobody has edited the menu in Settings → Menus since. Once you've edited the menu yourself, ClientCove leaves it alone.
Switching an Existing Portal
- Go to Settings → Menus
- On the Administrator Menu tab, look at the Recommended layout card. It previews each hub with the pages it would hold on your portal.
- Click Use this layout
- Confirm with Use this layout. The page reloads with the new menu.
The pages in the preview are the ones a new portal of your business type would get, for the features you have on now. Your menu after switching matches that preview exactly.
Only administrators can use this card.
Use this layout replaces the whole Administrator Menu, including any links or renamed items you added. Your current menu is saved first, so you can always put it back.
Restoring Your Previous Menu
After switching, the Recommended layout card shows Restore my previous menu and Your previous menu was saved on with the date.
- Click Restore my previous menu
- Confirm with Restore
The Administrator Menu goes back to exactly how it was before you used the recommended layout. The saved copy is then cleared, so the button disappears until you use the layout again.
Pressing Use this layout a second time never overwrites the saved copy of your original menu.
Each Person Sees What They Can Open
The menu hides pages a person can't use, whichever layout you're on:
- Financial pages — Invoices, Estimates, Orders and Revenue appear only for team members who can open them, and pages they can only view are marked with an eye icon. See Financial Access in the Menu.
- Users and Agents appear only for people who can view users.
- Actions appears only for people who can open the Actions page.
- Locations and Assets follow their own view permissions, as before.
If a hub loses all its pages this way, the hub is hidden too.
Hubs in the Chat View
When the sidebar is showing the assistant chat instead of the menu, a row of hub icons sits under the current page's name.
- Click a hub icon to open a small panel with that hub's pages. Only one panel is open at a time.
- Dashboard and other single pages are plain links.
- The hub you're in, and the page you're on, are highlighted.
- Click anywhere else, or press Esc, to close the panel.
The row shows exactly what that person's menu shows, including view-only marks, so the menu is always one click away while you chat.
One Assistant at a Time
If a dashboard has its own AI Assistant card, it's hidden while the sidebar is showing the chat, so you don't see two copies of the same assistant. It comes back when you:
- switch the sidebar back to the menu,
- minimise the sidebar, or
- use a smaller screen, where the sidebar becomes a drawer.
The card always shows in the dashboard builder.
Notes & Gotchas
- The hub layout doesn't touch client menus. To regroup what clients see, edit the Default Client Menu or Client-Specific menus in Settings → Menus.
- After switching, you can still edit the Administrator Menu as usual — rename, reorder, add links. Editing it means new features are no longer added to it automatically.
- Custom links you had in your old menu aren't carried into the hub layout. Add them back after switching, or restore your previous menu.