How to organize client calls with Assistly Projects: a consultant's workflow

By The Assistly team · August 13, 2026

If you run more than one client, your call history is really several histories interleaved. Acme's kickoff sits between two Globex syncs; the budget number you half-remember could have come from either. The cost shows up twice: before calls, when catching up means scrolling, and during them, when you can't risk confusing one client's context with another's.

Assistly Projects untangles this with almost no process. Here's the workflow we recommend for consultants and agencies, end to end.

Step 1 — Create a project per engagement

From the command bar, create a project for each active engagement: Acme Corp, Globex — Q3 audit, Initech retainer. The right granularity is "the unit you bill and report on." One client with two genuinely separate workstreams can be two projects; a client with one engagement should be one.

Don't create projects for hypothetical future clients. Assistly keeps everything in General until a session is filed elsewhere, so a project you're not using is just noise. Make them when the first call is on the calendar.

Step 2 — Tell the project who belongs to it

While you're creating Acme Corp, the editor lists what it already sees in your recent calls, grouped: meetings, people, companies. Tap the Acme weekly, the two people you always talk to, and acme.com — three taps, and the project knows its own thread.

Nothing is added behind your back. A project matches on exactly what you put in it, so one call with an outside vendor can never quietly turn their company into an Acme signal. That list stays yours to edit.

Step 3 — Let the calendar file everything after that

With the project set up, your connected calendar takes over. When a call starts and the invite says it's a Globex meeting while Acme is still active, a single dismissable notice offers the switch — one tap, and the session files under Globex. Take it or dismiss it; either way there's no follow-up nag and no end-of-week sorting session.

In practice this means the filing discipline you've never managed to keep — in any notes tool — happens as a byproduct of answering one prompt at the start of some calls.

Step 4 — Ask the project before the next call

This is where the setup pays rent. Ten minutes before the Thursday Acme sync, ask the Acme project directly:

• "Where did we leave the migration timeline?"
• "What did their CTO push back on last time?"
• "What do I owe them from the last two calls?"

Answers come from Acme's sessions alone, with citations that open the exact line in the exact meeting — the same ask-your-history ability you already have, scoped to one client. You walk in current on the engagement without rereading a single transcript.

Mid-call, the same scoping protects you: when the discussion touches something from an earlier meeting, Assistly's lookups search this client's calls first and cite what they find, so the guidance in your overlay is grounded in what Acme actually said.

The boundary that makes it safe for client work

For consultants, the sharpest feature is the one that does nothing visible: one project's answers never draw on another project's calls. Ask the Acme project a question it can't answer from Acme's history and it says so — and if Assistly ever searches beyond the project, the response tells you. Client A's roadmap cannot wander into a briefing for client B.

That containment is the difference between folders and memory. Folders organize the archive; a project bounds what the assistant is allowed to know while you're in the room with a client.

A worked example

Say you run three engagements: Acme (product strategy, weekly sync), Globex (Q3 audit, twice weekly), and an Initech retainer (ad hoc).

1. Monday: create the three projects. Total time: under a minute.
2. Tuesday, Acme sync: activate Acme Corp before the call, and tap its weekly meeting into the project from the picker.
3. Wednesday, Globex standup: the calendar notice offers Globex — Q3 audit. One tap.
4. Thursday, before the Acme sync: "Ask Acme Corp anything" → "what do I owe them?" → two action items, each citing the meeting it came from.
5. Friday, an unscheduled Initech call comes in: no calendar match, so it stays wherever you point it — switch to the retainer project or leave it and refile later.

By week two, every call files itself and your pre-call prep is a question, not a scroll.

Good habits that keep it working

• Name projects the way invites are named. If the client's meetings say "Globex", call the project Globex — matches stay obvious to you, too.
• Take the switch notice seriously for the first week. Each accepted switch reinforces what the project knows about who belongs to it.
• Close out finished engagements. The history stays askable; it just stops being the active context.

Projects are included in Assistly for macOS and Windows, and the free plan is enough to run this whole workflow on real calls. Get started for free, or start with the launch post for the full picture.