The Protocol CRM
help center.
Guides, feature walkthroughs, and answers for coaches running their business in Protocol. New here? Start with the quickstart.
New to Protocol CRM? Start here — what it is, how to set up your business, and the core ideas that make everything else click.
Quickstart: set up your business in 5 steps
The fastest path from a new account to coaching your first client in Protocol.
Key concepts
The handful of ideas (clients, Vault templates, assignments, roles, and your app) that the whole product is built on.
The product guide
The guide button in the header: what it answers, where its answers come from, and what it will not do.
Clients
Your roster and each client's record: profiles, tracking, history, plans, per-client billing, and the queue of what everybody still owes you.
Your dashboard
The Overview tab: the counts across the top and where each one takes you, the eight cards you can choose between, and the difference between a client who has gone quiet and one who is waiting on you.
Arranging your dashboard
Configure: choosing the grid, adding and removing widgets, making a card two rows tall or two columns wide, putting the same card on the screen twice with different filters, what happens when you shrink the grid, and how your layout follows you between devices. The same controls arrange a client record and the tracking screens.
Client profiles
The client record: the header and its stage, label and app-view controls, each of the ten Overview cards and what it can do, arranging them into a grid of your own, the seven tabs, and what the Personal profiles capture.
The Personal tab
Who the client is, across seven sub-tabs: contact and app access, the four profiles that ground every plan you write, which coaches work with them, and the actions that re-run onboarding, issue a login code or delete the record.
The History tab
The client's history, one line for every change and who made it, plus past plans, the check-in archive, the training log, form submissions, and what happened to every email you sent them.
The Tracking tab
The rail down the left of a client's Tracking tab, what each of the nine panels holds, why the Clinical group is missing on some clients, how Overview, Habits and Nutrition are grids you arrange, and the difference between Configure and Tracking settings.
The Tracking overview
The first panel on a client's Tracking tab: the tile strip, the progress photos, the measurements grid, the latest notes, where entries came from, and how to add a note without the whole entry form.
The Check-ins panel
The entry log on a client's Tracking tab: the columns, the All, Reviewed and Flagged filters, narrowing by what an entry has or where it came from, and reading an entry in the pane beside the list.
Adding a client
How to add a client, and what they get when you do: what the Add client form requires, the two switches that decide what is sent, and why adding from the Leads list creates a lead rather than a client.
Finding a client
The Segments column down the left of your roster: who is paying, who has gone quiet, whose access is about to run out, who has no plan. Plus sorting, selecting several clients at once, and how to save a filtered list as a link.
Onboarding a client
Four ways to fill a client's profiles: send them a form, paste a meeting transcript, paste your own notes, or build a client straight from a form submission.
Login codes, app view, coach assignment and deleting a client
The actions you take on a client rather than about them: hand a locked-out client a login code, look at their app as them, move them between coaches, re-run onboarding, or remove them for good.
Plan statuses, and what your client sees
The four statuses a plan on a client record can have, what each one shows the client, how an auto-resume date works, and why duplicating a plan is the safe way to rework one somebody is already following.
Programs across your clients
The Programs tab is every plan your clients are running, in one list: which week each person is on, which plans are ending soon, which have ended, and how to extend a batch of them in one pass.
Form reminders & the check-in worklist
Automatic escalating reminders when clients miss any form — weekly check-ins, onboarding, or other forms — plus a paged worklist that tracks every one by state and only offers the actions that apply.
Client labels
Tag clients with your own words, then filter your roster by them. Labels can be created as you type, by you or by a connected system, and renamed, recoloured, merged or retired from one screen.
Configuration: labels, stages and statuses
The three vocabularies your client list, pipeline board and check-in worklist are built from. What each one drives, what renaming or retiring one costs, and how to merge two that mean the same thing.
Leads and low-ticket members
Your roster has three tiers. Leads cost you nothing, low-ticket members get the app without your time, and clients get everything. Here is what each one can use and what each one costs.
Client to-dos
The one queue of everything your clients still owe you. Filter it by status, source form, client or date, tick off what arrived another way, and add a to-do by hand.
Habits
The Habits panel on a client's Tracking tab: completion, best and worst, the streak, the daily strip and the weekday pattern, plus how to fix a day the client forgot to tick.
Nutrition tracking on the client record
The Nutrition and Nutrition logs panels: target adherence against the plan you assigned, protein days, the last logged day, and the day-by-day log with the meals and photos inside it.
The Form submissions panel
Everything one client has sent back, across every form: the intake filter, what each column really shows, and how this list relates to their check-ins.
Reading lab results
The Labs panel on a client's Tracking tab: importing a report, the marker table, what the position column means, and why Protocol does not label a value as normal or critical.
Genomic traits
How imported trait genetics appear on the client record, what the reading column is, and why there is no risk score, no colour ladder and no count of things to act on.
Your reusable library — training and exercises, nutrition templates, media, multi-phase programs, forms and check-ins, and automations. Build once, assign to anyone.
Training templates & the exercise library
Build reusable workouts from your exercise library, then schedule them into a plan a client follows.
The Protocol exercise library
Over five thousand movements ship with your account, each with a demo video, written instructions and a full classification. Read-only, searchable, and the same library you build workouts from.
Programs & the weekly grid
Build a multi-week program on the weekly grid: read a whole week at a time, and edit sets, reps, weight and meal portions straight from the schedule.
Editing the weekly grid
Drag a chip to move it, copy and paste a whole day, Copy onto, Duplicate and Fill forward are three different answers, Rest is a label that also drives the day's nutrition target, and where a chip click takes you depends on the zoom.
Assigning a plan to a client
Assign gives the client their own independent copy of the plan, active straight away. The end date you pick labels the plan, it does not resize it.
Recipe names from ingredients
Swap ingredients in a recipe and regenerate its name in one click - and set your own naming rules.
Duplicating a plan
Make a full copy of a plan, from your library or onto the same client, so you can edit the copy and throw it away if it goes wrong.
Removing things, and what happens to unsaved edits
Removals that would destroy authored work ask first and name what they are removing, and an open recipe editor keeps your edits until you save, even if you leave the browser tab.
Translating a program
Translate a whole program into another language in one action, including its phases, content collections, workouts and nutrition templates.
Per-client placeholders in plans
Leave a blank in a nutrition label once, then fill it in per client at the moment you assign the plan, instead of editing day by day.
The content library
The Vault screen that holds your files - three scopes, folders, search and views, documents you write in the app, and what a client can and cannot see.
Uploading files, and what processing means
How a file gets into your library, why a video says Processing, why you can use it anyway, and what Import from Google Drive does and does not do.
Sharing a file
Two ways to hand a file to someone - a public link, which is unlisted rather than private, and sharing with named coaches. Plus why share and delete work one file at a time.
Articles
Rich posts for your clients: write in blocks, aim them at everyone or at a segment, publish, attach them to a plan, and share one outside Protocol as a link or an embed.
Build standard, simple, or video-guided workouts from your exercise library, with sections, supersets, sets and reps and per-set intensity, then watch clients log them on mobile and review every session from your dashboard.
Building a workout
Assemble a workout from sections, groups and exercises, set sets, reps, weight, RIR/RPE, tempo and rest, group exercises into supersets and circuits, program per-set intensity, and find exercises fast with favorites, recently used and a search that knows gym names.
Creating custom exercises
Add your own movements to the exercise library, write their instructions, attach demo media in sets (default, explanation, easier, harder), classify them for the filters, and offer variations. Or bulk-create exercises straight from videos in your Vault.
Logging workouts (mobile)
How clients work through an assigned workout in the app: logging each set's reps, weight and RPE in the standard logger, reading the coaching note in a Simple workout, or following along in the video-guided player.
Reviewing logs (web)
See every workout a client logs from your dashboard: the headline numbers for a window, a session log you can sort through, and a session opened set by set, editable so you can fix what came in wrong.
Build forms and questionnaires, collect onboarding intake and weekly progress check-ins, watch the numbers and photos build up in each client's record, and turn a check-in into a progress report, written by you or drafted by AI, that you send when you are ready.
Building forms
Create an intake questionnaire in sections, a survey, or a check-in form: pick a type, add from eleven question types, map answers to tracked metrics, then start from a template and set it as a default.
Check-ins & progress tracking
Use forms as onboarding intake and weekly progress check-ins, see exactly what gets tracked, log entries yourself, and compare a client's numbers and photos over time.
Progress reports
A progress report turns a client's check-in into a short, sendable reply plus private notes for you. You write it in the Progress review dialog, and pressing Send is the moment it reaches the client's app.
Automations
Set up an automation step by step: its trigger, what the AI reads, and the report it drafts, so every new check-in, or every submission of a form you pick, produces a draft waiting for your review.
Add a chat message to a client's Progress Entry
The "Add to Progress Entry" action on any chat message, or on a media tile in the Shared content drawer, files that message's text and attachments into the client's progress log, either on the message's own date or appended to an entry you pick.
Planning
Your day-to-day operations, the calendar and the bookable events clients schedule themselves into, plus your task boards.
Video meetings on appointments
A virtual appointment can carry a real video link, from your own Zoom or from Google Meet. How to add one, how Protocol picks when you have both, and how to join or host.
Emailing guests about an appointment
When you create, move or cancel an appointment that has guests, Protocol asks whether to email them. Choose Send and each guest gets the details, the join link and a calendar file.
Tasks, boards & the client tasks list
Three views over the same tasks, an overview, a filterable worklist and a Kanban board, plus a dedicated tab for client work on the client list.
Talk to your clients in real time. Rich-formatted messages, photos and voice notes, @mentions, edits, emoji reactions, read receipts, and announcement-only groups. Web and mobile, fully in sync.
Messaging basics
Start conversations, send messages, reply to a specific message, read a conversation row at a glance, and understand the status icons. Everything you need for day-to-day chat.
Search your chats
The search box at the top of the chat sidebar finds people and groups by name across your whole inbox, and searches the text of your messages too, so you can track down the conversation where something was mentioned even when you can't remember who you said it to.
Formatting & mentions
Make messages clearer with bold, italic, strikethrough, links, inline code and code blocks, and pull someone in with an @mention that notifies them.
Editing & deleting messages
Fix a typo or wrong number after you've sent it. Edit any of your messages at any time, delete ones you don't want, and copy text or a link out of any message.
Reacting to messages
Answer a message with a single emoji instead of typing "got it" for the tenth time today. Reactions work on web and mobile, both you and your clients can use them, and they appear instantly for everyone.
Photos, files & voice
Send images, videos and documents, from your device or your Vault media library, plus voice notes you can play back at 1.5x or 2x, emoji, and saved message templates — typed or recorded — for the things you send often.
Announcement & read-only groups
Run a group where only you (and admins) can post, perfect for broadcasts, cohorts and announcements, by setting roles and per-person posting permission.
Notifications
How chat notifications work: when a push is sent, who gets it, what an @mention adds, what happens when the app is already open, and why your dashboard stays quiet.
Who has read a message
What the tick on your own message means, why a big group tells you how many read it instead of who, and how Read activity answers the question your shared inbox actually asks: has anyone picked this up yet?
Messaging on mobile
What chat looks like for your clients in the branded mobile app. What they can read, how they send and manage messages with press-and-hold (the one gesture worth telling every client about), how they know a message reached you, and the one difference from the web composer.
Stage & labels in the chat list
See which pipeline stage a client is in and which labels they carry without leaving chat, and narrow the inbox to those clients, or to the clients whose reminders a coach looks after.
Filter conversations (All, Unread, Drafts)
A one-tap toggle at the top of the chat list narrows your inbox to only unread conversations, or only the ones where you left a draft, so nothing waiting on you gets buried.
Browse shared media, files & links in a chat
A button in any conversation header opens the "Shared content" panel, a history of every image, video, document and URL exchanged in that thread, split into three tabs.
Sell to your clients and get paid: products and packages, subscriptions and renewals, installment plans, purchases and invoices, revenue analytics, and your shop configuration.
Products
Everything you sell, from coaching packages and session packs to bundles and digital downloads: product types, how a client pays, pricing and tax, access duration, linking plans, and which coaches sell what.
Subscriptions & renewals
Sell something that repeats on a cycle: setting up a recurring product, how a renewal moves the period forward, what a renewal does and does not do to the money, and how to end one.
Selling in installments
Split a one-off purchase into several dated payments, record full or partial payments against each one, see at a glance which plans are overdue, due soon, on track, or fully paid, and set up reminders for your clients and late-payment alerts for yourself.
Purchases & invoices
Every sale you have made and every invoice behind it: creating purchases, the statuses a purchase moves through, session credits, pausing and resuming, and working with invoices.
Revenue analytics
What made money and when: the period and coach filters, what sold against what was collected, the breakdowns by product, coach and customer, and how to arrange the screen.
Refunds, cancellations and what moves the money
What each action on a purchase does to your client's access, and what it does to the money. Those are two separate things, and only one of them happens inside Protocol.
Shop settings
Configure the shop once and everything you sell inherits it: your Stripe connection, tax rates, invoice branding and business details, and payment reminders.
Your Protocol plan
What Protocol charges you: the four plans, who counts as a billable person, why leads are always free, AI credits and where they went, and how to change plan.
The branded mobile app your clients use - preview it and configure its branding so it looks like yours, not ours.
AI agent
Connect your own AI assistant - Claude or ChatGPT - to your Protocol account and run your coaching by chat. Build and assign programs, analyse your roster, and get plain-language rundowns. Changes happen live, bounded by your agent key's access when you connect - and you can disconnect anytime.
Connecting your assistant
Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Protocol by adding one connector URL - then sign in and approve in your browser. Choose how much access to grant, and disconnect anytime. No keys to copy.
Installing the Claude plugin
The two-line install for Claude Code, the access level to pick, removing an old manual connector, turning on auto-update, and when you'd want a REST key on top.
Installing the ChatGPT plugin
Add Protocol to the ChatGPT desktop app from our marketplace, sign in, pick an access level, and the one privacy setting worth checking first.
Building & editing programs
Describe a program in plain language and your assistant builds it live in Protocol - as a reusable library template by default, or assigned to a client when you say so. Bulk edits across weeks work the same way.
Analysing & summarising
Ask open-ended questions across your whole roster, get plain-language rundowns and check-in summaries, and have the assistant leave a suggested reply as a draft for you to send yourself - all from chat.
Safety, scopes & privacy
How the access you grant decides what your assistant can do, the hard limits no agent key can cross, what data leaves Protocol for your AI provider, and how to see your connected agents and disconnect them.
How AI-generated content is labelled
Where Protocol tells you (and your client) that something came from AI, what gets recorded even when no label is shown, and why a report you reviewed goes out under your name.
Live technical MCP reference
The canonical list of the tools your AI agent can call on Protocol — 23 intent verbs grouped by access level, the entities they read and write, and the connection facts (MCP standard, connector URL, server version). For power users and developers wiring up an MCP client.
Integrations
Connect your clients' wearables and health apps (Apple Health, Health Connect on Android, and WHOOP) so their steps, sleep, heart rate and recovery flow straight into their record. Plus your own Google Calendar and Zoom, for scheduling and video meetings.
Apple Health (iPhone)
Let an iPhone client share steps, sleep, heart rate, HRV and body metrics from Apple Health. They connect once on their phone, then it keeps syncing.
Health Connect (Android)
The Android equivalent of Apple Health. Let an Android client share steps, sleep, heart rate and body metrics through Google's Health Connect. Connect once, then it keeps syncing.
WHOOP
Link a client's WHOOP account to pull recovery, sleep and the heart-rate numbers behind them straight into Protocol. A quick one-time sign-in, then it keeps flowing on its own.
Reviewing a client's biometrics
Your read-only view of everything a client's apps and devices have synced: a tile strip picked for that client, a sleep and recovery trend, and the readings behind them.
The in-app health snapshot
Once a client connects a wearable, their latest numbers also show up on the home screen of your app. Recovery, sleep, activity and body metrics at a glance, WHOOP first and Apple / Health Connect as a fallback.
Connecting your Zoom account
Link your own Zoom account so virtual appointments get a real Zoom meeting automatically. A one-time sign-in from Integrations, then disconnect any time.
Google Calendar sync
Keep your Protocol appointments and your Google Calendar in step, both ways. What syncs, how to put a Google Meet link on every online session, how event titles are named, how busy time from Google blocks your booking page, and what disconnecting does.
Manage your own account - profile, organization, team, your Protocol subscription, notifications, and integrations.
Quick answers to the questions coaches actually ask, the non-obvious ones about logging in, onboarding, programs, nutrition, check-ins, billing, and the app. Grouped by area, most-asked first.
Accounts, login & onboarding
How clients log in (and what to do when the code doesn't arrive), how to add and onboard clients the right way, and how teams and logins work.
Programs & workouts
Building workouts and programs, supersets and circuits, per-set weights, rest in seconds, what the modes and phases mean, and why video-guided playback or week numbers sometimes surprise you.
Nutrition
Custom foods and servings, adding supplements correctly, reusable food groups, why a template is one day, and how manual, photo and text food logging behave.
Progress & reports
Check-in reminders and time windows, saving drafts, units, where logged reports land, and a few behaviours that look like bugs but aren't.
Billing & payments
How selling works when Protocol keeps the ledger and you collect the money, subscriptions and renewals, tax rates, Stripe keys, in-app purchases, and what Protocol charges you.
App, devices & integrations
App updates and branded apps, device support and health sync, opening links, booking buffers and capacity, the calendar, running admin from a phone, and what to tell clients about chat on their phone.
Support
How to get help from Protocol - browse the guides, chat with the team, or file a ticket and watch it through to Shipped, with a bell and email notification every time it moves.
Help for the people being coached - using the mobile app to follow programs, track progress, log nutrition, message your coach, and book sessions.
What's new in Protocol CRM, by release — new features, improvements, and fixes, newest first. Many entries link straight to the guide for the feature.
Release 1.5.7
August 23, 2026 — client stage and labels in your chat inbox, voice message templates, a purchase expiry filter for renewal conversations, invoices that actually send with a PDF attached, AI onboarding from pasted text or any form, and email that reaches your clients again.
Release 1.5.6
August 17, 2026 — a shopping list your clients can take to the shop, AI reports for any form, a proper client tasks list, an optional gate that ties programs and reminders to an active purchase, faster video, and a large security and privacy pass.
Release 1.5.5
August 9, 2026 — installment payment plans, client labels, outbound webhooks, predefined chat templates, hourly nutrition placeholders, background voice-note playback and reply/forward on mobile, one unified place for check-in notifications, and a long list of fixes across chat, nutrition, reports and billing.
Release 1.5.4
July 16, 2026 — turn off read receipts, an announcement group seeded with every active client, escalating form reminders with a coach worklist, client profile pictures, manual meal entry, and a round of chat reliability work including live message delivery.
Release 1.5.3
July 7, 2026 — a shared team inbox, a first-class AI Agent with live activity, a big chat upgrade (shared-media drawer, all/unread filter, whole-inbox search, shared drafts), per-client plan placeholders, favourites, API keys & Integrations, faster nutrition building, and a wide batch of fixes.
Release 1.5.2
June 14, 2026 — richer chat, AI-drafted check-in summaries, Apple Health / Google / Whoop and Google Calendar sync, smarter nutrition logging, team library controls, global search, and a batch of billing and Tasks fixes.
Release 1.5.1
June 8, 2026 — sharper reminders & scheduling, cleaner workout logging, reliable note autosave, team-account library controls, and a batch of coach-requested fixes on top of 1.5.0.
Release 1.5.0
May 31, 2026 — the big two-month release. A smarter client dashboard, time-sensitive reminders, deeper workout & nutrition tracking, the client web app, and a long list of improvements and fixes.
For developers - authenticate with an API key and call the Protocol REST API to build your own integrations.
Creating & using API keys
Create an API key, keep it safe, authenticate a request with it, find the API reference, and revoke a key. Owner-only.
API rate limits & AI usage budget
Request rate limits per API key, the 429 + Retry-After contract, and the 402 you'll see if AI-backed calls exhaust the account's AI credits for the billing period.
Webhooks
Get notified when things happen in Protocol. Register an endpoint, choose events, verify the signature, and read the delivery log. Owner only.
Building workflows on the API
Safe re-runs for automations: idempotent tasks, duplicate-proof purchase imports, the client history feed, and the headers that tag a workflow's changes.
Protocol is a wellness and optimization platform. It is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Ranges and trends shown in the product are wellness reference points, not clinical thresholds. Always discuss your health, and any result that concerns you, with a qualified healthcare provider.