Running Active Playbooks

Tools tab and the playbook lifecycle

Open the tools and integrations relevant to the playbook in context — and run the lifecycle transitions (Complete, Reopen, Cancel, Delete) that move a playbook through its stages.

The Tools tab combines two unrelated-but-co-located concerns: a grid of integration cards for in-context tooling (Mural today, more coming), and the lifecycle controls for the playbook itself (Complete, Reopen, Cancel, Delete) — accessible here and from the playbook header menu.

This page covers both. The lifecycle reference for the full state machine — and how it interacts with templates, sessions, and artefacts — lives at Lifecycle reference.

Video walkthrough — coming soon

The Tools grid

The Tools tab shows a grid of integration cards. Each card opens the relevant tool inside the playbook context — so when the integration involves a board, a doc, a video link, or another external resource, you don't have to leave Gleo to use it.

Tool Status What it does
Mural Shipped Open a Mural board scoped to this playbook. See the Mural integration for setup.
Miro / Figma / Zoom / Teams / Meet / Docs / Notion / Loom Roadmap Placeholder cards for tools coming via the Integrations roadmap.

The placeholder cards exist so the grid layout stays familiar as integrations land — they aren't usable yet but they tell you what's planned.

Lifecycle actions — Complete, Reopen, Cancel, Delete

Lifecycle actions move the playbook between stages in its lifecycle. They're available from two places:

  • The playbook header menu — the ⋯ icon in the top right of any playbook tab.
  • The Tools tab — surfaced alongside the tool grid for convenience.

Both surfaces drive the same actions; pick whichever is closer to where you are.

Complete

Marks the playbook as finished as planned. Moves it from Active to Past. Use when the engagement reached its intended end-state — the work is done; the artefacts are filed; the team has wrapped.

Reopen

The inverse of Complete. Takes a Completed playbook back to Active. Use when:

  • An engagement you thought was finished extends with a follow-on phase.
  • You marked something Complete prematurely.
  • A client comes back asking for a refresh of work the playbook produced.

Reopen restores the playbook to its previous Active state — no data is lost.

Cancel

Marks the playbook as cancelled — "this engagement never really happened." Different from Complete:

Outcome Use Complete Use Cancel
The engagement reached its intended end ✓
The engagement was abandoned mid-flight ✓
The team will reference the work later ✓
The work is being kept for record only ✓
Reporting should treat it as a successful engagement ✓
Reporting should treat it as a no-show ✓

Both Complete and Cancel move the playbook to Past, but they tell different stories about the engagement and they're treated differently in retrospectives and reporting.

Delete

Removes the playbook entirely. Destructive and immediate — there is no undo, no recovery, no soft-delete state. Sessions in the playbook are removed; the team is detached.

Delete is for sandboxes, not for real engagements. A playbook you created to test something? Delete is fine. A real engagement that ended? Use Complete or Cancel — they preserve history. Once a playbook is deleted, the work it contains is gone; reports, audits, and references all lose the data.

If you're unsure, choose Cancel. It's reversible (Reopen exists for cancelled playbooks too), and it preserves the record for retrospective use.

The lifecycle in one diagram

The full state machine lives in Lifecycle reference, but the playbook-specific portion:

stateDiagram-v2 [*] --> Active: Instantiate from template Active --> Completed: Complete Active --> Cancelled: Cancel Completed --> Active: Reopen Cancelled --> Active: Reopen Active --> [*]: Delete (destructive) Completed --> [*]: Delete (destructive) Cancelled --> [*]: Delete (destructive)

Most playbooks live in Active for their working life, transition to Completed when the engagement wraps, and stay there. Cancelled is for the cases where the engagement was abandoned. Reopen brings either back to Active. Delete is the trapdoor — used sparingly.

Walkthrough

  1. 1

    Open the Tools tab

    Inside any playbook, switch to Tools. The integration grid shows on the page; the lifecycle actions are surfaced alongside.

  2. 2

    Open the Mural card

    If you have Mural connected, click the Mural card to open a board scoped to this playbook in a new tab.

  3. 3

    Open the playbook header menu

    Click the ⋯ in the playbook header. The lifecycle menu shows Complete, Reopen (if Completed / Cancelled), Cancel, and Delete.

  4. 4

    Pick the right transition

    Read the table above. Complete for a finished engagement. Cancel for one that was abandoned. Reopen if you're undoing a previous Complete or Cancel. Delete only for sandboxes.

  5. 5

    Confirm the action

    Each transition asks for confirmation. Read it before clicking through — particularly for Delete.

Tips & pitfalls

Cancel preserves history; Delete doesn't. If in doubt, Cancel. You can always Delete later if you really need to; you can't un-Delete.

Use Reopen rather than recreating. An accidentally-completed playbook is one click away from Active again. Don't recreate; the lifecycle was built for this.

Treat the placeholder integrations as roadmap signal, not promise. The Miro / Figma / Zoom / Teams cards are visible because they're planned, not because they're shipping next week. The current canonical roadmap is at Integrations roadmap.

Related pages

Reference Lifecycle reference Surface Active Playbooks list Integration Mural Reference Integrations roadmap